"Whoa." - The President of Bandari

We were thrown a bit of a curveball last week during one of our bi-weekly site-visits to our potential bridge site along the Rio Montepuez. Since rainy season began to pick up in late January, we've been going every two weeks to see how the site is holding up. When we went a few weeks ago, we encountered a pretty drastic change in scenery.  In the car with us was the president of Bandar, and as we pulled up to the river, he looked out at water and with a distinctly astonished expression on his faced, opened his mouth, and just said "Whoa."  It was actually a bit humorous.  I guess there are some expressions that transcend cultural differences.  He told us how he'd never seen the river this high.  Apparently, this has been a particularly rainy year, and as a result, the river has grown quite larger than anyone expected (or has seen in the past). 

The President of Bandar, a little concerned that he might have to do some swimming.

I wanted to see what the situation looked like, hoping that maybe it was just a freak incident and maybe, just maybe, the bridge site would show us something different.  So, we walked out to the site from where we parked.

Alan and the President, on our way to the bridge sight.  Not sure if the President was even concerned, but Alan and I couldn't shake an ever-present fear of what might be lurking in the ankle-deep water

Here's a video of what the River looked like.  A while back I posted a video of what the river looked like while crossing during dry season (Crossing during the Dry Season).  This is as close as we could get to that same place.

Eventually we got to a point where it just didn't make any sense to press on.  Without having to see it, I already knew what we'd find.  Our prospective bridge site was underwater.  We quickly realized that we could no longer build there unless we wanted to risk a potential bridge failure in the future if the water ever rose that high again.  It's a little bittersweet if you ask me, and while it is a setback for sure, it also means that we dodged a huge bullet.

After giving up, we headed back to the car.  We arrived just in time to see some farmers from the other side of the river crossing by boat, on their way to deliver a fresh crop of corn to the market

We offered him a ride up to the village, and he was quick to accept. Our friendly boleia cut a couple of exhausting hours off of his already tiring day.  This is what the scene usually looks like though.  The locals farmers put their sacks of crop on their heads, secure some more in a back pack, and then start hiking up the rocky hill 4km until they get to Bandar.  Oh yeah, and they usually do it without shoes on.

So, we were left with a difficult decision to make: We could either scrap the entire project (which we definitely did not want to do), or we could go back to step one, identify a new site, survey it, confirm that it is in fact suitable for construction, and then redesign the entire bridge to work in that new location.  Even though it is a labor intensive process, it's not impossible, and it’s what we’ve decided to do.

So we are back to square one. A few days after the depressing visit, we returned to Bandar with the hope that our luck would change.  And as fate would have it, it just may have.  With the assistance of the local military, we found a new spot not too far from our old one, but situated in what I believe is a much better location (particularly because it isn’t underwater). Just downstream of our old site lies the farm used by the Military base in Montepuez to feed its soldiers.  Before the fields of corn begin their seeming never-ending stretch into the bush away from the river, there’s a small encampment that sits on elevated terrain next to the bank. This is where we’d like to build. 

You can see the military camp on the far left side of the picture.  Where those tree's are...that's where we want to build.

Taking advantage of this elevation, the bridge would then traverse across the water to touch down on the other side of the river.  It looks like no matter where we build on the far side (unless we want this bridge to be significantly longer than 60m), we'd still be in the flood plain.  Some places more so then others though.  Because of this, extra precautions will have to be factored into the foundation design so as to account for building in such conditions.  What we’re hoping for though, is that somewhere in the sea 9-foot tall grass, wild bushes and the occasional tree, there exists a suitable location to place our second foundation that is out of the common flood zone, and thus, out of the majority of harm’s way.

A soil analysis on the near-side confirmed that we aren’t dealing with organics, which is some more good news.  But the next step is to check out the other side and go survey.  Once completed, we can confirm the span and then produce a new design. The last time we did this it, it was pretty easy.  The city government let me take advantage of some of their fancy equipment.  This time though…we’ll, that’s a story for another day.

All the best!

-Will