Dirks fabulous adventures in Uganda: more doors…

We still hadn’t finished all the maintenance work in the pig house. First of all we needed to add another gate as we found ourselves jumping over the fence several times a day at a specific place. So we decided to build an additional gate at this position. Charles used some small pieces of timber and built the gate in no time after I did some measuring magic then we were interrupted.

Two days later or so I continued to work on the gate with Alfred. We needed to attach the door somewhere so we used two pieces of timber for it that needed to be digged and cemented approximately 30 cm below the ground. Alfred digged some holes using some kind of speer until we found the perfect position for the timbers. Before cementing the timbers, we attached the hinges at the door. Then we mixed the cement and cemented just when it got dark.

The day after I mounted a lock and there we were.

Then – after another various interruptions – I started to rework the back door of one of the pig houses. Peter, our fat boar, had cracked the door a couple of days ago. It’s just in their nature to digging and pushing whatever is at and below their head’s level, so one day, the door, a true beauty, a masterpiece of craftsmanship, just gave way. The door was too large for the doorframe anyway.

I measured, saw and nailed, and swore, and nailed, and swore, then I nailed even more as I didn’t have any decent piece of timber that would not crack when I tried to hammer a nail in. Unfortunately we did also not have any drill so what to do? It’s really hard and also a bit annoying to neither having appropriate tools nor decent material when having to fix things… and there’s so much things that need to be fixed here… I tell you, it really pains me to having to rework botch-up with even more botch-up… Anyway, things need to be fixed so one uses a few more nails, non-fitting timbers etc. Somehow I managed to rework that door anyway and it seemed to be a lot more stable than the old one.

In the evening we attached the door with hinges. As we had to mount them not where they were supposed to be mounted, the door didn’t fit the doorframe anymore. So we had to chop a bit off the door. A perfect job for a man and a plane but there’s certainly none around. So we had to use African methodology to do that job and picked the machete from our shed. It was a very arduous job but it worked. It was already late so we stopped working at twilight. Next Sunday morning, I continued to plane the door bit by bit. Unfortunately, Peter the fat boar disturbed me every 5 minutes. He seemed to be rutting, bored and dissatisfied so he was up for a fight or so… After being interfered about 20 times I managed to plane the door to fit the doorframe.

A few days later I nailed some more timbers on the inside of the door to protect it from being damaged by big Peter. Peter is very strong and weighing around 100 kg, maybe even 120 kg so it’d be just a matter of time for him to push the metal sheet from the door. But it seems solid enough now.

Last but not least I attached a door lock so we can close the door if necessary.

Charles prepared a gate for Peters pig house.

as pigs can be very strong and love to dig we needed to concrete the doorframe

mixing the cement with sand, gravel and some water

we had to hurry as it was already getting dark

the back door needed some rework – solid African craftsmanship

the reworked door – solid African craftsmanship with Swiss finish

unfortunately, the hinges needed to be placed at some cumbersome position, so the door was too large and needed to be planed… Naturally we didn’t have a plane, so we used the machete…