As the year winds down to the festive season it appears all our clients have realised that stuff is needed urgently. I do also think the gold price breaking the $500 / oz. barrier has a lot to do with it.
What does this mean for us? It means the relaxed move to the shutdown on the 16th has become a frantic rush to trying to get home on the 23rd. All this made a whole lot more fun by the fact changing flights to South Africa in the week before Xmas is a mission. We have a very nice lady in SA – Kashi – who works for our travel agency who has managed against all odds to confirm our lads back on flights in time for Xmas. You have no idea how depressed guys get when they realise they may not be home in time for Xmas. We had three difficult days before all the flights were confirmed.
What this also means for me is that I will be spending a huge amount of time on the road in the next 10 days opening up one new site and closing down three. Security over the Xmas season is always an issue but as we are not closing the workshops at least we will not have to make sure that all the containers holding stores are welded shut.
The nice thing about the $500 + gold price is we have confirmed orders which in total exceed my budget until April. That is a first for me since I arrived here. Couple that with a nice large contract award starting in February and the work that Ian and his team are doing in Nigeria, West Africa has hit the radar screens at Head Office in a big way. I assume we will be getting a lot of visits from higher ups in the New Year.
My travels over the last week consisted of Obuasi, Accra, Kenyase, Tarkwa and Bogoso. Clocking up the miles still without a working CD player, which means I am spending a lot of time flipping through the local radio stations appreciating West African Music as well as catching the talk shows.
The biggest news still relates to the revelations by the (soon to be former) head of the ruling party who in an “interview” a few weeks ago alluded to the President been party to collecting kickbacks from contractors.
In Ghana these “interviews” are sometimes carried out by bugging private meetings, which is what happened here. This obviously restarted the whole debate around ethics in journalism etc.
The Serious Fraud Office has now got involved and it is going to be interesting to see what happens on this score.
One good point was made, which pointed out that political parties in Ghana are not financed by the Taxpayer but by “private donations”. It does follow that raising sufficient funds to drive a party machine may require some fancy footwork on the fund raising side. This however does mean that eventually the taxpayer picks up the tab if kickbacks are involved.
Some funny anecdotes came about as well from these discussions.
“The NDC (previous government) would look at company results published in the newspapers and know that 10% was coming their way”
In Ghana there is a quaint tradition at Xmas to give gifts of hampers. These hampers contain food and drink items and are normally in a box. They are now known as “kickbox”
When questioned about the ethics of bugging a private meeting, the Journo stated quite glibly that he would not have got this information if he asked the party chairman directly.
There was also a wonderful article about Journalism and the “art” of asking questions without offending the interviewee. It stated instead of asking a direct question such as “Did you take a bribe?” you need to say “People are talking about the possibility you have been involved in taking bribes”. My response to that method of asking questions is “bunkim” (I had a stronger work in mind). Ask the question directly demmet. If the guy gets offended, tough! Which is the reason why I am not a Journo. *chuckle*
We have had endless problems with out Sat system in Tarkwa which is now trying my patience. It also appears that our computer support team (third party) has been replaced in the New Year with a new computer support company. This should make life interesting. I am however far advanced with my VPN and soon hopefully we will not require the Vsat system at all.
Another interesting development is the total cock up in the “computerized” school allocations. That was discussed at length in preceding blogs. It appears – as the first term draws to a close – some 20% of students have not been allocated a school. In my book – someone needs to get fired!
It also appears that guys have been allocated to all girls schools and visa versa, which although not many are complaining has caused some issues.
Want to stuff something up? Give it to a computer programmer who does not bother to do sufficient test runs before going live. I mean for farks sake – it is a simple relational database system (which if I know Africa was written in access).
But hey – life does go on – except for the poor students that have missed a term of school
Right – the system is up and running – emails are flooding in – so lemme get at the day.
Hope you are smiling!!
