Staff from our counterpart organization Mano a Mano Nuevo Mundo are hard at work on building Mano a Mano’s runway for our airport project in Laguna Sulti, Bolivia. This includes crushing larger river rock required for the base layer with our recently purchased rock crusher; we have hauled tons of river rock to the runway site and mounded it into accessible rows for the rock crusher.
The locally available material does not have the type of binder or clay needed for compacting for a runway. To address this problem, the crew takes the laborious step of mixing two dump trucks of crushed rock with one dump truck of fine rock and one of ceramic clay. This recipe produces a composition of materials that will hold and bind together.
Mano a Mano rock crusher (and accompanying generator) at work on our runway site in Laguna Sulti, Bolivia.
Mano a Mano mechanics completed preventive maintenance of the rock crusher at our Cochabamba machine shop before hauling to the runway site in Laguna Sulti, and we have also had some challenges with parts breaking that have required repairs (always a challenge with heavy equipment!) but we continue to make progress.