How many ladders?...
The men are painting the church clock tower in the northern town of Mussina, (previously Messina) South Africa on the border with Zimbabwe. Article from from Vertikal.net
The first glimpse looks bad enough, the man is clearly on a long ladder at some height and trying to rub down and paint.
The ladder is though longer than you might think, the one the man is on is not resting on the ground…..
It is in fact balanced on a cantilever arm created out of planks with a human counterweight sitting on them while ‘footing’ the ladder with a rope.
If you thought that was crazy it doesn’t end there, back up a little and you see the it goes on ……
And on, What ingenuity! The chances of this going wrong are about as high as they go, In fact we wonder which route up the ladder our man took? Did he climb the outward facing second stage? or did he clamber over the human counterweight?
….if only an cherry picker had been available.