Morning all,
As an example of how things work here, I thought id share this morning’s experience with you all.
As you know, we’re looking to knock over some trees as part of our site clearance and I wanted to mark all of them so we only pushed over those strictly necessary.
A simple task you might think? Me too.
On Tuesday night I asked our client rep here, to organise me some marker paint by the morning. I Explained I needed an aerosol like the kids use for graffiti and he understood perfectly.
Next morning, Abdulrahman the driver shows up and I ask about the paint on the way to site. He says yes, he has a large pot but will need to borrow a brush.
I double checked this with him and yes, he’d brought along a large tin of white emulsion. I told him we needed to get to the builders merchant to buy an aerosol can.
The client rep agreed and said he’d meet us there for some reason, so off we went.
We got to the hardware store, I found some Dazzle, made in France, grabbed a couple and took them to the counter where I was told they were 12,500FCFA each.
This equates to about $75 for both.
Holy f@%k I said, I only want 2 cans not the whole pallet.
I suspected that they’d seen I was a whitey and were taking advantage so I asked him to double check.
He took me over to the paint stand, and showed me the price stamped on the shelf- sure enough 12,500 each. At this stage the client turned up.
I explained that I was not paying that amount unless it was filled with gold, and that I would use the tin we had already.
Suffice to say, we went back to site, borrowed a brush and the trees are now painted with a red cross.
When we asked about borrowing a brush, our builders also lent me some paint. I could have saved about 3 hours if we’d done this first.
The lessons;
Everything here is a lot more expensive than we might think. I also noticed that an ordinary Stanley spanner about 12mm was 9500FCFA or about $29 so I’m glad we’re bringing some tools with us.
Taxes are hugely variable depending what it is- I discovered they have a local paint factory (which doesn’t make aerosols) and so they tax the crap out of imported paint to persuade people to buy local.
Even though the client would have known the price, he chose not to tell me as he wanted me to find out for myself.
The reason he came to the store was partly to pay for it if I chose to buy it, but also so he could make sure that I saw for myself how expensive it was.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems and everything always takes a lot longer than you think it’s going to over here. It also involves a lot more discussion and general arm waving than we’re used to.
Proposed actions;
Never accept things at face value here. There’s always a story behind everything.
We should start a builders merchant as the owner of the one I went to this morning is extremely well off and probably tools around in an S class merc, same as the president.
Put a lot more of all the consumables into our containers than you think we might need. We can always sell any spare to the locals at the end of the project.
I need to develop a bit more patience or it’s going to drive me completely mental.
That’s all for now,
Me
