Morning all,
We completed the last of the base slabs this morning with a 12.5m3 pour at the western end which the boys started at 5 am. Photo 69 shows the slab post-finishing having been flooded with water to reduce hydration cracking. We have a small problem in that as fast as we get water onto the slabs, it evaporates due partly to the heat but also due to the rubbish water pressure we have.
The client/Government agreement states that a new larger high pressure supply is to be put in by 1st March 2010, but still no sign. There’s also no sign of the new power supply being commenced which was also due in y the 1st March. I suspect that both of these items have gone the same way as the latest payment. The water supply is probably most critical so we have been talking to the ministry about getting this sorted asap though obviously the focus is on the cash right now.
The other photos all show the abattoir end which is taking shape. Where we can, we have been backfilling and compacting Laterite and are now in need of Stan and Lindsay’s services to finish off the drainage laterals so we can complete backfilling. We’re hoping they’ll be back out in a week and a half but they now both have other commitments as well so need to sort them out first.
Also in the abattoir, we’re continuing the walls which are bloody hard to construct with the rubbish ply and timber we have at our disposal but, all things considered, they look ok so far though would benefit from a bit of grinding off here and some plastering or epoxy coating which we’re looking to get ordered once funds are available.
Speaking of cash, there was a full meeting of all the government ministers today at the Palais de Congress. Our client,along with our lawyer here, had some time booked with the relevant people after their main meeting so we may get some action after this although it’s not looking to flash at the moment.
Our client, whose patience has been fantastic to date, is rapidly coming to a stage where some action will be taken in terms of stopping work.
We stopped for a single day a couple of weeks ago which seemed to galvanise the new Government into doing something but all is quiet again now.
We did have a minister out here last week which was the first time anyone form the new government had visited, to our knowledge. Before the coup we’d get at least two delegations a week of notaries and ministry people coming to have a look and make sure we were doing what we said we were going to.
Temperature seems a bit cooler at the moment, possibly due to the dust obscuring the sun, though it was still 46 degrees today.
Only in Africa part 271377300678336
Speaking of driving, John was pulled over the other day which normally would only involve a small payment but unfortunately this time the guy actually did his job and checked over all the car’s documents which were in order, and also John’s licence. Subsequently, we have new direction on this.
Previously, we’d been told that we could drive on foreign licences as long as we had full insurance, which we do.
They’ve now changed this so John and I went to get our local licences yesterday.
Which you’d think would be fairly straight forward.
But it isn’t.
First, we were directed to the ministry of transport where we had a small altercation in the car park with some useless twat sitting under trees who was being deliberately obstructive car park attendants and then spent 10 minutes finding the right office in a 7 storey building with no ground floor directory, no signs on the doors and no lift which would do what it was told.
The ignorant bitch less than helpful bureaucrat we eventually found looked at our licence as if we had just wiped our bottoms on them (with hindsight, I wish I had!).
She told us we needed first to get them translated. This can only be done by the ministry of foreign affairs so off we went, having first had another slight altercation with the aforementioned car park attendant who was very keen to make our exit as difficult as possible by moving some motorbikes and putting them right behind our car.
We considered backing over the lot but thought this would result in a longer stay at the ministry so did a 193408 point turn and off we went.
Through the minister’s private drive way as this was the only one available.
Ha, that showed them!
We arrived at the Ministry of Foreign affairs (the Niger equivalent of MFat though obviously the one here is a lot more efficient than that in NZ but don’t get me started on that again) and found the right office where we made copies of our licences and were told it would take a week to do the translation. This seemed a little steep given there’s not that many words on either an NZ or a Bahraini licence but there you have it.
As her comedy turn, the admin girl suggested that my fee could be paid for in FCFA, the local currency, but that John’s should be paid in Sterling as his licence has a UK address on it.
Obviously we were just in the mood for some wisecracks by this stage....
Copies were left and cash was paid and the comedian informed us that she’d call us when they were ready. We then have to pick up the translation, go back to ministry of shite car parking, and go through yet more rigmarole, palaver and cost to get our local documents.
Which when they arrive will be a two bit piece of paper, un-laminated, hand written with numerous errors and the photos will be stapled on.
Anyway, we’ve now asked our controller, who knows quite few in government and at ministry of transport, to help us sort this out which he’s promised to do tonight.
Hopefully this will save us any more aggravation.
Tonight’s special subject is uranium.
I thought you may be interested to know what the French are up to here as part of their ongoing exploitation of their old colony;
For the past 40 years, the French state-owned company Areva has been mining uranium for Europe's nuclear power needs in Niger, one of the poorest countries on Earth. One local activist is taking on the company, claiming that water and dust have been contaminated and workers are dying as a result of its activities.
The man from Niger had come to speak with the CEO of Germany's biggest bank. Last May, Almoustapha Alhacen was sitting in Frankfurt's Festhalle convention center as he listened to Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann tell his audience that despite the financial crisis, his bank was doing better again. Ackermann spoke of responsibility, and he said that "the market and morality" were not contradictions, but would "harmonize with each other for the benefit of everyone."
But in the desert region where Alhacen comes from, there is no harmony between markets and morality. He wanted to tell Ackermann about it, after a group of critical shareholders had invited him to attend the Deutsche Bank shareholders' meeting. Alhacen, wearing a traditional Tuareg robe, a face veil and a turban, stood out among the other people attending the meeting. He was calm as he walked up to the lectern, his face projected onto a large screen on the wall.
"Bonjour, Monsieur Ackermann," Alhacen began, speaking French with an African accent. He had five minutes to describe to Ackermann the catastrophe he has been fighting for the past nine years. He said he was the founder of an environmental organization in the city of Arlit in northern Niger. He said that Areva, a French company, is mining uranium there. He also described the alleged dark side of Areva's operations: millions of tons of radioactive waste, contaminated water and serious illnesses. And Deutsche Bank was partially connected to this, Alhacen said, because it lends a lot of money to Areva.
Alhacen also spoke of responsibility, just as Ackermann had done in his remarks. Anyone who makes a profit by lending money to the uranium industry, he said, should help "fight the serious problems that have arisen in connection with uranium mining." Ackermann responded by saying that Deutsche Bank cares a great deal about protecting the environment. Alhacen has never heard another word from Deutsche Bank since the Frankfurt event.
Mysterious Illnesses
Alhacen founded his organization, Aghirin Man, nine years ago, when he noticed that many of his fellow workers were dying of mysterious illnesses. In Alhacen's Tuareg language, Aghirin Man means "Protection of the Soul."
Alhacen never went to school, and to this day one of his greatest pleasures in life is to ride a camel. When he is displeased about something, he pulls his veil over his face so that only his eyes remain visible. Aghirin Man's offices in Arlit consist of two rooms next to a tailor's shop. An Austrian couple, who are friends of Alhacen's, donated old computers to the organization. His desk chair is missing an armrest, and red dust coats the furniture.
These two dingy rooms are Alhacen's headquarters in his fight against Areva, a global conglomerate.
Areva, which operates uranium mines and build nuclear power plants, has its headquarters in Paris. Its total sales in 2009 were €14 billion ($19 billion). The company is owned almost entirely by the French state, which was the colonial power in Niger until 1960. The French established their first mining company eight years after Niger's independence. Uranium was deposited in sediments in the region millions of years ago, when it was a river delta. Since 1968, excavating machines have dug more than 100,000 tons of the nuclear fuel out of the ground beneath the Sahara.
The Saudi Arabia of the Nuclear Industry
France sells some of its electricity generated by nuclear power to Germany, and Areva employs 5,200 people in Germany. Every weekend, the players in a German soccer club, 1. FC Nürnberg, which plays in the country's top league, the Bundesliga, run onto the field wearing Areva jerseys. France has 58 nuclear reactors, which generate most of the country's electricity, and the fuel for those reactors comes from Niger. As one of the world's largest uranium suppliers, Niger is to the nuclear industry what Saudi Arabia is to the oil industry.
Uranium from Niger has served as a fuel for Europe's energy supply for 40 years. But unlike Saudi Arabia, Niger has arguably reaped little but misery in return. The country in Africa's Sahel zone is one of the world's least-developed nations. One in four children dies before the age of five.
The conditions in Niger are one of the dirty sides of supposedly clean nuclear energy. The activities there are well hidden from the outside world: The uranium mining takes place in the middle of nowhere. There are bandits in the region who kidnap white people and sell them to al-Qaida. The region was long under martial law because of a rebellion by the Tuareg. Today, Arlit is still accessible only by military convoy.
Recently, however, a Greenpeace team went to Arlit. They brought along Geiger counters, which detected levels of radioactivity that were far higher than they should have been. There are two uranium mines in the area, one near Arlit and the other near the nearby town of Akokan. One is an open pit mine and the other reaches about 250 meters (820 feet) underground -- the world's largest underground uranium mine.
Fighting for Their Share of Revenues
A total of 80,000 people live in the two cities Areva created in the desert to service the mines. There are no paved roads, but there is plenty of reddish-brown dust, which penetrates into every crack and pore. Well water is radioactively contaminated, and precious fossil groundwater is used in the uranium ore processing plant. The region's nomads are finding fewer and fewer pastures for their cattle, and people are affected by fatal illnesses.
Citizens' organizations critical of Areva claim that the little money the company pays to the Niger state remains in the capital or simply ends up in the pockets of family members of the longstanding ex-president. When Alhacen is asked what the mine has done for people, he says: "Nothing -- except radiation, which will be here for thousands of years."
The mines have also contributed to the uprisings, in which the Tuareg rebels use violence in an attempt to get their share of uranium revenues. Niger is a divided country, with the Tuareg living in the north and the dominant Hausa ethnic group in the south. The capital is in the south, and the south controls the country. Uranium revenues from the north are used to buy weapons in the south, which the government then uses to keep the north in check.
And on that informative note, i shall bid you all farewell.
Me
PS there will be a short written exam on this subject tomorrow
