Roadwork

Sometimes leaving the house is a challenge. Sometimes getting home is a challenge. No matter which direction we're attempting to go, these days we're never sure if we'll be able to get there and back!

They've been doing some serious roadwork on one kilometer of our dirt road for months now. We live at about the .9 km mark, so we're at the very end of the part that we hope someday might be paved. They've completely blocked it on one side with a backhoe parked across the road, and have put dirt piles and stacked thorn branches in such a way that there is no way a car could get past. Motorcycles believe in "where there's a will, there's a way" and will manage to get past anything, but we're stuck on that side. So, that leaves only one way out for us.

Unfortunately, sometimes they dig ditches across the road or dump huge piles of dirt in the middle of it and don't give us any advance warning. We try and figure out off-road paths that we can take to get around the ditches and piles, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Again, in order to prevent cars from attempting such maneuvers, sometimes they'll put up tapes or lay down thorn branches. When they had the tape there once, we looked at it and thought, "It's not strung that tightly..." and so I hopped out and held it up as high as I could, and Andrew drove underneath it. We've learned a few things about fighting your way through from the motorcycles, I guess!

Yesterday evening we arrived at our house to discover they'd dug a ditch right in front of our driveway. Since it might be about a week or so before they actually lay pipe in the ditch and cover it up again, Andrew laid some rocks and dug up some dirt to give us a way out. Now we'll just have to be really careful to follow our tracks every time in and out!