My First Trip: Day Sixteen

Disclaimer: This is an edited version of my diary from December 2000. Some information contained may be incorrect, and opinions I expressed then are not the opinions of Aaron Rowe in 2006. I have posted it purely for the Novelty value.

Tuesday 5th December 2000

Bad news for V...

There's a bit of a lull in the air this morning. Since K1... and J2... left there's been peace and quiet (except for the generator and AC) and it's been great. Also a difficult decision had been made. V... our cook was to be fired because of differences he was having with all the other staff. Now this seemed a bit stupid to me, Firing probably one of the best cooks in Nigeria, but D... pointed out his lack of control where alcohol and women were involved and that he causes so much trouble for the rest of the staff living in the compound. He also mentioned the suspicions he has that he's been stealing various bits and pieces from the house, like table lamps, video recorders and food. So I can see the point.

The thing about firing a cook is that you don't want to eat a meal from him after you fire him, because you might regret it. Things have to be done quickly and this is what I had difficulty with. He was to have no warning, tomorrow morning after our breakfast he'd be invited into E...'s office and given the bad news. A driver would be sent to help him move his stuff out of the house and take him wherever he wanted to go. Since he lives in the grounds of the house, he'd need to find somewhere to live which is why he'd be fired early in the morning so he had a chance to find a bed for the night.

It still feels like, the rich white man wins again, so I'm a bit upset. I think we all are. He obviously has problems outside work that are affecting him. That's probably why he's always drunk at lunchtime, If those problems were known to us something might have been done a long time ago to solve it.

D... has already found a replacement called M3... which is a bit harder to pronounce than V.... M3... would come in tomorrow lunchtime to prepare lunch and be the resident cook from then on.

Moving L...

So that's what was hanging over all of our heads today. E... had asked me to help L..., his assistant move to the desk near the safe. Which is by D...'s desk where I usually sit. Thinking about it for a while I asked if it would be easier just to move the safe. And nobody could think of a reason why not so we gave it a go. First I tried but it would just not move at all. It was firmly stuck in place. We called the Driver, C... to come and have a go. C... is a BIG man that would scare off the odd armed robber by just stepping out of the car, but he couldn't shift it either. While C... was struggling away N... came in with Coffee and told us that when the safe was installed they dug a deep hole and filled it with concrete and there was part of the safe going deep down into that concrete. So effectively it was bolted to the floor. How stupid are we?

I don't know if I've mentioned the power system here but if you can imagine every type of plug, every type of socket and every type of voltage being mixed together randomly, you might get an idea. Some sockets are labelled 110V some 220V and some not at all. I took great care when moving L...'s PC making sure I had the right adaptors for the plugs, and the right voltage eventually I got it working after only giving one 110V surge protector the biggest and last surge of it's short life. Bang. Smoke. Bad Smell.

So we took our last lunch with V... and came back to the office. I was sent out with J4... Our CAD office man, to Hyperia's Tech support office to see if we could get a new account set up for D2... the company Solicitor, and to see about a few other things. It costs N20,000 a year for just email access. that's £140. I think we could set up a shared internet dialup account. for 85,000 and all use hotmail or something. Might suggest that when we have the network installed.
Yawn

I did pretty much nothing for the rest of the day and went back for our last dinner with V.... E... opened a bottle of wine. We had chicken and potatoes. it was yummy.

There was talk of going out but everyone was too tired again. so off to bed.