Roadworks

My route to work is lined with cones… they’re playing about widening the road. A few days ago there was a really long line of traffic, I couldn’t see over the hill but as I sat there I had a chance to look around at places I don’t usually take any notice of. There is line of really lovely flame trees, bright red flowers dancing on the ends of twigs coated in tiny floaty green leaves. There is dusty path that leads under the trees and I don’t know where it goes and the building that I didn’t know what it was turns out to be the Malawi College of Accountancy, all freshly painted with landscaped gardens.

Anyway, as I came out the dip in the road I saw why we were all crawling along – there was a huge tipper truck, rusty and barely holding itself together, reversing along the left side of newly widened bit of road, 4 men in the back, shirts off, standing on a huge mound of gravel, shovelling it two at a time off the truck and into grey piles on the tacky tarmac. There men with brushes, wellies on, were scraping the gravel into place and stamping it down. The driver of the tipper truck had his head out the window looking backwards down the road, one hand on the wheel, the gripping the door! There were also two men with flags – one red, one green – flapping madly at the traffic letting a few cars go one way and then the next, shouting up to the driver every now and then…no idea what they were saying.

The half dozen supervisors, their reflective jackets laid out on the ground like picnic blankets, were watching from the shade of the nearest tree. It was all going so well though they didn’t really need to be anywhere else though! I loved it – all so against that health and safety nonsense and definitely better than your average ‘sitting in roadworks experience!