The team!!

What happens when a whitey plays Footy

When all other people are heading in the opposite direction to you, you are either breaking new ground or hopelessly lost.

Carl following the road less travelled

The crowd and The linesman with his flag of leaves

Pictures of the Footy

The singing supporters, drinking a wonderous Ghana drink called "Apertish" that basically kicks you like a mule and turns the brain into a mushy thing with no substance

Group Five 1 - De Simone 2

In the small town of Bogoso – Western Region Ghana, on the local cabbage patch masquerading as a soccer field, the Group Five team were put to the sword by a resurgent De Simone team.

The ref was professional, they players were not!

I should have realised we were on a hiding to nothing when our hired strip turned out to be England colours. England NEVER win an important game, and this was important. The opposition had hired a Bayern Munich strip, who have had a whole load of better luck winning games over the last year.

If I say the field was a cabbage patch. It had some grass, a lot of sand and – I kid you not – the lines were made out of CONCRETE!!

Goal Keepers in Ghana are wiry people. They must be as I dragged the Small jersey onto my Extra Large tummy. I looked like Bozo the clown.

It was apt – I played like Bozo the clown.

The last time I played in Goal was when I was in Primary School. It has been a long time since I was in primary school. It showed.

I was – fortunately – only on the field for 15 minutes.

I was hungover – refer previous post – and I managed to catch the ball 3 times.

The one cross floated from the right, and Bozo the clown made like Peter Shilton and rushed across to pluck the cross from the air.

That was the plan

The execution was somewhat different.

The execution resulted in my mind thinking “Oh Fuck, I am never going to get there in time” My heart made me try harder, my age made me get the tip of my fingers to the ball.

I stood like a spectator as the ball bounced in front of an opposing player, was crossed back and bounced around as my defence tried vainly to play without a goalkeeper who was now stranded 10 meters away.

The ball bounced off the cross bar, and I started to move towards the melee of players, with one thought in mind. “This is going to hurt”

Fortunately for me – unfortunately for the team, my defence failed dismally to hold the ball up until Bozo lumbered over to claim it. 1 – 0

And I could smell the captains coming from my pores

Team Management made a wonderful decision 5 minutes later and replaced me with a 5’ lad who proved to be a whole lot more capable than me.

The scene was wonderful though. The entire workforce of both company’s as well as 60% of Bogoso town were there. Around 500 people in all. Goodness that is a better crowd than the Golden Lions are getting at Ellis Park!

The referee was good, even though his idea of a half in Footy was 60 minutes.

The crowd cheered, the crowd roared and a little man ran up and down the touch time commentating into his cell phone.

Apparently the match was broadcast live on Tarkwa Radio.

When we scored the equalizer in the second half, the field was invaded by our supporters. No wait the field was invaded by all the supporters. The ref was berated by the opposition who felt the goal was unfairly awarded, and our gladiators were mobbed by our proud lads.

Score 1-1

5 minutes later the opposition took a speculative shot from midway between the halfway line and goal line and our poor keeper watched the ball sail over his head without moving.

Score 2-1

We were devastated!

Around 5 minutes from the end of the game, a player got sent off. The fields was once again invaded, but this time, the ref was subject to loads of abuse and supporters and players alike got involved in an almighty rumble.

It was great

Goals on each side, a fight, and a load of fun had by all.

Would have been better if we won – but hey. Nice way to spend a Sunday.

The best part was we had started a Lamb Vindaloo at 12am that morning. It had bubbled the entire day and that night we tucked into a great curry.

I was a hoppy lad!!

Cards 1 - Wine 4 - Antoine 0

Goodness. After a flurry of updates, everything goes quiet.

What is this world coming to! What is my world coming to?

Let’s see:

I have learnt a good lesson over the last weekend. It has to do with Cards, Carl and Jeri and some bottles of rather scary Aussie wine.

We sat under the stoep, playing cribbage and some funny “add the cards to 15, with pairs etc” game and supped at the rather acidic red wine. Was Aussie wine – cos it was as acidic as the Aussies are and gives you a headache.

Run out of wine, wander (Stagger?) up the 9th hole to the top bar. Find two of your workmates solving the world’s problems, and some other people and continue to partake for a long time. Bar closes, Stagger (Stumble) down the 1st hole and find a bottle of whiskey in the pantry and continue.

Instead of turning OFF my alarm and ON the air conditioner, I reversed the sequence and found a parrot in my mouth at 6am when the strident tones of “I walk alone” found its way through the tormented brain.

It was NOT a good start to the morning.

What made the Sunday a little more interesting was that we were due to play soccer at 3pm. On my last post, I was named as the second reserve goalkeeper. For some reason between the list and the following day, I became…… Goalkeeper.

I am still trying to find the person who made that decision and work on his management decisions.

Hungover we got to the Cabbage Patch at 2:30pm.

The soccer game warrants a separate post.

Party Hard and be buggered the next day

Another update so soon?

Goodness – people will start thinking I am doing no work at all.

We went to the pub – again – last night to celebrate the putting up of our first piece of contractual pipe. This of course not the first piece of pipe that was laid, but that was all temporary pipe or extra’s pipe. We had laid pipe!!

You will now understand we celebrate the funniest stuff on site, but as we were discussing last night, all we seem to do here is Wake up – go to work – go home – go sleep – repeat.

Having resorted to headache tablets as a result of last nights medicinal bout with Captains, I comfortably had two single captains and bade everyone an early farewell.

I cannot get pissed two nights in a row – that’s a fact. A sad one – but a fact nevertheless.

I had a hunger when I got home and was greeted by Fish and Chips. Now to be honest, I wanted something substantial to sort out my tummy and tell it who was boss.

30 minutes later I was happily tucking into 3 x Lamb Chops, Lentils and Garlic, Feta Cheese and Olives and yes – the chips.

I was happy.

I was also nodding off on the couch at around 8,30 pm.

I was fast asleep by 9:30pm

There is something to be frowned at when you shattered after a previous nights hooley.

This week we start the run in to month end. This week I have a shite load to do. There is also a presentation by one of our clients in Accra on Friday which it seems that I am it. Albert is on R&R – bastard; Zack is pulling all the stops on a Job in Obuasi and we need to be there.

I was looking forward to some time in Accra. A day will have to suffice. It is month end weekend next weekend and we will not be working. Maybe a weekend in Accra?

We shall see. – Not much fun when you are there by yourself with no-one to party with.

Tomorrow there is a Football Match between De Simone and ourselves to be played at the JDE Stadium in Bogoso. We are willing to negotiate the television rights for the match. Please contact me before 3pm tomorrow.

I am the 2nd reserve Goal Keeper, Jeri is the 3rd Reserve Goal Keeper. That means if 2 Goalkeepers get injured I will have to raise myself from a (hopefully) beer induced stupor, walk onto the field, pull a hamstring on the way in and call Jeri to take my place in Goal.

We do strange things here.

Of Hangovers and long black snakes

There is something ethereal about a Friday morning, 5:45am, mist low on the Golf course, standing on my 2 x 2 verandah, with a hangover from hell courtesy of way too much Captains the night before and listening to the birds make one hell of a noise.

To say I noticed that the noise from the birds was a lot more strident this morning would be a lie. I was too bloody hung over to notice anything but the smoke in my lungs and the way my body soaked up the morning cuppa.

On hearing a noise behind me, I turned in time to notice the biggest farking snake I have ever seen recover from a fall from the tree some 4 meters away from me and decide to reclimb the same tree, presumably in his quest for one of the birds up there.

My reaction – besides a rather surprised “Fuuuuuuuuck” – was to bolt back inside and close the door. Smoking rules be damned!!

Once my heart had slowed down to an acceptable 120 beats per minute, I snuck a peak out of the door and watched Sam the snake wendle his way up the tree.

I must be in the African Jungle!

Living with my hangover from hell – a dull throbbing by the afternoon – I cannot access my email, JDE or the company web page.

I sent a email to the helpdesk – from my “site” email – only to be questioned on how I was connecting to the server when I was not on a company range of IP addresses. I am not too sure why VPN software gets issued if the lad does not know that we can use it.

The upshot was the old IT favorite – We have checked everything from our side and it is working fine.

Well – my news is bad – It is NOT FUCKING WORKING FROM THIS SIDE DEMMET!!!

But hey – that’s my problem.

Last night in the pub was a hoot. I had had a particularly taxing day and decided that two relaxing Captains would be the order of the day.

I had a tad more than two, jousted verbally with the client for most of the evening. Received a site instruction written on a serviette with language foul enough to make me not want to give it to our engineer the following morning, and debated the fact that despite all the quality issues coming out of India and China, it may pay people to get work done out of there in the future. A lively debate it was too, considering my experiences in India.

The weekend rushes upon us, which means only three more days of work before the start of a new week of work – gotta love these contracts – Another week bites the dust in the chase to the 15th December.

Trust you had a great week readers

And trust the next week will be more fun than usual

Sunday Update

Tis a sad state of affair when you have to wait until Sunday to update your blog due to doing the chicken sans head thing.

What has happened during the week?

Well besides the inevitible work, I have managed to have my angry day and piss off the other people day, all in one week.

My angry day related to an accusation that we did not have enough people on site. I flew back with "we have too many bloody people on site for the amount of stuff we have" and so it went on. I ended up marching to my office, doing a schedule of what should be here, what is here and explaining in rather unflattering terms that if we are still waiting for goodies on some bloody ship in the sea, how silly it is to have loads of people picking their noses.

We patched up our differences in the pub that night as only a dozen double captains can do.

The piss people off day was a highlight, as I took great pains at pointing out all the instructions that were outstanding and how it was making our people pick their noses. That and how they can glibly make statements that items will fit, but refuse to put it in writing cause in reality they have no idea where the items go in the first place.

That said, my Small Works lad delivered 18 tons of chute to site. Bless their little cotton socks if they did not drape a Group Five flag in the front of the chute, leaving no unanswered question as to who made this chute. I was impressed at their marketing skills.

I also had a trip to Obuasi on Saturday to correct my marketing skills. There is nothing worse than doing something in an accountants manner and handing it to an engineer. They are bound to misunderstand it. I should know better.

So this week, between all the gumpf required on site, I will be doing a simulation of three months worth of work and putting a number to that.

Lets see if it will work.

Chatted to my sis today. She is well and happy - which is always a good thing. She also advised me that the greek university where her daughter is studying.

They are on strike - due to some EU rule that people are not looking on favourably. Ergo - No exams were written. Goodness, Shades of SA in the 80's

My dog died. My daughter wants to get new ones. She proposed a Huskey - definate no - and an Alsatian. Possibly, but make sure it does not bite people in the house and likes kids.

Right - Let me do my filing - *glare at all the papers on my desk* - and try and leave here before the sun sets.

Have a great week people!!!

News and rip offs

I have not had the chance to run through the local newspapers due to being closeted at Bogoso. However, as mentioned in my last blog entry, I managed to buy a newspaper and spend 45 minutes in Tarkwa reading it. This if course was due to roadworks, as opposed to stopping off at the local coffee shop and enjoying an expresso or three.

One thing that did catch my eye was a “tender” published in the Graphic by our beleaguered Ghana Electricity Corporation.

It appears our friends have a tract of land in Accra. Some bright accountant type fellow decided to make really good use of this tract of land. Accordingly they invited bidders to do the following:

- Provide the finance, design, management and construction of an office block, shops and multistory car park for 450 cars.

- Once they have provided the finance, operate the buildings on a Build, Operate, Train and Transfer program – not exceeding 20 years.

- Finally for financing the deal, building the building, operating the building the lucky bidder will also be required to pay rent to the Ghana Electricity corporation.

- Oh yes… and then after the 20 years, give the building to GEC free of charge.


This AMAZING business opportunity caught my eye – as well as millions of others who are stampeding to take advantage of this.

WTF was the lad thinking. I am willing to invest $5 million, pay rent for something I have invested $5 million in, try and recoup it from people over the next 20 years and then walk away from my asset. I do not think so.

Sunday - Bloody Sunday!!

Sunday:

The day when even the good Lord rested and looked on his creation and smiled. The good Lord was evidently not in Ghana when he created.

Took the trip to Accra on Friday to drop the Nessers off for her journey back to “a balmy 5 degrees” (as she put it in her SMS), and with heavy heart took the trip back to Bogoso on Saturday – weighed down in the car by 11 welding machines.

There is a reason why Accra is quiet on a Sunday and no-one is on the roads. That’s due to the fact that every man and his wife – together with 4.8 children get out of Accra to the bush on a Saturday. It took me 2 hours to travel the 38km to the market out of Accra. A further 4 hours to Tarkwa and resigned to my fate, sitting in the car reading the newspaper while the Tarkwa road was closed off for 45 minutes due to Taysec filling in a mighty big hole near the mine entrance.

I got back to Bogoso knackered and reasonably short tempered.

I was greeted by emails of varying degrees of “work required” importance.

A cease and desist emailing snotty emails to an old man, numerous “please balance these accounts as it is year end” and the odd “please do this urgently” type.

They were filed for Sunday!

Saturday night was our second fines meeting. I unfortunately was not in the mood to party at all. I had around 5 Captains and was in bed by around 11:30. I slept until 4. Fark I hate waking up early at the best of times – on a Sunday it is just that much worse.

I was fined for a few things: Saying I do nothing of consequence to earn a fine was one of them, breaking the chair at the fines meeting was another – one must learn not to ride cheap plastic chairs – Being the calmest person on site - if you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs, you do not understand the problem: - and my favorite fine – taking one month to finally roundly curse the client for their abysmal planning.

I have – due to the growing number of additional jobs handed to us – taken over what is known as “site instructions”. These are little pieces of paper, asking us to do something that was not in our original contract. Mainly small fabrication stuff, which I can handle quite competently.

One item which has made my shit list was a sealing ring. This item is around 6 meters in diameter and is made of plate and widgets to prevent dust and dirt from sliding past the crusher. (Don’t’ you just love it when I talk technical)? It appears that everyone quite happily forgot that our crusher needs one.

Ergo – when people realised that they need one – we must fabricate one. URGENTLY!!!

Design and drawing given to us – I even understand the drawing! And I give it to my lads to fabricate. Urgent I say!

Now the design calls for 200mm pipe. No worries say the client – we will procure the pipe. 8 days later – I get asked why I have not procured the pipe. After quietly explaining that I was told not to, I get told to.

The next day is a public holiday in Ghana – the only way I know it is a public holiday is when the workers get paid triple time – so I can only procure the day after.

The day after I get told – no cancel the order we are changing the design.

I smile and 30 minutes later am explaining a new design to my lads doing the fabrication and asking them to cut off holding sections now no longer required.

By now we 10 days from original URGENT and the job is now CRITICAL!!

So we rope in my workshop in Tarkwa to work late and roll flat bar, have the fabrication guys work night shift to weld the flat bar, and everything should be done by Saturday!

When I walk in on Saturday afternoon, one of the first things I ask of is the progress of the job. Carl hands me a drawing with what can only be looked on as an apprehensive smile on his face.

Well - Color my arse purple and call me a gummy bear!!! They changed the fucking design again!! This time the design bears no farking relation to what we originally made and at that moment……. I swore…….. I swore with feeling ….. I swore loudly….. I used language that would have made my mother – bless her – disown me.

And I went home!

Today – Sunday – it was time to work out all the accounting stuff that has fallen through the cracks. However… I decided to pop into the client’s office to discuss our new design.

I was friendly – I was nice – I was sarcastic.

I pointed out that what they were asking was impossible. I was not allowed to employ 5 year old welders, and I needed 5 year old welders to weld a flat bar, rolled on edge, with gussets, through a 80mm gap.

I walked out, when I was told not to worry they were working on another “simpler” design.

I did my accounting today

I balanced!!!!

I went home and napped!

I got bored

I posted this blog

And the comic pages turn!

I have not updated my Blog in bloody ages!!

Could it be because Nessers is in the country?

Could it be because the job is one where everything must be done yesterday and all the stuff you need is not here?

Could it be because the amount of paperwork generated by this place will make Sappi share prices take a 10% leap?

Or could it be because it is year end, and the year end gremlins have visited us.

Or could it be all of the above?

My answer – all of the above.


I can honestly say it has been a long time since I was so rushed to clear stuff off my desk on a daily basis. Even with Nessers in the country I am still getting home closer to 7 than to 5. Not good for someone who had found a comfort zone.

But hey! It is daily bread stuff.

I still maintain, if I ever built a paper mill the way the client wants this plant to be built, I would have been sweeping streets on Durban beach front.

That aside.

I have achieved my objective of shagging in each of the houses we have in Ghana, and chuckled at Nessers and her take of Ghana.

- It is hot
- Is ECOWAS another name for Ghanians
- Her plugs do not work in Ghana
- The plug she purchased in SA that said “works in Ghana” does not
- Her hair is frizzy
- She spent 2 hours at the office sorting out my filing.
- She spent a load more time at the pool and in front of the TV
- She still wake up at 5am
- She got vrot on Saturday at a braai with some (Afrikaans) clients and she managed to fluk the “Dutchmen” from Van der Bijl
- She was unhappy that the bed was spinning and ended up spending the night on the couch. According to her the first thought when she woke up was “please God let me have clothes on”
- She had a hangover of note – chirped she needed breakfast and unhappily had one bite of egg, one bite of bacon and half a slice of toast. I was forced to eat the rest of the food. *sigh*

Generally however I have been miles too busy to take full advantage of Nessers visit to Ghana, which is a bit of a pity. Who would have known when we planned this trip that I would be down the road tied to a contract from hell.

Such is life

It is also year end. With that goes the fun stuff of making sure everything ties up. Once again made a tad more difficult by my new lad who replaced me not quite getting up to speed. To say that I am clocking the hours is no lie.

But on the positive side we exceeded our stretch target for the year, which leaves me a very very happy lad indeed. My lads will be duly rewarded for a hard year.

On an even more positive note, apparently we are due to be awarded our BIG contract in Obuasi. Effectively a contract exceeding ZAR100 million over the next three years. This move vindicated a decision to re-open the Obuasi workshop in February 2005 and endure almost a year of losses there.

I am smiling!

I hope the guys in JHB are smiling as well.

Other than that

Nessers returns to the big cold on Friday, so I will be off to Accra with a return trip to Bogoso on Saturday. A Nut party is planned for Saturday night, so needless to say Sunday will be a quiet one.

Have fun people – will try and update a tad more often in the future!