Western Burma fuel storage

It is 1979, and I am in the wilds of Western Burma (Myanmar) and the local women have numerous rings on their necks, and there are tiger skins and bones and dried monkeys in the local market, that is held every 10 days. I have also been dining on local pink bananas, and tender mutton, but suspect that there isn't a sheep within a couple of thousand miles!

I am here to sort out a few operating problems relating to stone crushing machinery donated by Australia, the powers that organise these things having no real idea where and how their efforts really finish up. I am faced with brand new road making machinery and large quantities of tools, portable generators etc. I don't even know how the Hell they ever got all this stuff to this remote spot back in the mountains. I have been told that it was dismantled and then reassembled here, most of it being packed over the mountains on the backs of pack animals – and probably local natives. The locals treat these huge yellow machines like gods and have erected large sheds over everything, the sheds actually being no more than woven rattan squares about 2 feet each way, these squares being used in the manner of tiles to thatch the roof and sides of a giant bamboo frame.
My job has nothing to do with these machines, but I am shown them as a matter of local pride and I have to ask, 'Where is the diesel fuel to make all these machines run?'. And so I am taken to a spot outside the buildings where I had previously noticed natives digging what I had thought to be either a cesspit or possibly a cellar.

I am taken to the edge of another finished pit, and now see that the inside is being lined with light gauge (possibly 18-20 G), 8 x 4 foot black steel sheets. They are being laid on the roughly dug bottom of the pit, any extra length being roughly bent up the sides and corners of the trench. About half of the bottom and two sides are partly clad in this manner and one of their skilled workers is ARC WELDING the lapped over joints, vertical welding up the sides and corners etc. His helper dutifully hammering the edges together as he tacks and welds!

I watch for a while, amazed that they even consider that they have the skills to arc weld such thin sheet, the joints already finished prompt me to ask 'What is all this for?'. 'This Hammo, (my Asian name) is to store the diesel fuel.' 'But why do you need to store the drums in this manner?' 'No Hammo, we not store drums of fuel, we just tip into pit and cover over the top!' After a couple of seconds to catch my breath I say, 'But don't you understand that the fuel will just leak away?'. The reply was expected I guess, 'No Hammo, welder man is very good at his job – it no leak!'. It was obviously useless to mention the certainty of contamination! I turned to my fellow Australian local resident and asked what was really going on here, and he told me that this project was outside his jurisdiction, that the fuel would probably never arrive over the mountains anyway, and no one local really understood or needed the roads that were supposed to be built.

So we walked away and I proceeded to do what I had come to this remote spot for. A couple of days later I flew back to Rangoon and to this day, I am still wondering what happened to those fuel storage tanks! For that matter I am still wondering if those big yellow graders and bulldozers, with the large brass plates proclaiming that, 'This machine is a gift from the people of Australia', have ever moved!

This is only a small part of the 6 or 7 years I spent in South East Asia, but it pretty much sums it up. If you had the time, and worked hard enough, it was possible to show marvelous results and improvements, and on some jobs I would be treated as some sort of powerful God when the wheels started turning. But most of the time I needed the help of one of my sons on the job, both excellent welders and fabrication tradesmen, and with them in a hands on position, and a few rare enthusiastic local workers, we managed to get things done eventually.