THE BEAUTIFUL LAND
South Africa is a beautiful land with beautiful people and beautiful ideas. In fact the South African’s ideas are off the top shelves and beats the rest of the world in all its originality. So every positive has its negative attached.
Some years ago, a lady who owned a house decided to have a paddling pool installed to keep her children occupied. Unable to find a reliable contractor to do the job, she went through the smalls in the local paper and found this one promising heaven and earth. A real friendly bunch who displayed their qualifications and framed satisfied customers satisfactions against the wall. They got the job and demanded cash up-front. And got it partially. The whole world is not a bunch of fools.
Work began and after an over- extended period it was completed. The contractor demanded the rest of the cash but was turned down because faults appeared in the structure and water was leaking through the wall. The pool was 4 m x 3 metres and about 700 mm deep. No problem for the contractors they simply painted the faulty area with glass fibre resin. And Bob's is your uncle. As did this one, pools have pumps and pipes and whatnot. The pump needs a canopy for weather protection. No problem: Our intrepid contractors removed the closing flaps on a cardboard box and painted the box with glue.Coarse sand was scattered onto the glue and it looked quite grand and professional: Professional until the rains made their debut and the entire box, glue and sand collapsed into a heap. The contractor wanted his cash and that request was again turned down. The pump was covered with a factory-made cover and the contractor received his cash. Two years later I moved into the house and noticed the pool sides were bulging inwards.
The side support ground had slipped to the bottom and water had penetrated and surrounded the entire structure. Then the sides collapsed inwards. This is the point where the beauty comes to the fore: The walls were made of cut mazonite sheeting and painted over with glass fibre resin to make it look like genuine glass fibre panels.
Some months later the contractor arrives and wants to know if he can show a potential customer the pool as this person wants to make use of his expertise. We walked around the house and showed him the hole with the collapsed panels still inside. 03/10/2012
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