Morning all,
Well, President Tandja is no longer in charge and we have an interim military Government.
We may have moved to Fiji overnight though it still looks like Niger!
The interim government has said that they will leave things a couple of days to calm down and will then issue a timetable for restoring democracy in Niger.
Word on the street is that this will be within 6 months to 1 year.
Stan and Lindsay slept like logs on the cushions off the sofas in the living room but, all being well, should be able to return to their villa tonight.
As part of calming things down, there is now a curfew in place with no-one allowed to be out on the streets between 18:00 and 06:00am. This is expected to last for a few days at least, probably to make sure there’s no counter-coup or other civil disobedience on the part of Tandja’s supporters.
The BBC have a pretty good summation of events here. See;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8523196.stm
After meeting with the client this morning for a chat about things, we drove through town and out to site.
The city looked pretty normal, maybe a few less people around but business was continuing.
The only exceptions to normality that we saw was a couple of military land cruiser troop carriers with large calibre weapons mounted on the back. These were manned by bored and uninterested looking soldiers.
One of the supermarkets we use was also closed but apparently only because it’s close to a military base and they are obviously looking to minimise the risk of a counter-coup taking place.
At present all the borders are closed, with the closure also applying to the airport.
The borders and airport are expected to be re-opened within a couple of days which is good as Ralph is due to fly home on Sunday night.
Obviously we’ll be keeping our passports and cash with us, sat phones charged up etc until we are confident that everything has gone back to normal.
We arrived on site, to find most of our workers hard at it. There’s maybe 5 or 10 or so who haven’t turned up. Bouharima, our controller, was also conspicuous by his absence.
The guys seemed pretty pleased to see us as they were probably worried we were on the next plane home and they would lose their jobs.
We called everyone together and thanked them all for coming in and to let them all know that our contract was with the State of Niger, not the President, and that work would continue as normal for the foreseeable future.
I then said I would shout everyone lunch which went down pretty well.
The exception to our normal routine on site being that we’ll now make sure all our workers will finish at 16:00 to make sure everyone can get home before the curfew. Our night shift will start at 18:00 as usual but instead of leaving at 4am, they’ll stay on site and be fed and have a kip before leaving at 6am.
We will leave site at 16:30 and will drop the guys at the villa. I’ll then take Abdurrahman home before bringing the land cruiser to park at our place overnight.
Before 18:00 obviously.
Hopefully the curfew will be lifted in time to go out clubbing on the weekend.
We’ll do our normal toolbox meeting tomorrow when, hopefully, the rest of our guys turn up to site.
In terms of progress, who bloody cares, there’s a coup going on.
Seriously though, we’ve continued with shuttering and boxing, and stripping the stuff we poured yesterday and Wednesday.
On Friday’s the guys all go to the Mosque for an hour at 13:00 but as soon as they came back, we started concreting again.
A couple of wall sections in the cold store and, more excitingly, the first of our strip footings in the abattoir area- see photo.
We had a whole load more sand, aggregate and cement arrive yesterday morning so we’re also screening gravel.
Our first load of laterite for today turned up at 12:30, so our stockpiling continues.
The drainage guys are digging away on main lines and laterals and pipe is going in the ground- see photos.
As in NZ, the truck driver is often not keen to get out of his cab to do any work but here it is taken to whole new level.
Each truck has 3 guys in it. The driver, a boy to chock the wheels when the truck stops as the brakes are generally shot, and another to trip the tail door and look after oil/water etc.
Our hired loader is even worse- we have the operator, plus another guy who does the oil and water, plus a third who just sits there watching it all day. On top of that, there’s a supervisor who will come out a couple of times a day to check with us that it’s all going ok, plus he talks to the watcher for about 10 minutes before leaving.
It’s all about status and who is important and therefore doesn’t have to do the menial tasks.
Makes us chuckle most of the time but drives us bloody mad the rest of the time.
One of our foremen, Chayboo, has really taken the bit between his teeth since Ali left last week. He’s like a whole new guy now that he is allowed to just get on with it.
Sure, they don’t always get things right, but then most of them don’t have much in the way of construction experience and haven’t even seen anything like we’re doing.
The temperature got up to 47 today and was accompanied by the dusty winds. A dip in the pool at the end of the day is very welcome.
In light of the current situation, today I thought I’d ask the police supervisor on site if they actually had any bullets in the pistol he carries on his hip.
In answer, he pulled it out, chambered a round and fired it into the air.
So yes, they are most definitely equipped with live rounds.
But he still won’t let me shoot any of the goats....
We now have a rule in place about not firing live rounds on site.
That’s all for now,
Me
