The sense of urgency around a concrete pour is a thing which has to be experienced in order to be either understood or appreciated. Pouring concrete has a gravity akin to that of getting married. Once the commitment has been made it cannot, and should not, be easily unmade. There is a great deal of expense both in the doing and undoing of concrete. Concrete takes a lot of planning both for the day of the pour, and for the preparation of the site for weeks and even months before the pour is made.
What I saw in Fushekruje today was a smooth and choreographed dance of experienced, skilled, determined, hard-working men. No one shouted, mistakes were taken care of quickly and in a professional manner. The men were obviously hungry for the work and happy to be working. Yli was the overall foreman on the job. I don’t think I heard him give a single command all day. A watch battery will feed the gears to moving the hands of the watch; any other action would simply get in the way of the watch’s proper operation.
The ground has been ready to receive its 12 centimeter liquid stone shell for months. We had been on hold due to the production of a poor product by the first crew we hired. After the forms had been set for an area, the race began. Besmir cut and fit the welded-wire mesh in place, staying just ahead of the wheelbarrow men Piarin and Edison. Gazmir and Flamur never stopped hauling one bucket of water for every half bag of cement and one dozen shovel loads of sand-rich gravel to the spinning hopper of the mixer. As soon as the mixing was done, the wheelbarrows were filled and the mixing process started again.
A fast wheelbarrow man can catch about one-and-a-half minutes of rest between hauls. Yli spent the entire time screeding and finishing the freshly placed mud.
By day’s end we had about 40 square meters of new concrete in place. Yli will be back tomorrow morning to give the surface one last hard-troweling. His crew is off tomorrow for fest, pushim; the entire nation will be celebrating 100 years of independence. It is a blessing to watch a professional at his craft. Yli is a rare sort of fellow.
albaniacalling 