After the first challenge with the garbage, Eddy and I decided to continue. You’d say we’re fools. Oh yeah! It is what it is. But what the fools can’t live without? That’s right, the roads. Therefore, we shall go learn what’s what and how the roads are repaired.
So, Eugen Coca street is very broken. Today we shall help the road builders to lay 500 m of asphalt on this street by going through all the stages: from surface cleaning and bitumen impregnation, to sealing with a rolling compressor.
This job is definitely not for “cleanies”. The smoldering and boiling (temperature over 100 oC) asphalt is poured out of the trucks, and you feel like the devil in hell, who’s throwing the hot coal with the shovel and burning the sinner inside yourself. The caustic smoke “melts” the confidence that your careless and all-sufficient life is successful, that everything is going to be alright and that you’ve already accomplished a lot in life.
But you understand that sitting in the air conditioned office and using a mac drives you far from reality, just as the French Monarchs were far from their people in the times of revolution:
”If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake!”
Marie Antoinette
The road builders work in such difficult conditions 10 hours a day and receive a 3,000-4,000 lei (150-200 EURO) salary per month! This is way too little! How can an average Moldovan family survive with this money? And what happens when these people retire? It’s less likely that the young generation will want to work here. They’ll rather leave the country to find happiness somewhere else. Consequently, there shall be no roads and no people.
What if it’s time to consider this and create acceptable working conditions for the municipality workers? I think it’s a good question for the future mayor and the municipal council.
Speaking of mayor. I think it would be great if the first week of their term, each mayor would spend at least a day in each municipal service, to feel on their own back what means to transport garbage, fix pipes and pave roads. Maybe it would help them see things from another perspective, from within. And as a result, it would have a positive impact on the city administration results during their term.
Sincere thanks to all who repair our roads. It is truly a daily act of bravery, because it is a big, necessary and hard work.
Please, value the work of these people, because it is important to them. Thank you.
