African Cement Mixer

We met this young man several months ago. What the pictures show is cement mixing, African style. They measure the batch ingredients on the ground including the powdered cement. They make a little crater in the middle of the pile and then add water, gradually. They mix the pile with a shovel, by hand. When the consistency is what they want, they stop and kind of organize it into a neat mound. When the cement is needed on the project, other workers with buckets come and haul the mixed cement to the appropriate place on the building project. There was a real cement mixer on the Mission Building project when we came, but it has been gone for about 2 months. We never saw cement delivered in a truck all mixed up. We have never seen a cement truck anywhere. The neat stacks of blocks to the right of the cement and buckets are pavers. They will be a portion of the "floor" of the parking lot. They call it the "car park". This process has been going on for the past month and a half. The building was supposed to be finished at the end of June. It looks like it might be finished late this year or early next year.

The young man is married and has a baby girl. He is not typical of the Africans. They marry late in their 20's at the earliest and most do not marry until they are in the mid-thirties. The pavers are leaning against a storage container the Lagos West Mission uses for books, pamphlets, water filters etc. The picture with the young man on the right with vehicles behind him is a view of our short street. We take this street and turn to the left to get out to the famous "Opebi Road".