New Road

New road

 

Two weeks ago construction trucks arrived in my village.  I didn’t ask any questions, and thought that the mayor was just doing some random work to his property (which I admit is strange) since the trucks were in front of his house for a long time.

While I was at school, things began to change.  First trees began to fall down…well I didn’t see them actually fall down, I just saw these beautiful gigantic trees on the side of the road.  This was in preparation for their next project, to began to fix the road in front of my house, one of the two plantation roads.  This dirt-rocky road has been full of pot holes for who knows how long. The pot holes had grown big enough for a person to fall inside, seriously.  I would not even consider them holes, they were craters.  This caused the drive to church to feel like one of those little supermarket rides for kids, just bouncing back and forth the entire time. 

I asked people about the trees that were now down, one of them was my favorite breadfruit tree, where I loved to sit under and read or wait for the bus.  I was told by someone that the family probably wanted it down.  But as I began to look further down our road, I saw that all the trees that were near the road were taken down.

They raised the road, and after a week of doing work, they had it pretty smooth pretty far uphill.  (Far enough to get to the two churches there at least.)

However, after all that work they put in, it is immediately disappearing.  We have been getting rain daily, with heavy rains at times, which washes away their work.  This is causing small holes to form. I keep hearing rumors that the construction crew is coming back to tar seal it, and I hope they come soon, before all of their work is lost. 

Samoa constantly has this problem with the roads, where they fill pot holes in the city, but they only fill it with dirt and rocks, and it seems like the crew is out every week filling the same holes.  I feel pretty lucky where I live.  When you live closer to the city, or in Upolu, the roads are much worse.  Here, only the plantation roads are affected by the weather, and the main road stays nice and smooth. 

I hope they do tar seal it soon, to save their work.