Pyramids

A few months ago, on a Saturday, the sound of a tractor or excavator woke me up early. That typical growl of a heavy engine, deeper and louder when the machine is doing heavy work. Slightly lighter, catching its breath, when the machine moves off and prepares for a new assault on the heavy task. Again and again.

After my stay in Vietnam, I know very well what that means: a new construction site next door, or rather, opposite the door. Not exactly reassuring. Memories of the rhythmic turning of concrete mixers, the squeaking of reversing trucks with concrete (bê ton, in Vietnamese), the toiling of excavators, the shuddering of drills, the screaming of workers, the layer of cement dust on all the plants in the garden, and the smell of concrete came to mind.

Anyway, things weren't going that fast here. Apart from the excavator, no other machines were involved. It was not about building a new residential tower or hotel, like in Da Nang, but about rebuilding a house. Drastic, though. It looks like a castle, or that is what the new wall with walkway reminds me of.

After digging away part of the ground to build an underground floor, the machines and trucks left the scene for good.

No crane to lift things. A wooden scaffold was built with steep slopes over which the construction workers went up in their slippers. Sometimes with a wheelbarrow, but mostly just with an old paint bucket filled with bricks, cement or sand balancing on their heads.

No cement mixer, but a shovel and sieve. Everything was mixed on the street.

No ready-made metal structures to reinforce the concrete. The metal rods were folded together on the street. The gutter on my side of the street was used for that.

No bags of gravel for the concrete. But large stone chunks that were meticulously smashed into small pieces by a number of stone cutters, all women.

No, this time there was no grunting of machines. But there was the repetitive sound of hammers on stone, the sound of metal bars being worked. The street has become a construction site. On my side, the bricks are waiting, in the ditch the reinforcements are being made. On the other side, the stone cutters sit and work, mortar is made, piles of sand and cement lying around. That material tends to disappear at night. So there is extra surveillance and, because it rains, the guard needs a roof. So a corrugated iron hut leans against the wall around my house.

No machines, but all handiwork, by a lot of construction workers who make long hours, 6 days a week. It reminds me of the pictures in history lesson of how the pyramids must have been built.