Chapter 640 Construction Site
A battle of manpower. In an era without large-scale mechanical engineering, all projects required manpower to carry out. This question was obviously beyond the scope of the Africans who had just stepped out of primitive society.
On the west side of the Mitumba Mountains, in order to open up a path for the Hessian Railway, the Hesse Provincial Government prepared to mobilize 400,000 people to repair the planned route.
Of course, 400,000 people cannot be gathered all at once. In addition to applications from other places, it is more important to mobilize people from the province of Hesse, and even more importantly, militia to ensure the orderly progress of the project.
In addition to suppressing blacks, there are various dangers in the primeval forest, which also need to be dealt with by the locals. After all, they have lived here for so many years and have accumulated a lot of experience.
Felling trees alone is a huge project. It is not just as simple as felling the trees. The roots underground also need to be cleared away.
The primeval forests in Hesse are quite dangerous. They have not been developed for thousands of years, and the trees there can easily reach a height of more than ten meters, and thirty or forty meters are not uncommon. If the direction is not well controlled, a lucky person may be killed randomly. Even in the 21st century, logging is a dangerous job, so this is unavoidable.
The black lumberjack, with a rope tied around his waist, climbed to the top of the tree nimbly, reached out from behind to take out the rope, tied it around the tree trunk with skillful movements, and then slid down.
Later, two lumberjacks took East African iron axes and started chopping at the tree trunk. Finally, with the joint efforts of more than a dozen people, a towering tree that had grown for who knows how many years fell in a fixed direction.
But this is far from the end, because the felled tree did not fall directly to the ground. Instead, it was supported by the dense vegetation around it. In order to move it completely to the ground, they had to continue cutting down the surrounding trees.
"Cut down all vegetation within a radius of fifty meters, remove all the leaves, and throw them into the jungle on the side. Trim the branches from the tree trunks and pile them on the periphery. Process all the main trunks into logs and stack them up." Hans, the team leader, gave the command in accordance with the requirements of his superiors.
The fifty-meter range can be regarded as a temporary construction site. Hans' task is to lead the team to continuously expand this fifty-meter-wide road to the north, and then make it easier for subsequent construction workers to carry out construction.
These logs collected after felling, if they meet the requirements, will be processed by carpenters into railway sleepers or cable support poles for communications along the railway.
Wood that does not meet the requirements will not be wasted. The remaining branches will be dried and used as natural fuel for boiling water, cooking and housekeeping.
After all, it is a pristine rain forest, so there are countless parasites and fungi. For the workers' safety, they are required to take a shower, wash clothes and soak their feet every day.
All of these require hot water. Fortunately, this is a primeval forest and there is no shortage of wood. Of course, the continuous rainy weather can easily wet these natural fuels, so the East African engineering team will also be equipped with coal and other fuels prepared from the rear.
"Lazy guy, take your machete and go clear the branches and leaves. What's the point of chopping the air there?" Hans kicked a black worker who was paddling around in the water on the butt.
Hans managed more than fifty people, including seven militiamen from the Province of Hesse, six supervisors, and three cooks.
One supervisor was responsible for keeping an eye on four or five black people. Because the area was located in a primeval forest, the Hessian government and the Ministry of Railways attached great importance to surveillance in order to prevent the black people from escaping.
It's not an exaggeration. The fact is that there are dense forests around here and the terrain is complex. If the black laborers really run away, they will really run away, and it is impossible for East Africa to go deep into the dense forest to track them.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with running away from a few illegal workers, but the most important thing is to prevent these black people with "sharp weapons" from rioting and causing bloody conflicts.
With the explosion of steel production capacity in East Africa, the tools in East Africa have been replaced one after another. Hans' small construction team alone is equipped with dangerous tools such as "picks, axes, machetes, shovels, and iron bars".
Although the East Africans are holding hot weapons, who can guarantee that these blacks will not make trouble and fight to the death with the East Africans? This is still a primeval forest and is not suitable for the use of hot weapons, so it is better to be careful.
Of course, unlike the East Africans who are full of worries, the vast majority of black workers have no such awareness at all.
It's not that they don't like freedom, but where can they go when they are unfamiliar with the place? Most of the black people in East Africa originally lived in the grasslands of the plateau area, and they were often taken around by East Africans to work, and they would not stay in one place for a long time, so they were also very unfamiliar with the Congo rainforest. The only people in the team who were familiar with this place were the militiamen from Hesse Province, or the rubber agricultural workers.
The vast and dark tropical rainforest is frightening to most people. The same is true for black people who live in tropical savannas all year round and enjoy the bright sunshine. Therefore, they are not stupid enough to go into an unfamiliar primeval forest.
And the most critical point is that East Africans provide food. If they really run away, how will they solve the problem of food? If they are on the grassland, they can still use traditional hunting skills, but in the rainforest, they are at a loss. The ecosystem here is completely different from the grassland, and the animals are also different.
Of course, the black people on the grassland could not escape at all. In such an open environment, the East Africans could shoot them down with one shot even if they let them run a hundred meters first.
Another key point is that under the rule of East Africa, the spirit of these blacks has long been worn away. A few years ago, there may have been some stubborn blacks who yearned for freedom, but now the blacks in East Africa do not have the courage to confront the East Africans.
….
"The weather in Hesse changes so quickly. It was sunny just now, but now it is raining heavily." said Hans.
"Captain Hans, let's let everyone take shelter from the rain first! We can't work in this weather." said militia captain Chris.
"How long will this rain last?" asked Hans.
"It's hard to judge. It could be just a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days. But it doesn't matter. It's getting dark now, and the sun won't be visible in a while. So we might as well finish work while it's raining and prepare dinner and hot water."
Chris is a militiaman from the nearby village of Penensari, so he is very familiar with the climate here.
"Well, this is the only way. Let those blacks hand over all their tools, count them, and then go to the tent to shelter from the rain. Hera and Will will be responsible for watching them, and the others will take turns every two hours." Hans said.
The tools are all relatively sharp, so they must be counted and handed in at the end of each workday. This is a necessary procedure for every black construction team in East Africa.
This regulation certainly did not come out of thin air, but was the result of experience gained from bloody lessons. Once, a black man took the tools distributed by East Africans and cracked the heads of East African supervisors under the cover of night. After such incidents happened many times, recycling tools became a regulation of the East African construction team.
At night, Hans and his companions had dinner around the campfire. The sound of rain outside the tent never stopped, and the damp wood crackled in the flames.
The black people slept in a big tent. Their treatment was not as good as that of the East Africans, but they also each had two large bowls of rice. There was a straw mat on the ground, which was their bed, or floor.
The Hesse railway was divided into four sections and construction started simultaneously, but the progress was slow in the early stages. The weather and environment were both obstacles to railway construction, especially the rainy weather throughout the year in Hesse, which was very different from the dry and rainy seasons on the plateau.
(End of this chapter)
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