The application of brute force

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

It was 3 a.m.; roughly 10 Tongans and 4 Peace Corps volunteers stood huddled around 5 massive crates at the Ha'apai docks. The beam emitting from an LED flashlight shined directly onto the group's collective fears; the keys that we held in hand did not fit into the crate's burly lock. It was the only obstacle that prevented us from retrieving our cargo.

Unknown to us at the moment, in those crates were approximately 10,000 books, 37 refurbished desktops, 40 Cathode Ray Tube computer monitors, and the combined admirable efforts of countless individuals who donated their time and material possessions to people they've never met.

Although the cargo had made the trip of over a thousand miles to some of the most untouched parts of the world, we still had to complete the final step of getting everything into the third floor of the business building before vandals or rain could ruin the contents inside. We all momentarily looked at the sky, hoping that Tonga's fickle weather would play nice.

I pondered the predicament. The reinforced steel lock could have been considered one of the finest crafted devices 1000 years ago. On the exterior, a logo of the manufacture had been delicately etched into a thin layer of brass before being encased in hardened steel. In the interior, chamber after chamber of tiny pins determined the current state of the lock. Given only a few ounces of pressure at specific internal locations and we would have been allowed access to the contents of the crates. We momentarily tried bashing the lock from the outside using hand sized rocks, but each attempt only lowered the groups' hopes.

I looked around at the rest of the volunteers. I image we all wore a sort of weary resignation; a look that was half the result of sleep deprivation and half the effect of looking into a high quality deadlock that wouldn't give. I could no longer feel the effects of the coffee that we drank a few hours past and I was just moments away from calling it a night.

Thud!!! The Tongans were reluctant to give up and were already improvising. We turned around just in time to see another clash between technology and primitive raw energy. This time the primitive raw energy came in the shape of a lead pipe that smashed against the lock to no avail. After a few minutes, the Tongans agreed that the lead pipe was virtually useless. However, the Tongans didn't skip a beat before their next plan was hatched.

Another Tongan had run off a few feet to grab a jagged rock weighing in at least 15lbs. I liked their thinking; if smashing something with a rock was ineffective, that means your rock was too small. This specific rock, a crude instrument probably used well over 1000 years ago, still proved to be very effective. With just three strikes, the primitive rock had successfully bypassed the different layers of complex chambers and pins built within the lock. In a final loud clank, the lock released its firm grasp, and hung loosely in defeat.

Over the course of the next few hours, we moved the contents of all the crates up to the third floor (which with our luck happened to be the highest point in Pangai). We had waited there all night and a couple of hours in the morning for the boat. By the time we were finished unpacking, it was 7 a.m and many of us had not slept for over 30 hours.

We all had a meeting scheduled at 10 a.m. and I had another meeting at noon with my supervisor (who just flew in from Nuku'alofa). I believe its karma making me work for all my lost hours in the last month. I have no complaints here; I'm glad I have something to do now.

Ironically enough, the same lock from the crate is still intact and now secures the iron-gate to the third floor of our building. If it weren't for the faint scratch on the surface, no one could even guess that it had a previous encounter with a lead pipe and a massive rock. Inevitably the security that the lock provides, like any sense of security, is only an illusion.