I have been remiss!!

Good Morning from an overcast Accra.

Eish, I really have not been too good at updates over the last few weeks so I will try and make up for it.

What has been happening?

Well I have been bouncing between Accra, Tarkwa and Obuasi over the past week or so trying to keep everything together and clocking up the K’s in the car. Couple this with the fact that my CD player is dodgy at the moment and there has been a fair amount of singing in the car as once again the CD sticks inside the unit and I have to wait for a stop to reset everything and get the bloody CD out.

Our friends from Thirdrail appear to have FINALLY got it right and the Accra house has connectivity. The quality of it appears on the face of it good, and it remains to be seen what the uptime turns out to be. This was only achieved after some severe toy throwing which had a conference room full of their technical and sales walla’s trying to please explain to a very unsupporting me what the issue was. They finally agreed to give me time in their office to so my stuff while they battled away into the night.

Last night I arrived in Accra at around 7pm (2 hours to travel 14km – Accra traffic is foul!!) and as it was a tad late to cook, I decided (once again) Nando’s would be a good option. I was to rue that decision.

Chatting to Nessers, I complained of stomach cramps and decided it was time to go to bed. Well lets just say that Nando’s does not taste good second time around. Obviously the chicken had been left lying around in a not too healthy area and had some pretty fun bugs attached. These bugs decided to carry out a body takeover which appears to have failed dismally as they were rudely tossed out over the next four hours.

It is a bugger when the cramps are so bad you cannot lie, sit, walk or stand. I canna recall when I was so sore. Finally got to sleep around 2.30 am. My tummy muscles are sore as hell and I am speaking with a gravelly voice.

Methinks Nando’s is off the list of acceptable foods.

Friday was month end Friday where everyone toddles off for the weekend to spend their monthly pay. True to form our system decided at around 11am to decide it was on time out and no processing on the accounting system was possible. The call to the Helpdesk was met with what you would expect on a Friday afternoon and it is going to be interesting to see if anything is working on Monday. Of course it has to happen at a month end, and it also appears I cannot access via our VPN. Contract recons could be interesting this month.


Friday things kinda got out of hand, and Carlos had purchased 4 bottles of Captains for the house. He also got some meat and wors. It then ended up with drinks and braai and a hangover the next morning. I did not get to watch the rugger as I was required in Obuasi for a meeting. Finished both meetings at 1:30 and decided to do the Accra run so that Sunday can be a chilled day

So much for that – I have two meetings today and one drop off at the Airport – Zack is heading home on R&R – and one pick up of a Larnie from SA office.

Said Larnie will keep me busy in a load of meetings for the next two days.

Business stuff on Wednesday seeing some prospects and back to Tarkwa Thursday. Going to be a fun week,

As can be expected I am not in the best mood…… so lemme do the post and get the pics of the house up.

Hope you smiling

Sunroom door

Sunroom door
Originally uploaded by Hop.

Will become the entrance to the office. And we in the big city now - so there is loads of security!

view from bedroom other window

view from bedroom other window
Originally uploaded by Hop.

The grainy effect is from the mosquito netting

View from my bedroom

View from my bedroom
Originally uploaded by Hop.

*chuckle* Have not worked out what rooms from my neighbours house can see into my room....

Squash court

Squash court
Originally uploaded by Hop.

looking down from the main lounge. The floor is concrete (rubberised) which could take it out of the shins if you got serious about squash

Outside View

Outside 1
Originally uploaded by Hop.

As can been seen the landlord needs some paint..... This view is from the stoep outside the sun room

TV room

TV room
Originally uploaded by Hop.

A place where most evenings are spent!

Study

Study
Originally uploaded by Hop.

Current office space. Will turn the sun room into an office as it can be split off the house quite nicely.

Lounge

longue
Originally uploaded by Hop.

The main Lounge which if you open those sliding glass doors you look down onto the squash court

front garden

front garden
Originally uploaded by Hop.

The grass needs a bit of looking into, and it would look so much better with a splash pool. *chuckle*

Car port

Car port
Originally uploaded by Hop.

and I can park my wagon just outside the door. Is that not just lazy! - hehe

Bottom Room

Bottom Room
Originally uploaded by Hop.

Also with ensuite

Third room

Third room
Originally uploaded by Hop.

Also with en suite bathroom and a little study area

Bath 2

Bath 2
Originally uploaded by Hop.

What can I say.

Second room

Second room
Originally uploaded by Hop.

Guest room. Not the strange color of the cupboard!

Bath

Bath
Originally uploaded by Hop.

See - another shag place and..... *bite of hand*

My room

My room
Originally uploaded by Hop.

I mean I get a room that has a mirror built for shagging, and no-one to shag. the fate gods have a warped sense of humour.

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!!

What is it with me and the local cops?

What is it with me and the local constabulary?

Once again I have fallen foul of the law and ended up missing a meeting over it!

As a starting point, we have adopted a branding policy and I am quite happily driving a vehicle with very smart company stickers on the side of the door. The lads in JHB even went so far as to get me a spare wheel cover branded with the company logo.

The car looks really smart

The car with the logo becomes a “company vehicle”

“Company Vehicles” need a sticker paying some sort of tax to the Accra Metro Authority

The next point to note was written about in my first blog when I arrived in Ghana. At every robot and broken down truck there is a plethora of hawkers selling all kinds of stuff. Oh yes and the ubiquitous beggars that one finds in Africa. As they are a tad in your face, I have grown immune to them at the window and tend to ignore them, lost in thought about sex and other stuff.

The final point, which led to the confusion was, all over Ghana the local fuzz wear black uniforms. In Accra they wear white shirts.

Now you will understand the confusion when I ignore a white shirted lad knocking on the passenger side window. You will also fully understand when I drive away from said white shirted local as the traffic moves. And yes…. You will also fully understand that said white shirted local lad will get somewhat agitated by my total ignorance of his position of authority.

The lad then decided to come to the driver’s side and once again attempt to gain my attention. (He was safe to chase me on foot as the Accra traffic is foul and does not move very far very fast). I decided to open my window and chat to him when I noted that he was in uniform and was looked somewhat flustered. He then proceeded to kak all over me for not stopping. He did not appreciate my point that there are so many bloody people trying to stop me, I did not quite differentiate him from everyone else.

Asking me for my driver’s license and car papers at which he looked over for a second before asking me for my AMA papers.

Been a rather frustrated bunny, I asked him what the hell AMA papers were. A small slanging match ensued as I was convinced I was once again been knocked by the cops for money. I mean bugger it – they get enough from me in Tarkwa, why the hell do I have to support two police forces.

The lad however was suitably unimpressed and promptly proceeded to arrest me for failure to stop and failing to display the called for AMA sticker.

After doing the chirp and realising that my sarcasm was blowing straight over his head, I then phoned Zack to find out what this lad was asking for and was I (once again) been taken for a ride.

Zack advised me that my now really pissed off white shirted lad was 100% correct and I was officially in shite.

GHC500,000 later I left the local charge office with a AMA sticker and a small notation in a his cash book that makes GHC72,000 looks like GHC 500,000

Seems like the Accra cops and myself have already established a relationship.

Thirdrail? Methinks they a rail short

Well my first blog from Accra, and posted from my little desk in the home office. That means… We finally have internet access from Accra. And boy was it an issue.

Thirdrail, our service provider of (dubious) choice was the ISP blessed with setting up the access and will be providing our VPN bandwidth between the offices in Ghana. Three weeks ago, I gave them the go ahead to install the wireless at the home office in Accra. It took the buggers two weeks to note that there was an upfront payment which was duly made and the installation was to be complete last Friday.

I toddled through to Accra on Saturday safe with the knowledge that due to them not responding to my emails during the week, there was no way in hell we would have connectivity. I was not disappointed.

Now what makes me boil a tad is when I can never get hold of anyone. I mean this is Ghana! If I work seven days a week, my suppliers better work the same hours. What then transpired was a snotty SMS to both sales people that they best refund me the money and I can go to another ISP. (Goodness how I love competition). I was rewarded with a phone call on Sunday (see they can increase their working hours); advising me that by 9am Monday morning they will be doing the installation.

True to form, at 9am I got a phone call that the installation team has been delayed and will be there later. True to form three lads arrived later and commenced installation of the radio mast on the water tank. In true Ghana form when I wandered around the back of the house, two of the lads were lying on the lawn and nothing was happening. The reason? The clamps they had brought along were too small.

Finally we had a signal of sorts and the lads packed up. When I casually mentioned that although there were these nice panels installed and a wire and box on the desk, I did not have connectivity, they happily mentioned that they were the RF team and they did the panel installation. There was a Digital Team that installed the router and connects us up.

Loving the concept of job creation, I could then phone the Thirdrail offices once again and happily ask when the DIGITAL TEAM would be passing by to complete the installation.

“They are leaving now” was the response. This was 3:30pm. Their offices are 10 mins away – even in Accra traffic and I expected them before 4. Come 4.30 they not around and methinks it was time for a small amount of toy throwing.

That was achieved by a drive to their offices, and a quiet word in their ear that they can come and take their equipment down as I will find someone else who does not have the vast store of bullshit that they have at their disposal.

Needless to say – by 6:30 pm I had a connection, and although the connection is foul (it appears there is a cell phone tower in line of sight that requires my antennae to be lifted), I was at least able to access email and jde.

Would I recommend Thirdrail as an ISP. The jury remains out on that!

Written in Accra - Posted in Tarkwa

Back in Ghana once again and the fact that it has taken me over a week to do my first blog update gives you some kind of indication as to what fun I have come back to.

But fun aside; this is the week that was:

The Accra flight schedule has changed (as mentioned in my previous blogs) and instead of a nice lunch time flight, arriving at 6:30 pm, we now form part of the Washington flight which leaves at around the same time we used to land. Couple this with the fact that all international flights are in the evening, the international check in was designed by a hippy who smoked too much of the good stuff and SAA was just coming off a week long strike, you have some of the picture of what the airport check in looked like.

Try fit some 2000 people and their baggage into a space 4 meters wide by 40 meters long and you will gather it was push and shove to find our way to check in. Couple this with the fact that I had excess baggage (my text books for my course weighed 15kg all by themselves) as well as four items of luggage (2 boxes of drawings for our new job starting next month), enough be said that I was growling by the time I asked the nice lady for an aisle seat as ONCE AGAIN the farkers at our oh so (in)efficient travel agency had omitted to pre-book a seat.

An unhappy farewell to the Nessers and the knowledge that I will not be getting my end away for 11 weeks, I toddled through customs with the minimal amount of hassle. Which was more than everyone else I may add due to me using the far side customs before anyone had twigged they were open. SA passport control service bid a fond farewell to their international passengers by staffing the entire departure control with six – yes six!! – people. It took both Ian and Gus almost an hour to pass through their service driven hands.

I spent a couple of penny’s getting the lads in Ghana some goodies and joined the queue at gate 8 for the boarding. Once again the travellator was not working and in all my innocence I wandered past a long queue of people who I presumed were leaving via gate 7. Oh what naivety!! Of course the plane is going to the USA…

Our friendly yanks are unfortunately paying the price for their rather interesting foreign policy, which automatically dictates that we who fly half way to the land of hope and glory are subject to the full might of “security” checks. Our method of checking security….. look around and identify suspicious looking people and search their hand baggage. Oh yes – and the best part of it all? We are not allowed lighters on the flight!! I mean hello!!!!! We not allowed to smoke on the farking flight but sure as hell want to have a smoke (or three) when we get to the other side.

I am a smoker – do NOT remove my lighter from my possession. I must admit, I did not volunteer my lighter and the plane landed safely across the water. I would LOVE! to understand the reason for surrendering your lighter. (I mean besides the fact that the airport staff who smoke have found a really clever way to ensure they never have to buy another lighter in their lives again) (or – there is a huge market for second hand lighters that I am not aware of)

As an aside – there is a stunning ad for a vehicle tracking company that shows us where missing socks go. Maybe they should do the same with missing lighters.

Now. I arrived early – I checked in, asked for, and was given, an aisle seat and did everything right to ensure I had that extra few inches to travel with. That presupposes that someone with a tad more push than me also requests an aisle seat and I get bumped to a centre seat in the middle of the plane. To say I was pissed off is an understatement, and true to form spent a large amount of time bitching to all that was willing (and unwilling) to hear exactly what I thought of the situation.

SAA have managed to squeeze as many people into a plane as possible when it comes to cattle class. I measured from my nose to the seat in front of me I had 32 centimeters. I mean squash us in will you!! Luckily I had a very nice lady who was returning from a medical NGO project in Zambia and her two daughters in my row. Very nice lady took one look at me and (wisely) decided that I should not be spending the next six hours chatting to her daughters (OR.. Nessers phoned her and told her in no uncertain terms on how she had to protect her little lasses from my wicked ways) and I ended up with her aisle seat anyway.

The plane is one with your own little TV set and a choice of current movies. That assumes that the system actually works of course. In our case in order to get the system working, it had to be reset twice and Ian and Gus did not have any “in flight entertainment” the entire flight. The plane was filled to the gunnels and there was no way they could move to a seat with a working system. One hopes that SAA are maintaining their planes a lot better than their inflight entertainment systems. (Cost cutting due to the extra 1% already Kyaia?)

I did manage to watch “Miss Congeniality 2” and the Vin Diesel movie where he looks after kids. (canna recall the name). I also managed a few pages of my book and chatted to the nice lady about her African adventures.

Of course the plane lands at 11:30 pm local time, (1:30 am SAST)and the poor buggers that remain on the plane are woken up for landing and asked to remove their luggage from the overhead lockers and place them on their laps. This I assume is to stop a wooly raghead from leaving a ticking package on the flight while he visits my Imam in Tarkwa.

Security Fears? You betcha!

Arrive at the Accra house to be advised that:

1. Only one aircon is working out of the six in the house. (subsequently I realised that our poor Peter is not the brightest of the pack as he does not know how to work the remote controls)

2. The Kettle is broken

3. There is no food in the house

4. The phone is not working

Auspicious start to my 3rd tour of duty this year.

To say I have been busy in the last week is an understatement. Dealt with all sorts of strange stuff when I got back to Tarkwa - uneventful journey – and as Ian had come along for the week to resolve some old issues, I spent time with him in meetings with three clients before driving back to Accra on Saturday to put him on a plane that evening. (and he gets nookie on Sunday – lucky bugger)

One thing that did surprise me though is the trip from Tarkwa to Bibiani has always been four hours. Mark had mentioned that when he did the trip with Albert in April it was around 2.5 hours. I drove it on Thursday in….. 2.5 hours. It was the first time I drove myself to Bibiani and it appears that Daniel is not the fastest driver in the world. I have always read a book – or used the computer – on the trip and evidently did not note that his average speed is a lot lower then normal.

I have been in Accra since Saturday as mentioned. Ian and yours truly watched the rugby and supped the local beer and munched on Do-nuts. A weird combination I do admit, but the Do-nuts were so so nice. (and we won the rugger!!! - whoo hooo)

After a meal at Champs, Ian was dispatched at the drop off point with my copy of “medal of honour” and left to his own devices for two hours or so shooting Germans on his PC.

I also went food shopping for the first time in Accra. A little “expat” store called Maxi Mart. All sorts of imported goodies on packed shelves. It reminded me so much of the store that I went shopping at when I was in Cyprus – Angie will remember the day I spent a huge amount on buying stuff for dinner as to which she did mention I had shopped at the most expensive place in town –

I was shocked and stunned at the prices! Fark!!

I looked at a kettle – GHC 500,000 for a basic one – (R350.00)

Some of the food prices for you to mull over:

Item GHC Price ZAR Price
Dogmor (5 KG!!!) 69,000 50.00
Cabbage (1) 12,500 8.90
Tomato Sauce 750g 79,000 56.00
Cheese (300g) 62,500 44.64
Long Life Milk – 1 liter17,500 12.50
Chicken Fillet (500g) 31,500 22.50
Coke 1.5l 11,500 8.20
Jam 300g 31,000 22,00
Corn Flakes 300g 87,000 62.00

As you can see, if I am going to eat here I am definatly going to have to find a cheaper place to shop!

Another interesting factor is I need to print out our corporate profile for a job we are expressing interest in. The only place I know that has a color printer is the Tulip Hotel business center. Total cost for 51 pages - R998.00.

This is sad!!

Accra is a load more expensive than Tarkwa!

Best I start getting some business to cover these costs!

The fact that this blog will be posted a few days after I have typed it means that the phone line is still not working and I have no internet access. I did toddle off to the Telecom people and complain to a most unhelpful person ( was she trained by SAA?) who seems to feel that as the problem is reported it ceases to be her issue. I will await that one with interest.

Another fun item which makes me chuckle is the dealmakers. Word has evidently got out in the small town that we have an office in town and being a large company can do all these strange deals.

I have had five meetings in the last two days with all sorts of dealmakers who have the “in” with government and can get these “huge” contracts that will make our company lots and lots of money. The catch? Oh – government has no funding for the job, so you need to fund the job yourself. There seems to be some confusion as to how payment is going to be made.

All this reminds me of all the “empowerment dealmakers” I dealt with in my previous job who wished to invest “huge” amounts in our company, but unfortunately did not have the money to pay. Therefore we go to the bank, raise the funds to pay for a shareholding in the company and the same confusion existed on how the loan was going to be repaid.

Oh if the cat people were in earshot now, with all their liberated ideas they have about Africa. (if you never heard the story about the cat people – ask me – It was a HUGE laugh)

I am sitting at the computer hammering away at this blog (obviously as for some reason it does not write itself) awaiting 11pm when the SA flight lands so I can pick up Carlos and Leon. See what I mean by an inconvenient hour? I still wake up at 5:30 am so tonight is going to be a long night for us all.

Was there any humour in this post? - I think there was!

Speak to you later bunnies!!

More news from SA

Well courtesy of SAA I remained in South Africa for the week.

The strike was finally resolved on friday where the employees got an extra 1% and happily returned to work to take care of the backlog.

Now - someone really has to teach the unions about results of settling a one week strike for an additional 1%.

There are 52 weeks in a year dear union. Each week represents 1.9% of your annual earnings. By not working for 1 week, you lost 1.9% of your annual earnings. You settled at 1% increase in annual earnings, so your members are 0.9% worse off. And to make matters worse you had SAA by the short and curlys. End of Lession - negotiations and strike action 101.

We are booked on the flight tonight and assume there will be enough room on the flight for us. Spare a thought of our poor lad who was stuck in Ghana for the week and only arrives today. At least I was stuck this side.

So in theory, my next missive will be from Ghana.

A last word of welcome to the seven people from the office who are going to appear on the thought police access list as they browse my blog. At least there is no porn on this site for them to point the crooked finger at!!

Have a fine day friendly ones: