Missive from parts of Africa

A light hearted and sometimes serious look at moving 6000km into a place in Africa: April 2007. Promoted back to South Africa, the missive will continue to track my foray's into deepest Africa as and when I get there.

Name:
Location: Joburg, Africa, South Africa

Friday, August 19, 2005

Tis Friday already?

Another week bites the dust (sort of) and I camp in the office of a Friday afternoon keeping the thought policeman busy as I catch up on my news and blogs.

It is taking some getting used to this traveling to and fro, and I am quite happily having to make adjustments as regards being in Tarkwa, working like a dog for 3 days or so and then shooting off to Accra to potter around having 3 – 4 meetings a day and trying to get my marketing hat to fit properly. Is it fun? You bet it is!

After my police escapade, I abandoned all attempts to meet with the steel suppliers and went back home disgusted with the fact that all my arguing was for nothing as I was in the wrong from the first step. I hate it when I am wrong! Demmet!

Meeting on Wednesday morning with consultants (who also have loads of projects – no finance) and left Accra at 10.30. Johan has copied some really nice heavy house music for me and the “douf douf” accompanied me on my 5 hours to Tarkwa. (well as much “doef doef” as you can get with 2 Japanese speakers). It appears decent sound kit ordered from SA has been impounded by the local thought police as they do not appear to believe we need decent sound in the car. I must admit these are nice people that spend 30 mins in their car a day and do not have to travel 5000km a month on Ghana Roads with no Highveld Radio or 702. All swings and roundabouts I spose.

I have had two days of run run run and early nights. I must admit the drive from Accra zones my brain, as unlike a Durban – JHB trip on a wonderful highway where u can chill and drive, driving in Ghana requires constant concentration on avoiding the larger potholes, missing the trucks that INSIST on driving in the middle of the road, watching out for little kids as you pass through the numerous villages on the way and the final 72km of narrow dirt road that threatens to spin you out at every corner you take over 40. Thank Gawd for 4 wheel drive. It has got me out of the dwang more than once.

Ergo – bed is an early option and I am generally feet up reading by 9pm.

Last night I gave up Chris Rock on Comedy HBO to “read”. The problem was I am reading another Kellerman (The Lifeguard) and was so into it wanting to see what eventually happened that I *cough* read until around 12, finishing the book. The storyline was a bit of imagination stretch, but the twists were astounding and very well written. Read it is my advice.

Therefore I was most shocked when I woke up at 5.30am all bright eyed and bushy tailed. I have no doubt I am going to pay for it tonight. I thought when you got older you needed less sleep *chuckle*

For the umpteenth time, I have a sty in my eye. So I look like Kermit the Frog with no real effects. I have however noticed that my left eye has definitely got weaker than my right. After 40 years with both eyes having the same prescription it appears that my eyes have broken up. That will teach me to make the planned appointment with the Eyequack last time I was in SA. I now have to deal with Bino vision until October when I head down south again. That also must be what is contributing to the headaches.

But enough about my loss of bodily functions –

I head off to Accra again tomorrow to meet with some SA high powers from Head Office and an Investment Bank to pursue business opportunities. As a brag we have meetings with two ministers and some international banking organizations. Shades of Unicell again: *smile* The fun part is when I was in Swaziland I was on first name terms with two of the ministers and we used to party together with one when he was in the mood to leave the joys of running a ministry behind. (always fun to party with armed policemen accompanying you – definitely no fights).

One of the fun things to work out is to make sure I know where I am going on Monday and Tuesday. It is all very well driving alone and getting lost on your way to a meeting, but when you have two other walla’s in the car and you get lost in Accra, methinks they will frown a tad. Soooooo Guess what! On Sunday I will hop in my car and make sure I know EXACTLY how to get to the places where we have meetings planned so I do not look like an idiot! *chuckle*

All about forward planning – Nessers would be proud!

Am looking forward to cooking my own food as I must admit when I got back we had meat of an indeterminate type which everyone refused to ear and Lasagna and Mashed Potato. Not quite my fave rave.

Another interesting thing is apparently to run all our day end processes on our wonderful accounting system takes 12 hours. Ergo the lads shut the system down from 7pm – 7am. Which is fine when that is SA time, but not that cool when you are hammering away at some entry at 5.00pm local time and the system dies. With email pottering up and down the system during the day, from 5pm – 8pm was a really good time to enter stuff into JDE. So much for that been possible now. I do wonder what happens when the time difference is say 4 hours. That means the system dies at 3.00pm. But we smile and just do it!

(Nike Royalties to my bank account please)

Allow me to get back to what I was doing!

Have a fun weekend now bunnies!!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home