Happy day after valentine’s day to you all.
The day started well with everyone on site before our 8 am curfew.
Everyone apart from the supervisor, Ali (no great loss there) and Bouharima, our controller, who came later.
We then had the camera crew arrive and start filming our stored materials. Which to be honest weren’t doing too much at the time.
We then got a call to say the minister had been summoned by President Tandja and wouldn’t be coming so instead we just had the newly appointed Government control and sign off committee turn up.
These guys will sign off on our milestone payments, after they’ve already been signed off by the ministry of finance, and have requested a whole pile of info which we’re in the process of providing.
We started our tour in the office with them looking at the plans and the photos of our steel trusses being assembled then disassembled and put into containers.
After that, we had a look around the stores before walking round the site.
It was quite a warm day, and I had decided to wear my local garb which has the breathability characteristics of a super thick condom.
Needless to say, I was extremely hot and sweaty but they all seemed to be impressed that a whitey had made the effort. They were also pleased with progress (even if we’re not) and hopefully now have a better understanding of what we’re building.
Or at least a better understanding of what I’ve told them we’re building.
See photo 1925 of me in the process of throwing a punch at the secretary general’s stomach.
Actually I was telling him how elsewhere sheets of mesh are made by a machine rather than hand welding them all as they do here.
Anyway, after a description of what everything is and where it all goes, they were off back to the ministry for a glass of tea and a sleep before afternoon prayers.
I’m also the idiot wearing the dress and trouser combo in photo 1928.
The rest of the people in the photo are, from Left to right;
One of the guards making 2 school boy errors firstly by going to the toilet having forgotten firstly to pull down his trousers and secondly not realising that there’s a bunch of people watching.
Next is the team leader for the police on site who is a smarmy arrogant git, and who has also just taken advantage of the situation and stolen the guards tea.
Then there’s the big guy, owner of our contractor for foundations
Then a good guy from the ministry of urban affairs, who I have found to be very helpful
Next up is the secretary general
Followed by our controller who has been great and really helped us out ever since we arrived here.
The client has his back to the camera, and you can just see between the client’s head and mine.
We then had a meeting with our main contractor. This went pretty well, and he understands why we have made such a fuss over progress etc and what he needs to do to get things moving again. I’ll send minutes of this through to the relevant people once I’ve done them but it was a good meeting, albeit somewhat fraught at times.
Obviously we’ll see what he does tomorrow but as a first step, Ali the supervisor won’t be back on site. Boube has also said he is keen to pull things back on track as he has a lot of mates in the ministry and elsewhere in government and doesn’t want to be made to look like someone who can’t deliver.
He also thinks I’ll be talking to him about the next stages but he might be a bit optimistic there, although had he not gone to Tunisia for one and a half weeks and left a numpty in charge, I think we’d have sorted our issues a lot sooner.
I felt that today we made some real progress with boxing and shuttering and the guys seemed to be working a lot better without the constant interruptions and without being dragged off one thing to go and fire fight somewhere else.
We also started to get rid of our spoil pile to make way for more laterite for our hardfilling under the floors which has been arriving since Friday.
Once we have a bit of space we’ll hire more trucks and will get things really cranking down at the quarry as well.
On the domestic front, Stan a Lindsay have finally memorised the route between villa 1 and their villa.
Its at least 50m away so it’s surprising it’s taken them this long.
Actually, that’s a lie, it’s about a 10 minute walk but fairly straightforward.
This means that ADR doesn’t have to hang around waiting to take them home after we have dinner every night.
Me Dave and Ralph walked them home last night out of the kindness of our hearts.
And because we had run out of beer and they still had some at their place.
Obviously this was all finished by the time we left...
Anyway, tomorrow is another day and we’ll hopefully be pouring a fair bit of concrete but over here, you just never can tell.....
Bye for now,
Me
