Constructing Two Worlds

 Whenever I pass a construction site here in the US. I always wonder how quiet it is compared to construction sites in
Ethiopia where they are always loud and sometimes chaotic. Contractors in Ethiopia use a lot of unskilled manpower to compensate for the lack of machinery or high price to rent or buy them. It is relatively cheaper for them to hire people to work as laborers. The drawback is the laborers they hire are unskilled and are not productive as the contractors want them to be. To perform a simple task there needs to be a lot of commotion and shouting accompanied by whatever noise construction machinery on the site makes.


On the other hand contractors in the US are highly dependent on machinery to minimize cost because unlike Ethiopia hiring people is expensive. The people they hire are highly skilled and much more productive than their Ethiopian counterparts. You will not see a lot of unskilled laborers doing manual tasks in the US instead you will see few high skilled construction workers operating all kinds of machinery. In general, most construction goes as planned and is completed according to plan. Everything is predictable and there is no reason for delay or unproductiveness. 

In Ethiopia, Contractors don't have that luxury everything is unpredictable there will always be something that pops up after planning and during construction. Engineers and whoever works in construction should have an extra set of skills to navigate this unpredictability. They have to come up with solutions for new problems and have to improvise on the spot to complete projects. It is rare for a project to be completed on time which makes it cost more than the budget allocated but almost all projects are completed whatever time they may take. 

When you compare the construction prosses of the two worlds they perfectly reflect the social economies of two worlds. Although it is easy to conclude that the Ethiopian construction method is inefficient and underdeveloped when the bigger picture is seen the sector employs a large section of the uneducated unskilled population of the country giving some economic benefit for millions of families. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accidents don't Happen For A Reason They Give You A Reason

Image
Accidents don't happen for a reason they give you a reason. In February 2016 I thought I had it all. I was happy with my life, work and everything I do. Everything was going my way exactly the way I want it to go. I was in control. There were no surprises or misfortunes. Physically I was in good shape, I go to the gym at least three times a week, play basketball three days a week, swim almost everyday and mountain biking for two or three times a week. I juggle different responsibilities at work. My colleagues think I was working hard but I had never felt that I was working hard because everything I did was done with passion.  I was high with life, I was invincible, I was on top of everting until that cold February morning which paused everting.  On the morning of, February 16,2016  I had no plan to cycle or do some mountain biking. On the previous night, I had a good run playing basketball and it was a late-night pick-up game at the German Embassy school. S...
Read more

Old Lady of Lalibela

Image
This is about an old lady who had seen a lot in her days. She had been a child, a girl, a woman, a daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. That doesn't matter anymore now she is just an old lonely woman. What is that she is thinking about? Is it the beauty of her youth or the fate of her Children? Is it about the loss of loved ones and the beautiful old days? Is it the love that she lost years and years ago? Life had been hard on her. Like her, the tree on her background all wrinkled and shrank with age. Like the old dead tree, she will be dead too soon. I wonder if she is worried about or cares about death at all. She is praying with her prayer stick close by but for what is she praying for? Is she really praying or drifting away in nostalgia when she hears the prayer chant of the priests. Chants that she has heard since she was little. Maybe she is doing both cherishing the good old memories and praying to live in paradise after death. I am sure her long years had never bee...
Read more

Reflection of a Half Century

Image
  Reflection of a Half-Century  Part One 1973-1991 The average life expectancy of an Ethiopian is 67.81 years in 2023. It had been as low as 46.13 years in the 90s when war and the high infant mortality rate kept it low. An improvement was made in the 2000s when basic health services managed to reduce the high infant mortality rate. I am living in the United States now which has a life expectancy of 74 years for men. That means I have about two decades to enjoy planet Earth. I am at the beginning of an age where you have more stories to tell. So that is what I am going to do.  Self Portrait 2023. Keeping a tradition of Birthday Portrait.  My generation has gone through so much in a lifetime that life reflects our country’s break from thousands of years of tradition to stumbling into the unknown, experimenting with ideology and theories that had not been proven to work with the country.  I was born in December 1973 during the last days of the last Ethiopian Emper...
Read more