Good day,
(hello in English)
You’ll be pleased to know that although our driver is wearing an Australia baseball hat, he does have a kiwi flag on the back of the car now!
Firstly, a bit of news from an interesting website;
The beleaguered government of Niger's president, Mamadou Tanja, appears to be keen to take on the opposition leaders that boycotted the last parliamentary elections.The elections were geared at ultimately changing the constitution in order to give Mr Tanja unlimited term limits.Now the government has issued an international warrant against the country's opposition chairman, Mahamadou Issoufou, accusing him of money laundering as well as campaigning to tarnish the country's international image.If you can’t beat them, arrest them that’s what I say!
I started the week with a trip to the villa, which although a bit grubby has potential I think. Thanks for the comments from those of you that bothered, I’ll go over our requirements with the client when we get a spare bit of time next week.
I also went to builders merchant and market to obtain the rest of the pricing we needed- you’ll have seen the spreadsheet by now hopefully so let me know if there are any other items you need a price on and I’ll do my best to get it.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on site which is great. I have now received all prices expected for the site clearance etc. Hope to have someone signed up and started this week.
I was walking around the outside of the building earlier today when an enormous lizard at least 2 feet long dropped off the wall and fell to the ground right next to me.
Well, I say two feet but it was probably more like 10 inches and 2 feet was how high I jumped when it happened!
The contractor has also been making blocks on the site for use elsewhere. I’ve taken a couple of each type and will get them strength tested to see how they stack up. There are 3 types I’ve seen so far- Completely solid (used for foundations/kerbs etc), ones with 2 holes in then (used for walls such as our perimeter) then there’s also an interlocking type with 3 holes (see photo) as well. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of compressive strength we get out of each.
Temperature has been hot but ok so I’ve been avoiding turning on the aircon in my office and instead have windows and doors open to get the breeze going though. It’ll be easier to acclimatise if we aren’t forever in and out of AC- more on that later.
I also went to the supermarket where I wrote down a few prices of everyday items we or our contractors might need. I also bought some stuff and realised afterwards that I’d paid less for a bottle of decent Bordeaux wine than I did for 4 apples. Apples are imported so I knew they’d be a bit pricey but the price said 525 per kg which I thought was ok. After heated discussion in Frenglish with the checkout girl, it turned out that its 5250 but the label printer doesn’t do more than 3 numbers.
When I was in the car expressing my displeasure at this, Abdulrahman, once he'd finished laughing at me for getting angry with the checkout girl obviously, helpfully pointed out that I could have got a whole bag full from the market for less money.
The answer to this? Buy more wine and less fresh fruit obviously!
I spent some time with the client today- he came to my office here on site first thing to discuss our pricing and the earthworks contract. I have some concerns here over contractor selection but will work through these today and tomorrow. We also talked about the current site residents and who I wanted to get rid of and why. Moving them out has proved tricky as firstly they are government employees and secondly have no-where to go. I’ve explained that we need a clear and empty site or people will get run over/Pinch stuff etc and we won’t be able to control it. Need the small building vacated this week, the one in the compound done before first container and the main shed at some stage that I decide within the next few months though I might employ the old guy who is currently a project azawak employee and is keen to become be one of ours. Him and a couple of his 10 sons have been quite helpful so far.
The plan is to commence on Friday and have am opening ceremony- the client has a meeting at the ministry after lunch to arrange this. He will now come on Friday so he can attend the opening.
The security consultant is now engaged, and I’m waiting for a visit from one of their consultants which will hopefully happen before I leave this time around.
Today’s information subject is air con and electrical.
Everywhere I go people have their aircon blasting away at full bore. Problem is, they don’t seem to realise that it would work a lot better if only they’d close windows/doors.
As an example, the office of the laboratory for public works has a unit directly above their front door which is cranked up to maximum but the door is left wedged wide open and they complain how hot it is in the foyer.
I have discussions with the translator that I am putting an automatic door closer into one of our containers for my office as she never shuts the door when she leaves the boardroom, and it’ll save me getting up every five minutes. I’ve given up explaining to her that the AC in the main hallway and large room out front would also be more effective if the windows were shut. She hears the words and nods but I don’t think she understands what I’m talking about- it’s too difficult a concept to grasp.
Mind you, I wouldn’t be lying if I told you she isn’t really technically minded. She came in to the board room that I was using the other day and tripped over my laptop cable pulling it and the socket it was plugged into right out of the wall- see photo attached. As I was picking up my cable checking for damage, she was trying to push the socket pins back into the hole in the wall which now contained just a live terminal box.
I pointed out that this was not a good idea and might well be the last thing she ever did.
I noticed that she had also accidentally pulled out the plug of the “Orange livebox” unit that provides wireless internet that sits on her desk. I pointed this out to her and explained this was probably why the wireless network had stopped working. I then plugged it back in and left her to her confrontational sounding phone call to the service provider asking them when they were going to come and fix it.
Finally, I’ve also attached a photo of the wiring beneath the desk in my hotel room (need to be careful where I put my feet) and some fine hidden wiring at the office villa.
I don’t know much about electrics but i’m reasonably sure that it would be right up there in the accident stats here.
Kalatonto,
(See you later in Djerma.
Or is it Hausa?
I don’t bloody know it’s all running into one!)
Patrick
