Bronze over Technology

We were confronted by culture shock this morning. I woke up to what sounded like someone dissembling our gate at about 4:00. I got up and looked around and discovered the origin of the noise was a group of workers gathering at the new house that is being built across the street. They had built a fire and were making tea. Soon after I got settled back into bed the hammering began and I knew our restful night was over.
I've been facinated watching this house being built. They seem to prepare all week for a big push on Fridays (the start of our weekend, Fri.- Sat.) when I expect they get extra reinforcement from family members and friends. This week they had been forming up the floor for the second story and building a rebar mat. So this morning come 4:30 they fired up the generator for there cement mixxer and got busy. Mind you it was pitch dark at this point and they didn't use lights of any kind not even flash lights. When it got light after about an hour and a half I realized that they had really gotten BUSY. It looked like an ant hill in hussle mode. There were 20 guys working on mixxing and pouring the cement. It went like this: 1 bucket water, 1 bucket cement, 3 buckets sand, 4 buckets gravel into the mixer, dump into the hoist, hoist to the second floor, dump into waiting wheel barrow, repeat. The whole process took 11 seconds. A wheel barrow full of concrete dumped every 11 seconds!!! 5 dumps per minute without skipping a beat. It was incredible. I figured they were pouring about a cubic yard per minute which would be the equivalent to a full cement truck in the states every 10 minutes. They had the whole thing knocked out by 9:30.
This is something I'm loving about the men here. They just bear down and get the work done forget about technology lets talk about manpower.
Let me give you another example. The same house across the street. I noticed a large hole at the corner of the street. After a day or two I realized that there was a man down working in that hole. He had dug it so deep that I hadn't been able to see him. I guessed he was attaching to the water line which may have been but after a few days they brought a power pole and dropped it in his hand dug hole.
Last example. Because most places only get water from the city every few days we have several 500 gallon tanks on our roof that provides water during the other days. It ends up we needed one more so we called someone to order one. 15 minutes later two men showed up at our door with a water tank. These guys looked like the were in their 50s (though I have a hard time guaging as people seem to age quicker here). The dropped two straps and tied them onto the tank from our roof which is the 4th story (it is a flat roof as is normal here and great view from up there). I thought maybe they would use block and tackle to lift up the tank which probably weighed 150-200 lbs. Instead, they rolled up their sleaves and climbed up on top of the concrete railing around our 4th floor roof and started pulling the tank up. Once they got the tank up near their feet they both fell back onto the roof and the tank popped over the rail and squished one fellow. They got up and brushed off all smiles just another day on the job for them. I was a little shocked but also quite impressed. They just MANHANDLED that thing.