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

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Classic Read

I wander around the blog'osphere when I am trying to chill and came across this beauty.
I laughed cos it was so so true.

I hope you laughed too

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Weekends of fun in the sun - with some work thrown in to make it legit!

January sees everyone coming back to start a new year. January also heralds the much feted Think Tank. Those of you, who have read my blog for a while now, know the think tank gets all my managers and supervisors together to see what happened over the last quarter and target the next quarter. Couple this with the new people I have, it also cements their positions within the team.

It is also a good excuse to have a piss up together!

Mia Mie was the venue for this years Tank and I maintain the place is wonderful. Wilderness, wonderful bay, nice beach, good accommodation and above all electricity and hot running water.

There was also a boat and part of the team went fishing on Saturday afternoon. Part of the team went fishing on Sunday Morning. I was the Sunday morning lad. We chugged around the bays, trawling lines with weird plastic lures behind us. We avoided the local fishermen in their boats trolling nets. We also avoided the fish.

Except for a nice Mackerel that committed suicide on the bright piece of plastic.

“I cannot take it any more! There is that stupid wannabe Fish pulled behind the noisy thing.

Good Bye cruel sea!!”


The fish was donated to Okkie, who out of all of us cooks the best fish.

Generally a successful weekend. Miles too much to drink and smoke and eating good food.

The height of colonialism. Bringing your chef to the Think Tank weekend so he can cook good food.

He cooked good food!

Ozzie sweated the whole way through the Saturday Morning session. (hangovers are a bitch!) Marco got afflicted by the dreaded tummy bug on the Sunday and our intrepid fisherman Harry caught nothing.

We did manage to spear a cat fish in the bay. I call it cat fish – it is kinda like a squid. If I recall correctly when I was young, my Uncle used to hang the bugger behind the farm kitchen door for a while and eventually get Raju the Cook to make a bloody nice curry.

I am not too sure if I wanted a cat fish hanging behind my door, and I must admit there had to be some preparation work to stop the fish from smelling like an old woman on roids after a few days of Natal heat. I missed out on that part.

The speared fish was donated to the local inhabitants.


Got back to a day of meetings. Finally collapsed into bed at 8:30 last night.

Oh the wicked life I lead!!

Hope you are all smiling!

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The Daily Read

FROM THE PRESS:

Front page news: Ghana Daily Graphic

Another ATM Scandal:

Apparently 3 students from the local university managed to work out that by opening an account with a certain local bank which offers the ability to recharge your cell from an ATM machine, they had the key to riches!

GHC 700 million worth of riches – that equates to $80,000.

It appears there was a fatal flaw in the ATM program. In order to make use of this service you did not have to have any money in your account. QUE? WTF Did I not know about that!!!

The best part however was it took the bank THREE MONTHS to work out that the clearing account they run for this service was …. Erm not clearing. It got better when they realised the address the students gave them did not exist. They do however have the lads pictures from their student registration – which could be a blow for them.

You would think that Banks would have closed this loophole by now considering ATM’s have been around for a while. I also have a sneaky suspicion one bank employee responsible for the loophole is looking for a job.

Sex with a dead person?

A lad in the Eastern Cape – yup South Africa made the Ghana News – was arrested for violating a corpse. Apparently the lad did not have access to a fresh one from the local morgue, but had to revert to digging one up!! I trust it was reasonably fresh *shudder*

His excuse must be “But your Honour, I thought she was British”


INTEREST RATES in Ghana have reduced by 1.5% to a whopping 19.5%. Growth? What’s that?

MAN STABS WIFE – Gets six years hard labour. I think he will be sorry when he gets out – The missus survived.

MTN ARRIVES IN GHANA. With the recent spate of acquisitions MTN have done in Africa, they inherited Spacefon – or Areeba as they are now known – Methinks we are going to have loads of Yellow on the billboards in Ghana. Me also thinks the days of phoning South Africa for GHC 2200 per minute (USD0.23c) will be a thing of the past soon. Maybe – just maybe – the service will improve.

GHANA HAS AN ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION. They do? Fark!!

(The story related to how they demolished unauthorized structures on their land) The apparently have some 2000 acres of which 300 had been occupied by squatters. Site of a new power station to alleviate the daily blackouts?

COKE FOR ALL. Apparently four of the local police assisted in the nicking of 2,280 kg of cocaine from the local cop shop in Accra. I am hoping it was 2 POINT 280 kg and not 2 tons of the stuff. The accused that had the coke originally goes by the alias of “the Limping Man”



My News?

Nothing really – Work Work Work – Minimal Play – although I did get a game of golf in on Sunday and played ok.

Same old!!

Monday, January 08, 2007

Press Cuttings

Items in the local newspapers sometimes jump up at you and you can only shake your head and agree with everyone that we live in a strange world.

However, the local press picks up some gems from the foreign media sometimes:

WOMAN CHARGED WITH MALICIOUS CASTRATION:

In a place called Lillington in the USA a woman was arrested for “attacking a man in his genitals” (sic) at a Xmas Party. Apparently the poor lad needed 50 stitches to repair the damage and police said a weapon was NOT used. One can only assume the lass grabbed the guys nads and swung off them. She was released on a $50,000 bond. The take a lads bag seriously in Lillington.

HELPFUL DRUNK DRIVER OFFERS AID TO POLICE.

In Berlin, a rather pissed lederhosen clad man pulled over at a police stop check to assist in what he thought was some poor bugger broken down on the side of the road. The cops did not appreciate the gesture and promptly nicked the Good Samaritan for DUI. Does not pay to be helpful when you are ratted obviously.

BUFFALO GORES WEDDING GUESTS.

Cambodia is the place that when you have an open air wedding, make sure you invite the neighbors. Especially if the neighbor happens to be a Buffalo. Apparently Billy the Buff got a tad cheesed off that he was not invited and gate crashed the party. Injuring 4 guests in his display of anger, poor old Billy was shot dead some 1.2 kilometers from the party. The party continued after an hour long delay and it does not say if Billy the Buff was included in the festivities as the main course.

23 YEAR OLD ARREST WARRANTS?

It appears that in a town called Smithport there is no statute of limitations. Some poor bastard was brought before the local judge for failing to answer a DUI case 23 years previously. The judge commented to the prosecutors who insisted on bringing the case to court, “You better have a witness with a very good memory”

There is of course the usual “Thirsty man sells daughters beagle to buy beer” ; “Man trapped in drain while hunting for keys” and the good news story of “Baby born on train gets free rail travel for life”

The local media has nothing much in it that will perk ones interest and cause you to shake your head and say “We live in a strange world”

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Ghana decides "No More Millionaires"

Ghana has decided to issue a new currency.

They have taken GHC 10,000 and in July 2007 will turn it into GII1.00

Now watch what happens to inflation.

Akwaaba

Ahhhh – Ghana

You know you back in Ghana when you driving on the wrong side of the road, and you still have cars that understand.

I cannot believe how bad SAA have got over the last few months. Bar the fact I was on the flight from hell which goes via Abidjan as opposed direct to Accra – additional 2 hours without a ciggy you understand – but the flight leaves at 14h55 as opposed to 17h10.

Arrive at JHB International – formally Jan Smuts – now O J Tambo International at 12h45 and attempt to check in. Why do the boards bother with stating “SAA CHECK IN – Counters 1 – 33” when only 5 counters of the 33 are actually manned? I can never quite understand that concept.

Obviously going up to Ghana we have a good few items going up to site. Five of us gives 150kg. We have 182kg. Convince the nice person at weigh in that I have a silver card, which means we are only 22kg over weight and really that’s only just over 4kg a person so it is not that much. Finally we just put one lad through twice and the poor confused lass believes we are within our weight limit.

Twiddle thumbs in queue for 40 mins before you realise that no-one is actually checking any body in. I kid you not. There were some 80 people in the queue and not one person checking any one in. After some muttering and getting a tad frustrated when Lufthansa open up (using SAA Check in – welcome to Star Alliance) and quite happily skip the 80 people in the line and start a new queue, I went through to find someone to complain to.

SAA are nice – the “team leader” wears a red jacket. At least you know how to find someone to kak on. Happily ask the team leader why no-one is been checked in and am met with the “It is Shift Change” response.

Now hit me over the head with a used SAA ticket. One would assume that shift change does not entail Shift A going home and 30 minutes later, Shift B arriving. Apparently with SAA this is exactly what happened. So for some 30 mins you can stand in the queue and stare at the departure board update.

When I happily pointed out that for the last 30 mins no-one had been checked in, his very glib response was “Why are you complaining – you have only been in the queue for 30 minutes”. Given that response, I knew I was on a hiding to nothing.

Finally we get people drifting in to start the check in process. As luck would have it the poor lad that checked us in was employed from the street that afternoon and thrust in front of the computer. It took 40 minutes to check five of us in. I lie not. I marked the time. He was eventually assisted by a pregnant lass to get us seats as well as our 11 pieces of luggage tagged.

Oh yes – they were not fooled by the additional person and I was forced to go back and pay for the excess baggage. Once again an exercise in frustration. There are 5 counters with people at them. (this by the way was heading towards 13h30) but as SAA would have it, only 2 people were actually receiving clients. One nice old lady wandered up to a lady sitting at an open counter and was sent back as “There is a shift change happening”.

When I was finally served I chirped the lad “Are you guys in wage negotiations again?” His blank “I should be working at the post office” stare meant that I was required to elaborate. “Everyone it so slow today – shift change is a bugger”. His glib response was “Well then you should not check in when there is a shift change”

Erm. Excuse me fuckhead! I did not ask for the flight to leave at 3pm. Your fucking company did.

Of course there was a wonderful sign up “NEW CHECK IN SYSTEM – Effective November 2006”. Aha – why then did they just not tell us all

“Dear Passenger,

Because the old check in system was starting to work well, we have been forced to design a new check in system that will once again frustrate you. Please bear with us while we learn to stuff up our shift change, find people who have never seen a computer before to check you in and generally assist you to brush up on your swearing by having surly supervision that has no idea what customer service is all about.

We thank you for choosing SAA, but as we are the only airline flying to your destination due to us having the ability to block the competition, you cannot use another airline even if you wanted to.

Have a nice day”

That said – I started and finished my book on the flight, was served 3 meals of chicken and got to Accra airport craving a ciggy. Fortunately I had other people with me so when my bag arrived on the turntable, I picked it up and asked Martin to please get the other bags as I want a ciggy now!

The Hamatan is in full swing, and it was a barmy 26 degrees with visibility less that 200 meters. You can almost taste the sand from the desert as it flies over the coast forming hurricanes in the Indian Ocean so the Americans can have some natural disaster to put on CNN.

Uneventful drive to site – Satellite system not working (Surprise Surprise) and a 2 hour walk around site to catch up on what has happened while I was away.

Akwaaba!!

Monday, January 01, 2007

2007

The new year is upon us and I trust you all had a blast welcoming 2007.

I had a quiet relaxed night, no hangover, pre new year nookie (post new year nookie today) and generally am a smiley lad!

Back to the Jungle on Wednesday for a short stint before taking some leave in Feb.

Keep on smiling hoppy people