I like a man who is honest and clean. A man who can stare his enemy in the face and then put an ounce of lead in it...

Antonio is three month’s old. Just a guess given he was found dumped in a drain. Sister Elsa from Peru had to put something on his record card. After all, no-one in Angola is allowed to un-exist.

Even his name is an invention, one of hundreds the good sister doles out every year to ensure her records are acceptable to the authorities and at least a little dignity accorded her charges. Without a name, despite the plaintive wails that are an infant’s primeval plea for love and sustenance, they do not exist and are not, therefore, entitled to a place on the ration roll. A handwritten entry in a cheap exercise book could mean the difference between life, or as in the case of little Antonio, likely death.

Outside, I can hear the traffic on the new dual carriageway, fruit of high oil revenue and blessed peace, linking the affluent southern suburbs to the commercial centre of the city and the beachside bars and restaurants of the Ilha beyond. The coiffured elite of Angolan society hurrying through the squalor of Cazenga in air-conditioned and multi-cylinder powered isolation.

I have a four-month old son, Alexander. He was born in the Sagrada Esperanca, the best clinic in town and separated by a palm fringed boulevard from Miami Beach, a restaurant with its own exclusive section of the beach where girls in miniscule bikinis are kept safe by a private security force paid to keep the original residents away and prevent the awful whiff of poverty spoiling the appetites of the Beau Monde. Where sundowners and a snack two nights ago worked out at over a hundred dollars per person. The hospital bill for the birth of Alexander and one night’s internment was $6,700.

Antonio, officially three month’s old, is smaller than Alexander was at birth. At four month’s old, Alexander is massive in comparison and is already making his first, clumsy and occasionally heart stopping attempts to crawl. But then he has two doting parents, various cousins, aunts and uncles and a nine-year old brother to provide the sustenance and attention his enquiring and developing mind and body crave.

Antonio, on the other hand, lies on his back, not even the energy to hold out a hand desperate for human contact. His eyes are impossibly big and devoid of any emotion. Underneath a rib cage etched with a sculptor’s exageration and through translucent skin, I can see his heart beating. It seems strong, healthy even, but Sister Elsa tells me they are all that way before they die, the body concentrating all its depleted resources on a last ditch effort to survive.

The infant should be in hospital, on a drip with trained and equipped nurses and a consultant paediatrician in attendance, but I have been here too long to question why Antonio is dying in his little cot in an under-funded orphanage cruelly situated right next to the state owned oil company’s well supported crèche.

No-one can blame the children of the affluent for enjoying the life all children have the right to, nor parents for providing the best for them, but it was heartbreaking to realise that while the kids next door were chauffeured to and from a beautifully restored complex and fed a square meal every day, hundreds of others on the other side of a high security fence were trying to survive on watered down, irregular milk supplies. The luck of the draw? God’s will?

The only gift from God Antonio will have is an exhausted Nun to pray by his side as he slips back into the arms of his creator.

Sister Elsa has been looking after all the waifs and strays a city the size of Luanda can throw at her, the lucky ones, for over five years. I asked her if she had ever taken a holiday.

She gave me the fleetest of glances, a flash of irritation, then returned to the litany of needs we had been discussing; more cots, the place needs painting, none of the kids have shoes, plastic flip flops will do; the slices of sponge they call mattresses, soiled by youngsters incontinent with trauma, all need replacing. Yes, I had arranged loads of mattresses and shoes but that was over a year ago. Sister Elsa was gentle about it, but left me in no doubt that such things do not last forever. She doesn’t need give and forget, she needs constant support. And truckloads of it.

That slight moment of eye contact had exposed me as crass, stupid, inconsiderate. With only twenty-three cots and over fifty infants to fill them at any one time and a couple of them dying every week; with another three hundred or so older orphans all desperately calling Pai! (Father) and clinging to the trousers of any visitor, begging for a hug, who could ever think of taking a holiday?

But where do all these children come from?

Sister Elsa was clinical. ‘Some are dumped, like Antonio. Some are traumatised by the war and their families cannot cope. Some are defective.’



Defective? I can imagine that little Carlita could be a handful. Incapable of accepting any form of human contact, she sits by herself oblivious of the saliva dribbling from her mouth and down her T-shirt, staring vacantly into some terrible vista only she can see. Tiny Paulo, he can’t be more than four, crouches with his little bottom in the air and his face buried in the dust, futile protection from demons that torment him still.

The worst was still to come.

‘And then there are the castaways.’

So matter of fact I almost missed it but Sister Elsa fixed me once again with her tired, but soul searing gaze. I had to ask.

Apparently, if a family endures a period of bad luck, or if the good luck they think is their due does not appear, they get in a Quimbandeiro, a sort of Witchsmeller Pursuivant, a person whose power is evidently absolute, the antics of whom as portrayed in Black Adder were hilarious, but here are deadly serious.

He may point out a decorative object, a cheap market bought trinket and suggest its removal would take with it the bad spirit. Just as casually, he may point an accusing finger at a bewildered child and condemn it as Satan’s spawn. Fully one fifth of these tiny residents have been ejected from their homes as ‘evil’ but have been lucky enough to find sanctuary in Sister Elsa’s care. God only knows what happens to those that don’t.

So here we have it. The world’s most vibrant economy. A population raucous with riotous indignation at the first suggestion they may not quite be as civilised as the new builds and platinum cards suggest and yet, behind the Hollywood film set thin veneer, evil incarnate stalks in human form, dragging apparently sane individuals from reason back to the darkest side of primitive belief, an utter moral bankruptcy that justifies dropping the issue of their own loins down a drain. Or as in the case of poor little Adam from Benin, cutting the boy up and dumping him in the Thames. The perpetrators of that most evil deed, and there were many, seriously believed that sliding Adam’s mutilated remains into the slime of centuries with a gutful of powdered bone, clay and gold dust would bring them good luck.

We hear about such affronts to humanity, read about them and are horrified. I have not only read about them, I have now seen the results. Not the ritualistic ‘Muti’ killings, thank God, but a lucky few who, probably through the divinely inspired intervention of some still sane relative or sympathetic witness, the woodsman in The Sleeping Beauty, were spirited away to relative safety, their saviours gambling their own traditional spirits for the soul of an infant.

This is just one tiny orphanage, three or four hundred lost souls in a city of millions. I am told that children do disappear, two in my neighbourhood this year alone and another two found strangled in a swimming pool. In a swimming pool for God’s sake and no-one was ever brought to task for that. The poor parents, poor in both the emotional and financial sense, merely received a contribution from the pool owner towards the pathetic cost of an artisan funeral.

I’m not just horrified, I feel homicidal. And like these condemned children, bewildered and distraught. Why? What purpose is served?

What possible belief could still be so deep rooted in a common psyche as to provoke such awful crimes and how to excoriate it?

I would advocate rising on mass, dragging these Quimbandeiro’s into the street and setting fire to them.

While such a solution has considerable merit, it will never happen.

Relief from this insidious scourge lies in the hands of the young and educated. Despite what our elders may tell us, it is not for us to blindly carry the torch of unforgiving tradition. Tradition is important, it is what differentiates one society from another, the pomp of the Changing of the Guard, the ceremonial splendour of bedecked warriors proclaiming their chief but why must we obediently and, evidently, blindly preserve laws and customs we know to be at least inappropriate and at worst criminal, contrary to all reason?

Much as I respect my father, if he told me to despise a man because of the colour of his skin, I would beg to differ and would not be afraid to leave his house if that difference proved irreconcilable. If some respected elder suggested I abandon my son or worse, I would roast his eyeballs, but that is just me.

We are so terrified of ‘not belonging’, of being expelled from our family or community, that we are willing to be party to any manner of collective crime. It takes real guts to provoke change and sadly, very few people have what it takes. Until a few more sons return home, brave the inevitable censure and denounce what they know to be archaic and cruel, stand up to their elders, all these terrible atrocities will continue and those who lacked the moral fibre, the wit to call attention to the sham, are just as complicit, even if they are sitting comfortably among their respective diasporas.

We can best respect our elders by taking the very cream of their experience and traditions, blending it with our own sense of humanity and ditching what we know to be wrong. The world changes slowly but dinosaurs do die out, making way for young blood, those who will never forget their origins, will hold dear the best but show contempt for the rest. Stay the hands of the Quimbandeiros of the world and have the courage to look them in the eye and say, ‘No more, old man, go home and leave us in peace’, and let others see that our success did not depend on the death of a child.

Fail to do this, and with every mutilation and every abandoned child’s futile wail, we bear yet another scar of collective guilt.

"Don't worry, there's a hug and a present for everyone!"

Post Script: I started writing this six months ago but have only just found the time to finish it. Sister Elsa told me Antonio passed away a week after my visit. I should have done more than just stroke his wee little head.

Obviously, I have not properly recognised in this article those parents who, with genuine love for their children but a complete inability to care for them and blighted by a state of utter desperation, have consigned them to the care of an institution. The article, as well as its tone, was spawned by the awful realisation that such a large proportion of children are cruelly abandoned, or subjected to unbelievable torment for the most incomprehensible of reasons.

Gratifyingly, having slid the draft past Angolan colleagues of mine for their opinions, I have been informed that there are an increasing number of instances where these Quimbandeiros, overstepping the mark, have been dragged into the street and severely, even fatally, beaten. Given the excesses they have been able to get away with in the past, it is hard to define what recently drawn line in the sand they traversed but clearly, for the civilised amongst us, it was a step in the right direction.

My father’s claim to fame, not his fault, he came from an era bound by archaic prejudice, was his ability to hit a running Arab at three hundred paces. It would be so nice if my son would recall me as the man who could hit a fleeing Quimbandeiro at a similar distance. Read more!

Road to Cazenga, a brief update...

Three weeks! Doesn't sound like much in the scheme of things and bugger all in comparison to the rest of the world (I am reading Professor Hawkins' 'A Brief History of Time') but to me it is an awe inspiring achievement the keen significance of which is only slightly dulled because I have found it so ridiculously easy.

Dear old Dr Abel, the man who since I met him had been warning me of my imminent departure if I failed to cut down on the booze and cigarettes has been visiting me frequently (even my office provided no sanctuary) and when he heard I was back from Kenya and Dubai, was here the next day (today) to check on me. Having enjoyed a hefty lunch and one of my last bottles of decent wine, he is now sleeping it off in one of the guest bedrooms. Heal thyself, physician...

He and Kieren, who were evidently worried that such a sudden end to a constant and significant intake of alcohol would leave me dribbling and screaming in a foetal ball in some corner of the closet, respectively advised me to take Diazapam or a collection of vitamin and other drugs resembling an exploded Smarties bag but I am sure neither are disappointed to learn that I require no supplements of any kind.

Exactly why this should be, I have no idea and shall not question my good fortune either. I am happy and the family, as well as those who still care about me appear ecstatic. This is all the support I need. I shall not let them down.

This is, I admit, a very brief post but what more should I say? Count yourself lucky, dear reader, had I been a real case, you would have had to endure page after page of self recrimination and the ravings of a paranoid schizo...

Now, if you will excuse me, I must spray a whole can of Sheltox into the bedroom to kill all the little green men with horrible teeth and long, deformed claws that are waiting for me under the bed. Read more!

Road to Cazenga

My Name is Thomas and I’m an alcoholic.

It’s hard for me to say at what point in my life I became one, the deceptively slippery slope from social drinking to alcohol abuse being so insiduously gradual. If the ‘beginning’ was one or two drinks every other evening, maybe a blast on the town once a month, and ‘now’ is the first large scotch at ten in the morning and a dead bottle by midnight, when exactly did I cross the line?

I tried to remember the last time I had not drunk whisky in any 24 hour period. I couldn’t. Not with any accuracy. I had to go back decades to a period when I knew that drink was the last thing on my mind, a period when I always seemed to have something to do aside from work; fishing, ski-ing, cycling, driving down to the Black Forest with some mates just to buy an ice-cream. It must have been a long time ago because my first wife called me a ‘functional alcoholic’, and she left me sixteen years ago.

My second marriage lasted about six years by which time I was nothing other than a very hardened and to be honest, embittered drinker.

Still, the work kept coming in and I got paid, promoted and get my bonus every year. I met Marcia and we have been together ever since. In addition to the adorable Dominic from my second marriage, I now have Alexander, a truly delightful little boy. I have a nice house, a good job and lots of business prospects. With a loving family and no real worries, what demon had possessed me and was now driving me inexorably down the path to self destruction?

I have reached the stage where I can polish off an entire bottle of whisky in a day. I always have at least three bottles on hand scattered in places I might end up and minimum consumption averages two-thirds of a bottle a day. I buy whisky like other people buy beer, by the case. For every-one’s safety, I gave up driving ages ago and for years have employed a driver. Add that to the cost of two cases of scotch a month and it becomes an expensive habit, certainly a lot more than Dominic’s school fees.

And how did all this affect my family? I don’t know, you’d have to ask them because that’s the thing about serious alcoholics, they wander about in that self delusional fuzzy mental state, confident that everything is OK. In the meantime life, both theirs and those of their growing families and ever wearier friends, slips them by. Normal people, looking in from the outside, would say, ‘God, what a selfish bastard’.

I am not saying I have only just recognised my problem. I have been very worried for years. I desperately wanted to give up alcohol, to kick that monster in the teeth, but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t just lose the battle, I was routed. I couldn’t even manage a day. The worst thing was, having abstained for a body and soul torturing six or seven hours, my feeble will failed every time and I would collapse onto the bottle as a shipwrecked sailor would a flagon of water and over compensate, sucking a bottle dry not gradually over the course of a day, but in the remaining hours left to me before sliding into temporary oblivion. If I was lucky. If not, I would spend the night thrashing in the mire of self-revulsion, haunted by the demons come to mock me.

But, I would be up in the morning and ready for work so I couldn’t be that bad then, could I? I might have the slowly fading evidence of carpet pile pressed into my face and the itchy bumps where mosquitoes fed all night free of the risk of slapping hands but, all in all, I was always in pretty good shape and could do my job. A functional alcoholic. That rare breed of Real Man who works and drinks hard and can take it. I have had a tough life at times; an exciting, sometimes very dangerous life so it is hardly surprising I do some things to excess. Men like me are scarce. In times of war, they come looking for blokes like us.

Thus fooled, and fortified with a quick slug, I would start yet another day. My life cycle had reduced to about the same span as my memory was reliable. A day. People loved borrowing money from me.

We are all intelligent enough to understand the effects of sustained alcohol abuse on an individual, apart from making them generally very unpleasant to sit next to. But try pointing these out to an alcoholic. Unless you hit him at that awful maudlin stage (and if you were still around by then you are either a masochist or a Jehovah’s witness) he is more likely to chew your head off than listen to reason. I know I have a beautiful family and I know they would rather have me around than bury me and I know that one day my employer’s patience will run out and I will get the sack and we will all starve ‘cos I’ll never get another job, my wife will leave me, again, and my kids will grow to despise me so why don’t you just fuck off and let me drink my whisky in peace instead of reminding me, you postulating pustule?

Gits. What do they know? I bet I am doing better than they are. I bet they have a huge mortgage on their house. I don’t. Bet their car is on HP. And besides, my job is crap anyway, I’d do much better concentrating on my other business interests. I’ll be a millionaire by the time I am 40…45….50?

Then there are those, even more crass, who become unwitting allies to the ever increasing hopelessness of the afflicted who, having no apparent relief in sight, gradually accept their fate and give up. These are the self styled ministers of the hospice. They can be found beneath every turd. My miserable end is unavoidable. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. I will beat my children and murder my wife. And the postman, because as my son grows older, to my alcohol sodden brain, he will start to look like him. There follows a gruelling monologue, a detailed list of damned souls and the suffering that preceded their passing, their futile attempts at self salvation, of once sane men strapped to hospital beds being intravenously fed vitamins and Thiamin, their central nervous sytems suppressed to stop them going mad with fright at the little green men clawing at them, the inevitable tragic outcome. They point out that with the amount I consume and the period over which I have done so, I stand no chance and all the aforementioned evils, especially the withdrawal symptoms will, for me, be the severest imaginable.

‘Is that so? So, no point me even trying then. Aah! That hit the spot! Sorry, you were saying?’

OK, I understand that at my post-mortem, the mortician would marvel at how God managed to stuff a liver the size of a bouncy castle in my gut but that’s only fat. I’ll start exercising in the morning. Maybe I’ll take Dominic for the walk he keeps asking me for. I will even try to be good and not take my hip flask with me. Just a short walk then. A breath of fresh air might be all I need to give me the energy to cuddle up to Marcia tonight. God knows I haven’t done that for ages.

We have been very busy at work lately and I have not been home for a while. Instead of a romantic meal for two with Marcia, I was bouncing over Luanda’s roads on my way back from the new site to the Cazenga site. For some reason, I was really sad I wasn’t going to see marcia that day. Somehow, that day seemed important and it being Dia das Namoradas had nothing to do with it.

The boss was in the car with me reeling off a list of things categorised as ‘urgent’, ‘fucking urgent’ and, ‘we’re dead if it doesn’t happen, urgent’. I wasn’t listening. It had just dawned on me that I had not had a drink that day. We had started early and it was now sometime in the afternoon. The thing that really struck me was that this realisation had been sudden, not the gradually increasing ache and anxiety I normally felt when my blood/alcohol ratio fell dangerously close to the legal limit. The fact was, I had not noticed. I had gone hours without a drink and I hadn’t noticed. Gosh.

The boss had stopped talking and was gently snoring as we weaved our way between the rusty Toyota Hiaces and clapped out Corollas that make up ninety per-cent of Luanda’s traffic. I knew I had whisky in my room and with every yard we covered, I was getting closer to my first drink of the day. I looked at my watch, eight waking hours without a drink. And then it hit me. I pulled the sun visor down and took a good look at my reflection, maybe I had finally gone mad. Instead, I saw myself wearing a stupid, lopsided grin. I knew exactly what I had to do. What a Valentine’s present for the family. I sat back in the seat and willed the driver on.

As soon as the car stopped, we piled out. ‘Boss, I need to see you in my room, thirty seconds, that’s all I ask’. On the way I saw Manuel, and then Rodrigues. ‘Hey! You two! Come with us, it’s important’.

Bewildered, and not a little bemused they shuffled uncomfortably in the small bed space a twenty foot container allows. ’So what do we do now?’ the boss says, ‘start dancing?.

I reached under my desk and hauled the bottle of whisky out. ‘Ah, we’re celebrating!’

I cracked the top off, stepped over to the sink, and started pouring. The bottle had one of those plastic things in the neck, the kind of bottles bar owners stock to prevent over serving a client, and it seemed to take forever. The golden liquid splashed this way and that and gurgled down the pughole. The air was pungent with the aroma of scotch. Rodrigues, the man who every day for the last two years had faithfully gone to the bottle store to get me my ‘medicine’ murmured a breathless, ‘Wow!’

I dropped the empty into the waste basket. It hit with a loud thud, something final about the bang. I said, ‘That’s it’.

I had been unable to remember a single day without whisky. Tomorrow will be the start of my sixth day free of the bloody stuff and I feel fine. I am doing what they all say cannot be done, go from a bottle a day to zero in one hit. I was due to go on leave this weekend and was looking forward to spending some time with the family. Instead I must go to Kenya and then on to Dubai. Before I go though, I will nip home. It won’t take long but there is something very important I must do there as well. In front of the family.

The road I travelled didn’t go to Damascus, it went to Cazenga. But on the Road to Cazenga, the light doesn’t blind you, it shreds the veils of self delusion. Read more!

Three Little Chefs

Read more!

An ace comment, sadly anonymous

Wherever we are in the world, whatever we are doing, we lucky few who have had the honour of wearing the uniform and standing alongside the best that a country has to offer, will always remember them. On those occasions when men and women such as we gather, we will raise a glass and say, with quiet pride, "they were our friends".

Bang on. Pity the author is so shy

. Read more!

Lest We Forget

The memorial plaque in Palace Barracks dedicated to those members of 321 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company who lost their lives during the troubles in Northern Ireland. I recall with fondness and sadness Warrant Officers Mick O'Neil and John Howard with whom I had the honour to serve.

We must also respect the memories of all Ammunition Technicians and Technical Officers, all Bomb Disposal Officers and Technicians of every nationality, their courageous support teams, the signallers, the drivers, the search teams, the escorts and all mine clearance experts worldwide who have been killed or wounded in the course of their duties, sacrificing their lives or health in order to save so many, and we should all be grateful that there are still men and women brave and dedicated enough to continue to volounteer for some of the most dangerous duties in the world so that others may live their lives a little safer. Read more!

To Tommy Atkins

I stumbled across this recently. I recited it at my father's funeral. He was called Thomas as well.

To T. A.
I have made for you a song,
And it may be right or wrong,
But only you can tell me if it's true;
I have tried for to explain
Both your pleasure and your pain,
And, Thomas, here's my best respects to you!

O there'll surely come a day
When they'll give you all your pay,
And treat you as a Christian ought to do;
So, until that day comes round,
Heaven keep you safe and sound,
And, Thomas, here's my best respects to you!
R. K.

This was written so long ago by the Soldier's Poet and it still holds true today for the shabby way servicemen and women are treated all over the world. Read more!

A new citizen of the World...

so where is he better off?


There are lots of things that could, and should, be explored here in Angola. The trouble is that editors tend not to be particularly interested in Angola as a rule so one can end up putting in a lot of work to no avail.

The typical angle on Angola is the rich living it up while the poor starve (the latest published in the Guardian/Observer a week ago on Sunday; mine were the only positive comments in it).

I am not an apologist for the ruling party, now returned with a massive majority after the recent peaceful elections. Rather, I am a realist and having been here for fifteen years and having seen the very worst of the civil war and the extraordinary changes made since, I accept that on balance, the government of Angola is doing a good job under very difficult circumstances and things are most definitely better. Look at it this way. While old grannies in UK freeze to death because they cannot afford to pay their energy bills to foreign owned companies enjoying ludicrous profits, the executives of which are paying themselves outrageous bonuses yet this is considered free market economics, the Angolan ministers rake a bit off the top but are actually improving the country yet are accused of corruption. By whose standards?

Rather than looking at it as corruption, we should consider that Angolan politicians have only been doing exactly the same as our Politicians, City Boys and CEOs have done; they have merely awarded themselves a very big salary. Unlike our lot, though, instead of presiding over an ever more dire economy or asset stripping a vulnerable company mercilessly consigning its workforce to the dole queue, this lot are managing the fastest growing economy in the world. A growth that flies in the face of the global downturn.

Now there is an angle to be explored. Rather than the clichéd exposure of corruption perpetrated by arbitrarily targeted individuals, how about a general comparison of the moral issues; why is one sort of rapacious behaviour considered acceptable business practice and another corruption, and of the two groups studied, which is actually doing the better job? Unlike Global Witness et al whose approach is inevitably one sided, a study such as this should make all sides sit up and think. It’s about time the Emperor’s new clothes were exposed for what they are. The bonuses enjoyed in the first world seem rarely performance related, more a right. Yet dipping your hand into the Angolan till is corruption if you are Angolan, perfectly OK if you are French. What is the difference between fleecing shareholders or a population? Are they not all people who have placed their trust in the hands of a few?

Traditionally, oil rich countries tend to ignore other market sectors, such as fisheries and agriculture, in favour of the carbon fuelled Milk Cow with the paradoxical result of urban deprivation and rural poverty. Angola, however, has instigated agricultural loans; easier access to finance for those wishing to rehabilitate or develop farms. Same for the fishing industry. Now that the interior is safe, the government is encouraging investment in mineral exploitation beyond the diamond industry.

The coincidence of high oil prices and the onset of peace places Angola in a similar position to Nigeria in the 70’s. Nigeria wasted the opportunity with costly white elephant projects and the blatant corruption that painted the face of African economics for decades, and the grease stained hand of external influence was writ large on the walls of every African President’s palace. You are not telling me that Mobuto Sese Seko could have raped his country for so long without the support of the United States? This is a temptation which Angola is now resisting, concentrating instead on the rehabilitation and construction of sensible infrastructure and keeping corrupt practices within ‘acceptable’ limits. It has shunned the advice of the IMF, has always been wary of the US and is finally reigning in the French. You can do business in Angola but increasingly only under their terms. You may still be required to pay the odd ‘consultancy’ fee but at least they are leaving enough in the trough to fund improvements.

Leading up to the first elections in 1992, the governing party, MPLA, honestly thought it might lose the elections to UNITA. African politics are such that opposition parties have virtually no funds whatsoever with which to mount an effective opposition campaign. Knowing this, and under cover of a recently declared policy of denationalisation as part of a move from socialism to a free market economy, the government gave party loyalists control of most of the major companies in Angola so that, in the event of defeat, they had their own independent sources of funding. MPLA did scrape a victory but UNITA refused to accept the result. The return to war post 1992 resulted in an imperative to generate the funds necessary to prosecute the war since the end of the cold war also saw the termination of the proxy superpower war and ready supplies of war materiel.

Naturally, these two coincidences made a few people very rich and doing business here over the next decade necessitated some very questionable bedfellows along with the creative accounting that the United States eschews, (but its own lawyers and accountants are experts at circumventing) and which the French, with Gallic shrugs, accepted as part of the field of play.

The end of hostilities with the death of Savimbi in 2002 has allowed the government to gradually swing from the widely acknowledged and criticised opaque war economy to a steadily more transparent peace time economy the benefits of which are tangible. There are those who suggest the government’s investment over recent years were nothing more than a cynical attempt to buy the electorate. I would argue that there are many cheaper ways of buying the vote than building new hospitals, railways and thousands of kilometres of roads. These are long term investments benefiting any party who ends up in power. Faced with literally concrete evidence of the government’s determination to improve the country, journalists typically now resort to ridiculing these efforts by suggesting in print, to quote an example from a recent article, that there is little use in a new hospital if it does not have the qualified staff to run it. Had the correspondent bothered to visit one of these new hospitals, she would have found it staffed by expatriates from Brazil, Portugal, Cuba and even to my surprise, Canada.

My first son was born in 1999 and I made sure I sent his mother to Cape Town to have the baby. My second son was born only a week ago in the Clinica Sagrada Esperanca in Luanda. If, with all my experience and above all means, I am content to allow my second son to be born in an Angolan hospital, then surely that speaks volumes for the improvements that have been made? The big joke here is that I never considered a state hospital for the birth and was blinkered when I chose the country’s most prestigious private hospital and paid well for the privilege. I recently visited the new state hospitals in Luanda, Lubango and Huambo, all of which are free, and was stunned by the standards. I mean, marble bloody floors and all the latest kit including whole body scanners. For free? In UK we have the brightest minds running the government and civil service yet, according to Sky News this morning, the NHS will be bankrupt in four years.

So which country has the brightest prospects?

The UK, the citizens of which are suffering an ever increasing tax burden? A country where food and energy costs are leaping at a rate higher than Angola’s official and far more transparently calculated rate of inflation, and where house prices are plummeting even faster? A country in which government has effectively put a cap on the price of life and where every day new terms to describe the financial woes that beset its habitants are coined? Now a British citizen may not merely be afflicted with ‘negative equity’, his problem will likely be compounded by ‘energy poverty’. I suppose this sounds better than the frank admission that the value of your house does not cover the mortgage and you cannot pay your gas bill let alone fill your car with petrol. Or even tax the bloody thing. A country that has just posted a zero economic growth rate. Unless your name is Alistair Darling, I suspect that no UK politician would be so honest as to admit such gross incompetence to his electorate while at the same time voting himself and his colleagues a pay rise.

So what about Angola? A country the growth rate of which has just been revised upwards from an already unparalleled 23%. A country that has, in the last five years, built more roads, hospitals, railway lines, power stations and schools and connected more people to reliable power and clean water than the UK, the world’s fourth richest economy, has done in the last twenty years? Sure, Angola has its problems and is by no means perfect but don’t forget, the bombs stopped dropping on England sixty-three years ago as opposed to six years ago in Angola.

No wonder Scotland wants to cede from the Union.

The same recent article I referred to earlier suggested that Angolans should vote with their feet, or rather with the lack of their use. A clumsy suggestion; the best way Angolan citizens could protest their mal-afflictions being not to vote at all. What point hard fought for democracy then?

Well the Angolans did vote. And they turned out in numbers that would make a European or US politician bleed with envy. There was none of the violence or intimidation that beset the Kenyan or Zimbabwean polls. None of the blatant rhetoric that accompanies first world politics. Instead, every citizen wasn’t so much encouraged to vote as obliged to. No voter’s registration card meant you could not register a land purchase. You could not register your child for school. If you were not registered, life became more complicated. The government forced democracy on its populace and they responded with alacrity. Every one of the multitude of political parties campaigning, as far as I could tell by hours of mostly boring, sometimes hilarious, party political broadcasts, enjoyed equal exposure on state television and the population were encouraged to ‘vote with their hearts’ and warned that their choice was constitutionally secret.

The opposition parties painted their neighbourhood strongholds in their various colours and put up billboards promising change and a better future. The government quietly erected signs stating simply: so many thousands of kilometres of roads built, so many millions of square metres of land demined, so many new hospital beds and made sure that the new power stations produced and, of course, the face of the benign dictator, the architect of all this progress, stared at his electorate from hoardings, flags and T-shirts and the voters responded.

At first, turn out was slow. People were scared that there would be a repeat of 1992. Then there was confusion. Ballot papers were not delivered on time to some of the thousands of improvised polling stations in schools, hospitals or simple roadside tents. There was no violence so people decided to vote but time was running out. The government ordered the polling stations to stay open late. Then they announced that the polling stations would reopen the following day. The opposition cried foul and demanded a rerun of the Luanda vote. The population said that if Samakuva, the UNITA leader, prevented them from performing their ‘civic duty’, they would kill him. No arguing with that.

MPLA won by a landslide 86%.

The population did vote with their feet and afterwards proudly displayed index fingers blackened by indelible ink. They had exercised their democratic right, in many cases for the very first time, and had voted unanimously for the party that has wrought so much change in the last few years. Yes, you will still hear cynical comments about the ‘Futungo Clique’, the ruling class running Angola like a personal corporation but these Executive Officers seem to be doing a better job of it than most. In five years, they have endowed the country with peace, economic prosperity and above all, hope. There is a long way to go, still many people that need assistance but the general consensus is, those in charge are earning their bonuses and deserve another few years at the helm.

I hope that I and ten million or so other people are right. This is the world into which I bring Alexander and continue to look after Dominic and Marcia. Read more!

I guess I will never learn...

No one would be surprised to learn that children, the essential ingredients of a happy, stable existence are expensive.

I was two weeks late being born. The trees on Unter-den-Linden in Berlin back in 1959 were gently scattering their blossoms across wide pavements in the shade of buildings still scarred by the attention of the allies while my mother laboured with an increasingly fidgety baby who remained stubbornly reluctant to enter the exciting new world awaiting him.

No doubt exasperated by my tardiness, the consultant at the Military Hospital in Spandau advised my parents that a caesarean section and forced expulsion from my residence of the last nine months and disputed few weeks was the only solution. The time of my birth, therefore, was set for 10am the next day.

My father shrugged and pushed off to the Sergeant’s Mess leaving my mother to her rising panic. This was 1959 after all, and the idea of being sliced open and having the child she had nurtured at great physical expense dragged out of her womb by its heels was traumatic to say the least. I can imagine Aniela Gelinsky, my Great Grandmother, who spoke no English and German with a thick Polish accent, spitting on the shadows of the gynaecologists and pointing out that in her day girls gave birth in a barn without complaint and still had to make sure the men were fed at the end of the day. A turn in the fields would do the trick. Nature should take its course, not be hurried by the sacrilegious hands of mere mortals keen to empty a hospital bed space.

With a few litres of Berliner Weisse inside him and well used to the black art of military humour, my father was not about to fall for yet another prank and probably not so politely told the caller attempting to inform the father-to-be that his wife had suddenly gone into hysterical labour to fuck off. He knew his son would be born at 10 am the next morning so he had time for a few more jars and a decent kip before the wondrous event.

I am proud to say that my father was present at my birth, albeit under Military Police escort and bearing the scars of a verbal exchange that had evidently quickly turned physical. He held me briefly in his arms and then did his 28 days. He probably slept better than my mum and mopping jailroom floors and making his own bed was good training for the months to come.

Ever since then, I have always been late. I am famous for it. Years later, following my father’s footsteps, I had the full weight of the Manual of Military law launched at me yet was late for my own hearing. Fools, they should have jailed me as they did my father. At least I would have been forced to turn up on time and saved myself the ire of the Brigadier, a stinging fine and the hangover only self pitying overindulgence the night before in the company of some very sympathetic US and Canadian officers can induce. They, our over-the-pond and unforgivably maligned cousins, were even kind enough to stuff me into my dress uniform and help me start the car after pushing me into it. I am sure suiting me up with my Sam Browne on the wrong way round was a joke rather than because, as their uniforms resemble pressed boiler suits with everything held on with Velcro, they were unfamiliar with the addenda we adorn ourselves daily in the British Army.

Still, the Adjutant was a decent bloke so, with a pitying glance, he sorted me out and gave me a freshmint before pushing me in the direction of my fate. You carry your sword in and success is measured by whether on your way out it is still on your hip or jammed in your chest. I had forgotten mine so I had the Brigadier’s writing implement jammed in my eye. Fortunately, he was considered as dangerously incompetent as I was so he only had wax crayons to hand.

As I said, the Adjutant was a decent bloke.

I have rambled on a bit. I started by pointing out the obvious, kids are expensive, and then I banged on about a hereditary tendency to be late and get into trouble but the two are inextricably linked in the Gowans family.

Everyone recognises that it does cost money to look after a child: food, clothes, school fees and a thousand discarded toys, but no man can be mentally prepared for the costs before birth.

And I am not talking about anything as cheap and reasonable as weekly private medical attention in a city so expensive even Michael Winner would never consider writing a restaurant review here. He couldn’t afford it even if he could get an entry visa.

The house has only recently been built. A few months ago, I accepted that the constant attention of various tradesmen of the building kind, to sort this and that out and just tidy this bit up had sullied the place somewhat so agreed to having it all redecorated again.

Now I am told that the bedroom furniture ‘simply will not do’. Apparently the bed is too small and where will the baby sleep?

In a cot, preferably in any bedroom other than mine I thought surveying a bed big enough for a testosterone laden Prince to land his helicopter, shag the entire neighbourhood and get in a decent bit of rough shooting to boot without having to put a foot on the bedroom floor. It is so big I am amazed that after leopard crawling across a slightly larger version of Salisbury plain dragging a weapon the effectiveness of which has decreased with age and distance and the amount of post prandial whisky I have consumed, I still had the energy to get Marcia pregnant in the first place.

Or maybe it was the gardener. After all, I am away a lot. I’ll find out pretty soon, though.

If it was the driver, I will be really angry. Any fool can drive but it takes a man with real skill to turn desert into Eden. I would sooner look after the gardener’s genes than those of a wannabe Luis Hamilton who has remoulded all the panels of my truck against various gate posts and the bodies of those innocent road users arrogant enough to get in his way.

All the curtains need to be replaced. And the poles. Because the new curtains will have different lengths. That means the old holes will need to be filled which will leave scars that must be painted over. So we might as well do the whole house again. Even the armchair that has served me faithfully all these years is to be consigned to the annex. My armchair!

At least it won’t be lonely. It will be joined by the sofas, my ridiculously small side tables (perfectly acceptable for the demands placed on them: an ashtray and a whisky glass) and, incomprehensibly, my Persian rugs (although the latter might be a ploy for a new vacuum cleaner).

Marcia is determined to ensure Alexander enters a pristine new world. It is costing me a fortune and all I can pray for is that the little sod breaks a family tradition and arrives on time. Only painful labour will stop Marcia’s spending spree.

If he doesn’t, he better be a bloody good gardener. Read more!

A rehash, but also an update...

Not many expatriates can claim to have lived in the same shanty-towns that the impoverished endure. I did, occasionally enjoying town water and electricity, but never at the same time. I had the misfortune to go bust in Angola and faced with a dole queue in UK, decided I would rather tough it out here. I lived in what Angolans refer to as a ‘Cubico’, the colloquial name for the breeze block, wriggly tin covered cubicles that one can rent cheaply in the less trendy and invariably muddier parts of town.

Angola has its problems. Anyone who visits the place will immediately be struck by evidence of squalor and hardship. Go to any African country and more than a few others, and the same is evident. What encourages me about Angola is that things are definitely improving.

The Economist predicts growth of over 21 per cent GDP this year, the highest of any country in the world. The changes wrought in the first years of peace are truly breathtaking. Cynics say this is merely the government trying to win imminent elections to continue their decades long reign but name me a government around the world that has not curried the favour of its electorate with a few well thrown crumbs? Here, they are tossing whole bread rolls and that can only be a good thing for a long suffering population.

In his excellent book, The State of Africa, Martin Meredith argues convincingly that major impediments to development in Africa are weak or non-existent land title laws. In developed countries, we may suffer outrageous taxation but at least we can demonstrate legal ownership of what we have. Or at least the banks can. In Africa it was impossible to register the benefits accrued through years of hard labour.

This means the poor will always be poor. A budding entrepreneur with a spark might create a nascent business but without access to finance, his enterprise will remain just that, a good idea generating enough to survive but not enough surplus capital to turn it into a thriving concern.

That, in Angola at least, is about to change.

It was always possible to gain some sort of tentative grasp on property. Title may have been elusive, all property then owned by the State, but you could buy the ‘Chaves’, the ‘Keys’. So, in spite of socialism, property continued to change hands. If you had enough spare cash, you could persuade the original occupants to find somewhere else to live allowing you to accommodate a growing family.

The trouble was, you could not actually own it. Imagine; billions of dollars of potential wealth rendered worthless.

It was rather like possessing a stolen work of art. Sure, you could enjoy it and nominally it was worth a lot but in reality, as an exchangeable commodity, it was toilet paper. Certainly no bank would accept it as collateral.

Granting legal title allows the entrepreneurial spirit access to finance, the leg up they need to turn their idea and hard work into sustainable reality. It allows the many banks that have set up here in Angola keen to do business to lend, confident that their investments are covered. Empower the emergent middle classes and they will be the driving force of the economy. No longer will the value of land be measured solely in terms of the Cassava or Maize it produces or the cattle that graze on it. It will have a tangible value legally recognised by government and financial institutions. It is the break they have all been waiting for without realising it.

At last, a so-called authoritarian and recently socialist government is taking the lead by granting the people their right: personal security and above all, security of tenure. I hope they stop short of high income tax, capital gains tax and death duty but, at the moment, they are on the right track.

A few days ago I was ordered to present the documentation for my house and land at the local government offices. To my surprise, this was not an attempt to fleece me. I was informed that in accordance with new legislation, all local authorities had to survey their areas and register all property so that legal title can finally be confirmed.

The new property law came into effect in Angola on the 15th of June. The local authorities have until September to register all claims. I discussed this with my neighbours, some of whom have land but until now could not afford to build so live in tin shacks. We are all very excited. It means that those who need to can borrow against their land and build. Some want houses. Others restaurants and shops. A depressed neighbourhood will suddenly become affluent and just think of all that employment.

On paper, we are worth a lot more than a week ago. Imagine how much more wealth will be generated with access to capital. Maybe the Economist should revise its forecast because there are a lot of us that cannot sleep at night. Not through worry, but through unaccustomed anticipation. Read more!

Testing Tolerance

Pick one to discriminate against...

Two weeks ago, my wife’s thirty year old brother died.

One minute he was bouncing around enjoying life and then 48 hours after feeling a bit poorly he passed through coma and onto death leaving behind a young wife and a two year old daughter.

Naturally, I was away on business and Marcia had to deal with everything herself.

I gave her the support I could, a few sympathetic phone calls and paid for the funeral. Conscience salved I concentrated on work, only marginally interested in the as yet undisclosed cause of such a sudden departure. People here drop dead or get killed all the time. This one was a bit closer to home but I hardly knew the guy and only vaguely recollect an affable individual who had once engaged me in a conversation the details of which I have forgotten.

I have always considered myself free of prejudice. I might have held a few extreme views as a teenager but that was ignorance. Age has a way of tempering attitudes, of eroding the sharp edges of intolerance and besides, is hate really worth the effort?

Racists are insecure. I am areligious, if not irreligious at times and to me, even taking a couple of hours off a week to attend church is an extreme notion, never mind explosive underwear. I am aware of Aids but look at it the same way an airline passenger does the risks of flying. We know we can crash and burn but the chances of it, compared to dying of Malaria in this part of the world for example, are remote. I suppose I thought I was free of prejudice but then again, my convictions had never really been tested.

I was really shocked, therefore, when Marcia phoned me a couple of days ago and told me her brother had been HIV Positive.

Blimey. Aids is something you get if you screw around, were homosexual or a needle swapping drug addict. Normal people didn’t catch it. And especially not your wife’s brother. He had a good job and his wife, widow now, is a bank official. They were normal people building a life for themselves and doing quite well.

Why should the fact his death can now be attributed to Aids, as opposed to some other lethal ailment, make it feel so much closer to home than when I first received the news of his passing?

Before I had time to work out exactly how I felt, the second bombshell dropped.

Marcia took her sister-in-law and two year old niece to a clinic and had them tested. The child tested negative. The young mother was positive.

This was tragic news and even I could appreciate the enormity of it. One minute, a normal life filled with hope for the future, now sudden loss and a death sentence on top. How can you look a child in the eye knowing that having lost her father, and inconsolable to boot, she will inevitably lose her mother as well?

Marcia went on. Now the mother was known to be HIV positive, a stigma had attached to her. Her own family, while sympathetic, was not exactly keen to welcome her back. As far as her husband’s family was concerned, the widow could look after herself. Even though the child is proven HIV negative, no-one is cuddling her anymore. Stigma here is evidently hereditary.

Suddenly I could see where this was going. The child is Marcia’s niece. Marcia could not stand idly by and see her consigned to life’s rubbish tip, the flotsam of human misery washed up on the shores of prejudice. I support two orphanages here so could easily contemplate the child’s desperate future in all its cold, heartless clarity.

I told her, ‘Look Marcia, I understand. One more mouth to feed won’t make any difference, if you want us to take the kid on, I’ll go with that’

‘Two mouths’ says Marcia.

Despite what the less informed may think, and I included myself in this group before the last couple of days of frantic research, Aids is not a death sentence. It is in a way but it isn’t the same as a last cigarette in some forlorn courtyard followed by the firing squad’s bullets thumping into a blind-folded body. Laura is only HIV positive and, since her daughter is negative, one can only assume that infection was recent. She could live for years if not decades. Except that unlike the relatively merciful rapid dispatch by a hail of lead, Laura will not only have to deal with her own fears and understandably volatile emotions, she will have to cope with her expulsion from mainstream society. Imagine looking at your darling baby wondering if you will ever see her grow up? Imagine realising that through no fault of her own, she will never enjoy invitations to fellow classmate's birthday parties? What will happen to her when you are gone? People can be really evil sometimes.

I rang my mother for some advice and she asked, ‘would you drink from the same glass?’ Good question I thought, would I? The thought of living with someone I knew to be HIV positive was disturbing, if not terrifying and really called into question my self professed tolerance, compassion and lack of prejudice.

My Mother advised me not to get involved. She said I had a responsibility to my nine year old son, to Marcia and the soon to be born Alexander. I interpreted this as a Mother’s natural instinct to protect her offspring from any form of danger so will naturally ignore her advice.

Laura and little Cila will come and live with us and I do not care what anyone else thinks. We will not only use the same glass, but the same plates, cups, cutlery and linen. We will sit on the same chairs, relax on the same sofas and swim in the same swimming pool. We will watch the same programmes on the TV and will laugh at the same jokes and if either of them needs a hug, I will give them one.

Laura, sadly, may have a more acute sense of her mortality but in my house, we will all enjoy whatever time we have left.

As a family. Read more!

Things are getting better...

I accept that compared with many Angolans who survive from day to day on incomprehensibly small incomes, I enjoy a high standard of living. There are not many expatriates, however, that can claim to have lived in the same shanty towns and Bairros that the impoverished endure. I did for two years, occasionally enjoying town water and electricity, but never simultaneously.

Angola has its problems. Anyone who visits the place will immediately be struck by the squalor and hardship that is the lot of the masses.

Go to any African country, and more than a few other countries, Asian, European or Latin American and the same is evident.

What encourages me about Angola, however, is that things are definitely improving. And having politely declined further assistance from the World Bank and the IMF, the Angolans are doing it by themselves. The Economist predicts growth of over 21 per cent GDP this year, the highest of any country in the world.

Angola endured decades of interference in its internal affairs and suffered years of destructive civil war as a result.

In his excellent book, The State of Africa, Martin Meredith argues convincingly that one of the major impediments to development in Africa is weak or non-existent land title laws.

In developed countries, we may suffer outrageous taxation but at least we can demonstrate legal ownership of what we have. In Africa, for so long, it has been impossible to register the benefits accrued through years of hard labour.

That, in Angola at least, is about to change.

There was a system to register title to property. One inherited from the Portuguese, therefore bureaucratic and exposed to corruption. It was suspended immediately after independence in 1975 as the country toyed with socialism and nationalised everything but, one way or another, it was always possible to gain some sort of tentative grasp on property. You may not have been able to buy title to property, all of it then owned by the State, but you could buy the ‘Chaves’, the ‘Keys’. So, in spite of socialism, property continued to change hands. If you had enough spare cash, you could persuade the original occupants to find somewhere else to live and allow you to accommodate a growing family. The trouble was, you could not actually own it.

Imagine; millions and millions of dollars of potential wealth rendered useless.

It was rather like possessing a stolen work of art. Sure, you got to enjoy it and nominally it was worth a bomb but in reality, as an exchangeable commodity, it was worthless. Certainly no bank would accept it as collateral.

Granting legal title allows the entrepreneurial spirit access to finance, the little leg up they need to be able to look after themselves and have a degree of control over their own destiny. A chance for a better life.

It allows the many banks that have set up here in Angola and are keen to do business to lend, confident that their investments are covered. Empower the emergent middle classes and they will become the driving force of the economy.

And who are these emergent middle classes? Why, the very people who have found a vacant piece of countryside and have toiled to make something of it. No longer will its worth be measured in terms of the value of the cassava or maize it produces or the cattle that graze on it, it will have a tangible value legally recognised by government and financial institutions. It is the break they have all been waiting for without realising it.

For too long countries blessed or blighted (depending on your point of view), with incomparable mineral wealth have ignored the fundamentals, the God given sustainable resources that can be exploited with the sweat of man in favour of quick and invariably filthy lucre.

At last, a so called authoritarian and recently socialist government is taking the lead by granting the people what is theirs: personal security and above all, security of tenure.

The new property law comes into effect in Angola on the 15th of June.

Maybe the Economist should revise its growth forecast as there are thousands of bright minds and hard working individuals ready to go. Read more!

Wash day in Lubango

Every day as I drive to the site I pass these women busy doing their washing in a well by the side of the road.

Called M'Huilas, they are traditional to Huila Province, Angola.

I am told that the number of rings around the ankle denote the number of cattle each individual owns. Sadly, friendly as they are, I cannot talk to them for they do not speak Portuguese and I do not speak their tribal language.

The best part, however, was that when I offered to take their picture, rather than rush for bras and T-shirts, they all stuffed a rag on their heads. Only then would they allow me to take the photo. Read more!

The heaviest element known to science

Shamelessly knicked from the UK Independence Party's website http://www.ukip.org/ukip/index.php so all credit to them and the UKIP member who sent it in.

In early October 2007, a major research institution announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Eurotium."

Eurotium (Eu) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called "morons" which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called "peons".

Since Eu has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Eu causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second.

Eu has a normal half-life of four years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Eurotium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming "isodopes". This characteristic of moron promotion leads most scientists to believe that Eu is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass".

When catalysed with money, Eu becomes "Administratium" (Am) – an element that radiates just as much energy as Eu, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Now vote UKIP and help do something about it... Read more!

A (very) short holiday

Living in Angola, I am used to the now thankfully decreasing threat of assault but after over a decade here, I suppose the odds were against me and last week I received a good hiding. Not, as one might imagine, from drugged up local juveniles or hardened criminals but from a completely unexpected source, a British co-worker.

Medical attention here may be a little crude by comparison with UK but at least I did not have to wait hours in an emergency room and the medical staff treated me with the utmost compassion. A few stitches later and X-Ray evidence of compressed vertebrae and a fractured eye socket I was advised to take it easy; lie down and avoid any strenuous activity which included travelling in vehicles on Luanda’s bumpy roads. Instead of thousands of pounds worth of consultant’s time and innumerable tests, the diagnosis was quick and as honest as it was simple. I had received a kicking, was in a bad way but I would live. Nature would take its course and in the meantime, here was a packet of Aspirins. I got into my car and drove gingerly back to the site.

It was my ex-wife’s turn to have Dominic over the weekend and, much as I love Marcia, my long-time girlfriend, the thought of spending a whole weekend alone with her fussing over me was almost as bad as sitting stiff necked in the site recreation area. Clearly I had to do something to avoid feeling sorry for myself.

Fishing, my favourite pastime, was clearly out of the question. My head would have dislocated after bouncing over the first wave. A right eye firmly swollen shut precluded sighting down the barrel of a hunting rifle, never mind the potential effects of recoil so that was out too. So I decided to go sightseeing.

I have been here over a decade and it dawned on me that I have never gone anywhere in this country without a reason. The idea of just jumping in the car and travelling somewhere for no other motive than seeing what was at the other end was alien to me. I did not even know what to take. My camera, obviously. Cash and Identity papers seemed like a good idea. Shorts to swim in. If I got wet, then I’d need a towel. I was bound to get thirsty so a bottle of Grants and a few chilled tins. Honestly, I was pathetic. By the time I had finished loading the car, all that was missing were my golf clubs and regimental sword (I had overlooked that last item hanging on the wall in the lounge).

Marcia, having struggled out into the yard on her own with a cool box sensibly loaded with fruit juice and sandwiches while I was doing a creditable impression of a Pickford’s removal man made short shrift of my efforts. Finally wresting my laptop from my grasp she left the maids to clear up the tonne or so of abandoned kit and ordered me to set off.

With no clear destination in mind, we just drove. South of Luanda, the road is in excellent condition and the scenery a salve to eyes used to decrepit buildings and piles of rubbish. Pretty soon, we were on our own and I began to remember why I fell in love with Africa. To our right, the Atlantic Ocean glittered, its painfully blue surface occasionally broken by the wake of a fishing boat. Overhead, eagles soared as they scoured the ground between ancient Boabab trees looking for elusive prey. It would be corny to say that time stood still, but with my arm hanging out of the open window and us pootling steadily southwards, it certainly slowed down.

We crossed the Kwanza River bridge, no sign of the entrenched machine gun positions I remembered, instead a neat little home-made stand piled high with fruit and two little girls perched on top of a sack of something bulky, probably pineapples, completely oblivious of their reason for being there. In the old days, the sight of a 4x4 braking suddenly and reversing back would have sent them scurrying into the bush but not now. Alerted to the arrival of a potential customer they launched into not so much a sales routine but a well-rehearsed dance. Everything on offer was displayed beneath the most beguiling of smiles and no, they did not have any change.

So I sat there, munching avocados the size of my swollen head, sitting on top of my sack of pineapples and watched the rest of the world rush by. We shared our sandwiches, emptied the cool box and in return, two little girls told me all about the really important things in life in-between stabbing the stitches in my head with grubby fingers and falling about in floppy heaps of hysterical laughter every time I winced.

I can understand it was not exactly Marcia’s idea of a day out and we do have a lot of rotting fruit in the kitchen but for me, it was brilliant. Read more!

Celita, Sao

Read more!

Lucapa Landmine. Beach Ruins, Pool Fun

Read more!

Linda and Kuito

Read more!

Kika and Celita

Read more!

Identity theft is a bastard and will ruin your day

I trust my Angolan bank more than I do my UK one. It took years for me to switch allegiance. All the time I was in Angola, I maintained my account back home. I had first opened it 30 years ago. Fellow expatriates, advertisements in the international editions, even my own branch, told me that I should move to an offshore account. I could never see the point. I didn’t earn enough interest on the amounts deposited and subsequently withdrawn each month and besides, I really liked the way I could pick up the phone and speak to a human being, probably someone I went to school with, and get them to shift money for me, cancel a standing order or bail me out according to my need.

Then one day, I wasn’t speaking to Sarah, it was a voice whose name I didn’t catch but assuring me that for security reasons, my call was being taped. It was speaking from Liverpool, about a 100 miles from my bank and no, she couldn’t put me through to my branch or deal with my problem. Instead, she put me through to someone in the province of Sheffield, India, who suggested if I wanted a personal consultation, I should pop into my branch. Well I couldn’t. I was in Nigeria at the time.

All I wanted to do was warn my bank that I was in a high-risk area, as the security advice my employers had given me on arrival suggested. Now she understood. A note would be placed on my file. Not the buff coloured A4 folder bulging with all the written correspondence between the bank and I that the manager always referred to on the rare occasions I visited. No, this was an electronic file. I had to accept that this was progress. I was then asked if I would like to nominate extra passwords. Over a mobile phone? I may be a bit dense, but even I felt uncomfortable with that one.

Two months later, I was back from up country and tried to log on to my account. I received a message telling me to contact my branch. This time I got a girl in Glasgow. She told me that she was putting me through to an ‘Account Counsellor’ and no, that person was not in my branch.

It was an interesting first five minutes, neither of us had a clue what the other was talking about. Eventually I accepted that I had to give him a password, any word that would then allow me to see my account on line. Why the hell he didn’t just plug in ‘chips’ or ‘I am an irritating moron’ I have no idea. I gave him my dog’s name.

Having been abroad for many years, several month’s movement on my account usually fits on half a page. Standing orders, salary and maybe the Amex if I had been anywhere civilised reccently Not the pages and pages I saw swimming before me now. At first I could not understand why I was a thousand odd pounds overdrawn. Then I realised I had the decimal point in the wrong place and suddenly appreciated how embarrassing it is to be incontinent.

It got worse. I needed some time to scan through this lot so I was given a number to call when I was ready. This time in Leicester, the closest to my branch so far. Not only had I been shopping in Sainsbury’s for the last two months, I had also moved from the midlands to London. I also seemed to have exchanged a lot of currency and had taken out an unsecured loan for £15,000. The balance on my account had evaporated, I had consumed my ten grand overdraft and I had a 15 grand loan against which I had made no payments. No wonder the bank was keen to talk to me. I called the number in Leicester.

It took a while, but finally they explained what had happened. Apparently, I had sent them a letter requesting a change of address. It seemed perfectly in order as I had enclosed a copy of my passport. A few weeks later, I was careless enough to lose my bank cards which, applying the highest standards of customer service, the bank were only too eager to send replacements to my new address, complete with PIN numbers. I understand that before granting a loan, an examination of the account profile is made. Considering that the evidence of the preceding months suggested I had suddenly popped up on a completely different continent and gone berserk, I can understand why the man in Leicester was never able to convince me how I had been granted such a large loan. He said it was because I had been a good customer.

Good customer or not, I wanted my money back. They were, I have to admit, very good about it. They allowed me to go through my statements and cancel everything I disagreed with. Then I asked them about the instant credit that was available to anyone with a valid bank card, the kind that they had issued to the other me in London. Ah. They could supply me the contact details for reputable credit reference agencies, perhaps I would like to avail myself of their services?

It will probably take me years to sort out. Fortunately, I live in Angola which makes it difficult for bailiffs to repossess the plasma TV I have never watched.

My salary is now paid into my Angolan account. I have my branch, a new one in the smart southern suburbs and all the staff know my name. They know what I do, they know when I am away in Uganda or Gabon on contract. They know my girlfriend. I can send my driver down with a letter to make a withdrawal and I am not surprised when they ring me to confirm. No wonder, then, that I trust my Angolan bankers more than my UK ones. Read more!

All expats are failures...

I live in a twenty-foot container in Angola. It may be air-conditioned, have hot and cold running water and electricity, but it is still a steel box for shifting cargo.

I was reasonably content but then I read Jeremy Clarkson’s article in which he suggested that all expatriates were failures. Nothing more than people who, unable to be any kind of fish at all in their own ponds, migrated like eels to distant pools setting themselves up with the proceeds of house sales and redundancy payments, grimly determined to demonstrate they had made the right decision. A gin and tonic fuelled self-delusional existence leading to bitterness, liver failure and skin cancer. I downed my whisky and started thinking.

Seventeen years ago I was in the Army. I enjoyed the social benefits of an honourable profession, not least the tolerance of a bank manager who appreciated the disastrous consequences of not being able to pay a mess bill on time.

Whatever madness it was that brought me to Angola, it wasn’t a desire to emigrate. I came here to start a humanitarian mine clearance project. In UK, I had a three-bed semi in a provincial mining town. I regretted leaving the Army and was drinking myself to death. The final blow to self-esteem was when my wife ran off with a married gas bottle filler from Aga Gas. I lacked the courage to put a bullet through my head so pushing off to a war zone to clear explosives seemed the next best thing for a man hell bent on going out as quickly and spectacularly as possible. So far, Clarkson is spot on. I had fallen into the gutter and was running away.

The job satisfaction was intense. In six months, I lost 23 kilos. I worked for cigarettes and whisky and if the odd bun or two were thrown in, I was in paradise. I ate one meal a day, charcoal chicken bought from street vendors and lived in an establishment that normally rented rooms by the hour. If the girls had problems with a client, I bounced for them. In return, they looked after my washing and other occasional needs and never, not once, was anything stolen from my room.

Now I run a power station. I have an eight year old son who goes to a private, Angolan college. He is bi-lingual, rides a motorcycle and, because we hunt together, is responsible with a firearm. He recently fought some older boys who were bullying a girl and suffered stitches in his face as a result, but refused to rat on the culprits. He is not racist; for him all men are divided into nice types or ‘Ladroes’, bandits. He is fit, healthy and, as I am sure the older boys would testify if pressed, hard as nails. He has even caught a 90 Kg Tarpon.

Angola has everything going for it. Name a crop and there will be somewhere with suitable climatic conditions in which to grow it. The fishing, both commercial and sporting, the kind that interests me, is excellent. It has oil. Angola’s significance as the second largest African producer is witnessed by the size of the American Embassy, a huge, bomb proof monolithic structure that dominates the smart Miramar skyline overlooking the rest of down-town Luanda and its increasingly busy port. It is a major diamond producer. Angolan diamonds are some of the finest in the world and along with oil, fuelled the long running civil war that only ended with the death of the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi in 2002.

There are plenty of organisations that lament the lack of transparency, worry about the ‘missing millions’ and claim Angola is a dictatorship, not a democracy. I can only go by the evidence of my own eyes. The country has embarked on house building on an impressive scale, specialists have been brought in to assist with energy production and water distribution, Chinese contractors are rebuilding the railways. Roads are being improved. Hospitals are being modernised and new ones built. There is even a modern shopping centre. Luanda is a lot safer than Johannesburg and the idea of a kid on a BMX shooting another is unheard of. It is the fastest growing economy in Africa and opportunities abound, just try getting a confirmed hotel reservation. So who cares if a few people abuse their trust and make a lot of money out of it? If this is a dictatorship, then at least it’s a benign one. Let the elite have their cake and eat it, there are more crumbs dropping off President Dos Santos’ table than Mugabe’s.

Granted, I live in a 20-foot container in the poorer end of town. But only during the week. Fridays, I am driven home in my company car and, since my long time Angolan girlfriend is a good Catholic, enjoy a fish supper in my nice house in an agreeable country without having to worry if my son is a drug addict or a gang member. When I die which, according to my doctor is long overdue (he insists I settle my account after every consultation), I will leave my son more than the gold cufflinks my father left me. Here, the assets of the deceased pass to heirs, not the state. I will leave him houses and a farm he can rent out to pay for his further education and the benefit of a broad experience and tolerance I would imagine difficult to replicate in UK.

Life in Angola isn’t perfect. But sitting here with my family around me; safe, content and happy, no mortgage, the sun shining, the pool almost ‘de-greened’ and the house full of friendly, cosmopolitan Angolans and only 6% income tax, it’s bloody close. Petrol is 27p a litre and diesel half that. It isn’t a crime to drive a 4x4, there is a race track only five miles away on which I can lay a bit of rubber whenever the urge takes me, and a golf course even closer. There are nice beaches where the smaller the Bikini the more fashionable, and I get to spend a lot of quality time with my son.

Mr Clarkson’s article did get me thinking, but having done so, let him have the Cotswolds and leave me the dictatorship. I vote for Angola. Read more!

Call of the Wild...

I have not managed a run ashore to slot any of the local wildlife for ages and the ever increasing amount of time I am wasting surfing the net trying to decide which would be best, a 'sensible' 30-06 (since we can 'acquire' the ammo from the local military at next to nothing) or my current fixation, a flat shooting Remington Sendero in 300 Remington Ultra Mag (which will require the difficult importation of ferociously expensive factory ammo) is testament to this. I need to take a break and get out in the bush. And soon.

It is odd, the way we all can justify even the most bizarre desires. I haven't shot anything at much over a 100 yards for ages yet I am irresistably drawn to the Sendero. You could set up a 30 inch tube, 500 yards long and with that rifle, and that ammunition, put one round after another down it without one of them rattling the sides and they would still have over 2100 foot pounds of energy at the end. Overkill? Not half. Basicaly, if I could see it in the cross hairs, it's dead. And without me having to exercise whisky depleted brain cells with ballistics calculations too much. For anything deer sized and up, the kill zone is bigger than the anticipated spread, just point and shoot. Undoubtedly, with this new and increasingly, to me, essential addition to my armoury I would be comfortable taking longer shots. None of us relishes the prospect of tracking a winged animal across miles of countryside so limit our ranges accordingly. How many of us have scoped an animal and given it up in favour of a long route march in the hope that the beastie will keep going in the direction we suppose so that we can get a more certain shot only to find sod all at the end of a lung bursting slog?

Read the US sites and you will discover how many of these rifles are available, second hand, hardly used. Not because it fails to live up to Remington's claim to be the most accurate 'out of the box' rifle, but primariliy, it would appear, because of the recoil (so buy a .22 and stop complaining) and also, significanlty, because of the weight. Weight? Nine and a half pounds? I defy anyone that is reasonably fit to tell the difference between a cumbersome and awkward nine and half pounds and an eight and a half pounds after a few hours of bush bashing. And besides, that's what bearers are for.

I know that I am talking myself into it. I know that a 30-06 will do all that I could expect of it but, well, you know.

Anyway, since I have very kindly been linked to a true hunting site, 'Bashing Bambi', for those of you surfing over here from Bambibasher's musings I reproduce a section of an earlier post related to hunting in Angola: I promise to get out as soon as I can and post more.

We have found an excellent place in the interior to go hunting. It’s a valley accessible only via an overgrown track and is full of Guinea Fowl, Francolin, deer and Pacassa (a sort of African buffalo, meat is fantastic). The local village Soba, to whom one should always pay one’s respects, said that noone had been down there for years. So we dashed him some sacks of pulses and the odd cans of this and that and he agreed that if any other hunters turned up, he would tell them the track is mined. Funny how the accepted wisdom of moving about in a mine polluted environment, primary of which is avoiding exactly what we drove down, a track unused for years, is subsumed by the desire to hunt. I remember reaching a village the occupants of which, were forced to walk miles for water yet within 500 yards, there was a river. There was also a bridge so the banks and abutments had been sown with mines in a futile attempt to prevent its destruction (the remains of it were barely visible above the tea coloured flow).
‘How long has it been like this then,’ I asked of the assembled village elders who were by now well into the couple of bottles of Passport Scotch I had given them.
‘Years’
That could be a couple or twenty. Didn’t matter. These were once again virgin waters. Yes, I was going to demine a route down to the water anyway, but I was bloody well going to take my rod with me. Best day’s fishing I’ve had since spending a day hoiking Barracuda out of the waters around the mangrove swamps of the Cayes off Belize.

I wanted to import a decent rifle and shotgun but found out that there is a blanket ban on importing firearms to Angola so I’m pretty stuffed at the moment. My pal, Julian, has a 30-06 Moisin Nagant, which must have seen service either with or against Napoleon’s troops in Moscow. It was ‘legally’ acquired as part of the process to obtain a firearms licence from the police.
‘So, you want a firearms licence, do you? Well, you’ll obviously be needing a firearm and guess what?’ (You can see this coming, can’t you?) ‘We just happen to have one on special offer…’
You can see your file in front of him. He’s grinning, it’s a game to him. On top is a piece of paper, a form, already filled in with the irregular typeface of an antique manual typewriter, the ribbon on its last legs. There is your name at the top. Surname mixed up with Christian name and inevitably hopelessly incorrectly spelt. A single passport sized photograph is clipped to the edge, the whereabouts of the other three they insisted they needed unknown. Just one signature, that’s all that separates you from a licence to kill. His signature. By the same hand currently wielding a conglomerate of corrosion and decay, a barely convincing semblance of a lethal weapon. It has taken months to get to this stage.
‘Oh, alright, I’ll buy the bloody gun as well.’
The resignation with which the last is delivered is usually quickly followed by a strangled, ‘HOW MUCH?!!!’

Scrap metal is expensive in Angola. Or at least firearms certificates are.

Most of us are aware of what could go wrong when the chamber of an ancient and badly maintained weapon is unexpectedly subjected to the enormous pressure generated by exploding propellant contained in cartridge cases devoid of any residual ductility, burning rates significantly affected by the projectile’s reluctance to squeeze itself along a heavily corroded barrel and, judging by Julian’s expression as he screwed up the courage to fire it for the first time, such visions were unwelcome visitors to his consciousness as well. After all, there is not much that can be done to alter the design of the weapon so sighting along its barrel means that the short trajectory of a departing bolt will inevitably, painfully, perhaps fatally, be arrested by the skin, bone and gristle of the firer’s face. Either way, a failure of the sears, pins and detents designed to hold it all in place will leave an indelible impression on your mind. Now that I know it works, though, I’ll use that for the time being as I cannot bring myself to hunt with an AK. Accepted wisdom, by the way, suggests that a heavy bullet must be used for Pacassa and that a 30-06 or 7.62 short is a bit light but someone has obviously forgotten to tell the locals that. The sight of a wizened local guide, so old that his age could no longer be determined with anything approaching accuracy, as he calmly stood his ground and reloaded an ancient single barrelled Baikal and poured load after load into a no doubt surprised and increasingly outraged bull Pacassa is one to be cherished and should form an essential part of British Army Training videos. Read more!

Filius est pars patris

A bit of an update. I have recently been pretty lazy regarding the blog but in my defence, I have been quite busy.

I paid my dues to Marcia’s family and things are OK now. Her family accept that until I have my residency, I cannot divorce Dominic’s mother or I will risk the invocation of the expulsion order I received back in 1997 when they kicked all the undesirables out. I was only allowed to stay by virtue of being married to an Angolan. I had to sign a declaration, though, that I would never again be involved in ‘Security Services’ in Angola. Until I get my residency then, the family at least can see evidence of my fidelity and that I treat Marcia better than most men, especially around here, treat their wives.

I finished installing the wood floors and the kitchen in the new house during my recent leave and Marcia now lives there. Dominic and I spend most weekends with her. It really is pleasant inside but the garden still looks like a building site. The offers for the house are trickling in but we are holding out until the pool is finished and the patio around the pool laid. I made the mistake of importing a prefabricated pool from South Africa. What a bloody disaster. Everything went swimmingly (sorry) over the weekend as we completed the final, three week long installation and last night, at 1800hrs, the tanker came and we swam in the pool for the first time. This morning I woke to a scene of utter devastation, one of the walls had given way. I have had to leave Marcia to try and sort it out as I had to get back to work.

I really do like the house, the design, the layout and the finish but as with anything one attempts for the first time, building a house presents a steep learning curve and we made many mistakes, some of them expensive. I am, therefore, looking forward to selling it so that we can start building the next houses where, hopefully, we will fall victim to fewer errors. Most of the errors, by the way, fall under the category of ‘False Economy’. The pool is a classic example.

I am hoping that I will get enough for the house to simultaneously start the build on the big plot near the original house (where we want to put at least eight houses), and the house on the River Kwanza. If they could go up at the same time it would be marvellous. It would be nice to have a house that was not destined for sale so that we could make it a home. At least with the Barro de Kwanza house being on the river only a few hundred yards from the beach and sea, I do not need to worry about a bloody swimming pool!

Dominic has just gone off to school having spent an evidently enjoyable weekend racing his motorcycle across the countryside and then yesterday evening, jumping around in the pool (fun while it lasted). Finally, he is starting to see some of the results of all my hard work since the separation. I still feel very bitter that his mother’s selfishness, or hot knickers, whichever way you want to look at it, have robbed Dominic of his childhood. Only now is he slowly starting to enjoy the things that, had everything continued as they should have done, he could have enjoyed all his most formative years. I have given up working for my own benefit. With a very dodgy heart, failing eyesight and an inability to make the lifestyle changes that I should, all I want to ensure is that I leave my son with more than a watch and a pair of cufflinks, and see Marcia OK as well. After a very poor performance at school, I fought like hell in the Army to get on and finally succeeded in gaining a commission. With a foresight that belied his scatty appearance, my company commander at Sandhurst called me in and during a fairly convivial interview, reminded me of where my determination had brought me and then, with stunning perceptiveness asked me, ‘What are you going to do now?’ Being young and stupid, I failed to grasp his point but time, very little of it as it turned out, proved him correct. Without a long term goal to push for, I would become, as indeed I did, a ship without a rudder. Bored in other words, and never a truer word spoken when old sages remind the young that the Devil finds work for idle hands. My long term goals now are a decent house in Europe, a house here and a decent sport fisher tied up at the jetty next to my house on the Barro de Kwanza. I am 30% of the way there but I do find myself wondering what will happen to me if I do achieve them. Knowing my luck, I will be found dead in the cockpit of my beautiful sport fisher, the instruction book in one hand and the unused ignition keys in the other... Still, I will be grateful if God gives me that long having called me in for three hat on, no coffee interviews so far.

I was called to collect Dominic last Thursday. A quite unusual occurrence and all the more anxious as the telephone communication was opened with, ‘now, there is no need to worry...’ Naturally, in a town where one could be considered lucky to be able to engage third gear, I hit over a 120 clicks accompanied by a frankly quite terrified driver (who had been relegated to passenger as a result of his to me, criminally sedate progress during the early stage of the journey to the hospital, and was now weeing into the cushion of the passenger seat next to me and wondering when the airbag would explode into his face). I bounced up onto the pavement in front of the clinic, told the congregating security guards and Police to fuck off, burst into the clinic and there he was, my son Dominic, his beautiful visage now blighted by a row of stitches perilously close to his already blackening eye. Even I know that it is hard to sit an eight year old down and demand off him ‘what the Hell happened’ without intimidating him slightly so instead, I headed back to the site, collected two of Dominic’s favourite engineers, Bill and John, and together set course for the Chinese restaurant. Still he would not say.

Slowly, over the course of the weekend, the story came out. I have conducted murder investigations that were easier. Apparently, there is a new girl at school who travels on the same bus as Dominic. While evidently a hit for Dominic, she was the subject of some considerable bullying by certain other boys. Obviously something happened while they were all trapped in traffic (exact details still unclear) but whatever it was, it was sufficient to provoke a reaction from Dom who, it is alleged, launched a vicious and sustained attack on one of the boys, two years his senior. Apparently he managed to head butt the boy several times in the confined space of the third row of seats before the others dived in, whereupon Dominic inflicted some further fairly widespread damage before being struck by a boy wielding, believe it or not, a seat belt buckle which of course, opened his face. That was the bit that the bus driver, having managed to bring his vehicle to a safe stop, witnessed. The facts that Dominic , rather unsurprisingly, came off worst and that the only adult witness seems to have a bit of a soft spot for him and coloured his testimony accordingly, are the reasons why I am writing this and not being arraigned in front of an Angolan tribunal as a prelude to being sued by irate parents. So what conclusions can we draw from this? About the girl: Dominic is not a poufter. And if he turns out to be one, then at least he understands his duty to protect the weak. About the fight: Dominic is no chicken. About his subsequent reticence, his unwillingness to name names: he is an honourable man. It’s a bit hard to tell him off really, isn’t it? God I hope he joins the RAF. I would blub uncontrollably at his passing out parade. Is there a school I can send him to in UK that feeds all its output to Cranwell? He keeps asking me about when he can go to that school, the one that he can sleep at.

So, as you can see, life continues pretty much as normal. For the Gowans’ family that is, not a ‘normal’ family. My client is evidently quite happy with the service I provide and has asked that this site be doubled in size and another 30 MW site be constructed elsewhere in the city. Target date? Christmas day naturally, so it’s another case of ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Thomas’. Still, unless I seriously fuck up, I think it unlikely that I will find myself buried up to my neck in sand under a hot sun humming ‘Ground Control to Major Tom’. Who would have thought, though, when I marched out onto to Old College Square 23 years ago, that I would end up building and running power stations in Africa? Me? The only thing I know about electrickery is that sticking one’s fingers across the terminals is bound to hurt. Read more!

Facit experientia cautos

I note that there is a small, but ever more vociferous group of sadly influential individuals who are keen to see the age at which one can legally be in command of a vehicle rise from 17, as it currently stands in UK, to 21. This in response to statistics that suggest the majority of tragic accidents are caused by young and obviously inexperienced drivers.
My son was very upset with me recently because he wants to learn to drive a car and I seemed, as far as he was concerned, criminally disinterested in teaching him. Fortunately, it was easy for me do deal with simply by plonking him in the driver’s seat and watching dispassionately as he realised, with ever increasing frustration, that even with his advanced age of eight years, he was still not big enough to reach the pedals. Naturally, it was all my fault that his legs were too short. I helped him get over his disappointment by sitting him on my lap and operating the pedals, thereby allowing him to take the car for a spin in the field.

There are a series of milestones in every child’s life that are a part of growing up but cause great angst to a parent. Their first day at school; the first time they start to stray from the safety of home and garden; riding a bike on the public highway. About the worst, though, has to be when your whole reason for being passes his driving test. I have a few years left to ponder this before the inevitable fear manifests itself, but Dominic’s evident keenness to get behind the wheel (he can already ride a motorcycle, albeit a miniature version of the real thing) reminded me of how keen I was, and, worryingly, how I behaved after passing my own test.

I am as ashamed of requiring three attempts to pass my driving test as I suppose a student pilot would be at taking twenty or so hours to go solo rather than ten. My first attempt ended suddenly with my head bashing painfully off the steering wheel as the examiner, noticing the distraction the blonde in the red E-Type was causing his young, testosterone laden candidate, decided that his intervention was necessary to prevent me ploughing down the little old lady who had evidently grown old assuming that a pelican crossing with an illuminated little green man provided some sort of invulnerability. The second test ended, somewhat to my dismay considering that I was driving a 1957 Morris 1000 with a crash gearbox, in a failure due to incorrect use of the gearbox. Undaunted, I had another go but on the morning of the test was so nervous that I stammered through the number plate I had to read at a distance to prove that I could at least see enough to recognise a car at ten paces, and stalled the car so many times before I even got out of the test centre that I was ready to give up immediately and save everyone a lot of time and paperwork.

Despite what many people say about driving examiners (and lawyers), there are one or two decent ones about. Sadly, as they very rarely advertise their humanity with a neon sign welded to their foreheads, they are almost impossible to recognise until at some very unexpected moment, like the sun finally breaking through hellish storm clouds with the attendant promise of easier sailing ahead, their bureaucratic façade crumbles to reveal, well, basically a decent bloke. Maybe it was thoughts of an uphill entry onto the very busy A50 and, based on my performance thus far, his chances of survival that prompted the examiner to tell me to pull over. As I pulled in, kerbing the wheel in the process, I resigned myself to the ignominy of being driven back to the test centre by an unimpressed examiner. Instead of ordering me out of the driver’s seat so that we could swap places, however, he pulled out a packet of unfiltered Players and offered me one.

Glorious nicotine. We sat there together in the car without a word, he probably wondering how hard earned his paltry salary was and me just rejoicing in the waves of peace that flushed gently through me. OK, I obviously wasn’t going to pass but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it? The statuesque Sally Bent and the sylph like Melanie Whateverhernamewas would just have to wait for the romantic lay-by trysts that with youthful optimism I was sure were guaranteed, as soon as I had my own wheels.

Being a decent bloke as I had now decided he was, the examiner had to at least do me the courtesy of going through the motions, so we had a relaxed run around the town before ending up at the test centre again. I answered the obligatory questions on the highway code and then we both got out of the car, me looking for my instructor so that I could be driven home, he fumbling with his clipboard and flip charts. I went round the car to shake his hand, sportingly. I didn’t like the idea of failing again but I didn’t feel badly done by, certainly not as outraged as I was the last time for being censured for not stuffing my Dad’s gearbox up by changing into first while we were still rolling. He gave me a piece of paper and without looking at it, I thanked him. It was only when my instructor came over to take the car keys from me that I realised. She was too nice a person to rejoice at the prospect of providing me with yet more expensive lessons. I had passed. The examiner looked at me as he had no doubt thousands of other fledgling motorists and waving his clipboard in the general direction of my instructor gloomily pointed out that, ‘This young lady has taught you to pass a driving test, now you must learn how to drive. For God’s sake, son, take it easy until you really know what you are doing.’

‘When will that be, do you think?’ I replied.

He studied me sadly and reached into his anorak pocket for another Player’s. ‘Never’.

On the way home with my instructor driving, for even though I had the pass certificate in my pocket, the law sensibly precluded me from driving excitedly away from the test centre (dying with the ink still wet on a pass certificate causing newsworthy carnage on my way to Valhalla no doubt being bad for Department of Transport pass statistics), she pointed out that the examiner’s remarks were not so much directed at me as a general indictment of human attitudes to risk, especially young male humans for whom risk is, let’s face it, as vital to overall well being as food, beer and the ever present chance of a first bonk. So naturally I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking forward to my first solo. Then I would be in charge and could drive without the constant nannying; ‘The outside of the curve, please’; ‘Take the long way round, less chance of you skidding’; all delivered in the monotones of the long-suffering, undoubtedly very bored professional.

Long way round? I had never seen Moss, Clark or Hill take the long way round, not unless they wanted to see someone sneak up the inside and spray their goggles with dirt and second hand Castrol racing oil before disappearing into the distance. No. These guys left rubber on the inside kerb and kicked the dust off the outside of the exit. All that tarmac was there to be used and if I managed to get round a corner at 45 the last time, what the hell was wrong with trying it at 50 this time? I am sorry. As far as I was concerned, the A5 was the Mulsanne Straight and the only way an 1100cc Vauxhall Viva was to sneak unexpectedly by the P6 Rover in front was by slipstreaming two inches from its back bumper and then popping out on a downhill stretch and beating it to the next blind corner. There must have been hundreds of middle aged duffers who, gratefully accepting slippers and journals from the mouths of faithful mutts, sank back into their wingbacks wondering what it must be like to drive with the consummate skill demonstrated by the young man in the Viva who had just forced them and their shiny jalopies through the roadside hedge and into the Leicestershire countryside.

My fun lasted exactly seven days. Having taken three attempts I was one of the last of my contemporaries to acquire their first wheels, mine were on loan from my mother, so it was a big group that I joined at the Globe Inn near Snarestone. I didn’t get the bonk I was by now pretty desperate for, but I’d enjoyed the beer and I was about to get all the excitement I could still walk away from. Having rather spectacularly failed to persuade the luscious Sally to explore the local highways, byways and secluded lay-bys with me, I decided that it would be rather cool to roar off into the setting sun in a cloud of swirling dust and tortured rubber. I am sure that Colin McRae could have done it. Or Vattenen. Any Finn at all really. But I wasn’t McRae. Or my brother come to think of it; if our surname was Schumacher, then I would be Ralph and he would be Michael, and my brother’s name really is Michael. And he lives in Germany. As far as I know, I have no Viking blood in me whatsoever so there was no way that I was going to get mother’s car through the quarry bends at over 60. Especially not with a couple or so of pints of Pedigree Best Bitter sloshing around inside me more or less where the seatbelt should have been.

The back tyres let go and the arse end smacked a telegraph pole spinning me across the road and into barriers that impeded an involuntary flight into the famous quarry, but well patinating the other side of the car in the process.

Have any of you seen that famous 1970 film, Le Mans? The bit where Steve McQueen in a Porsche skids out of control and rattles between the Armco before finally coming to rest and then sitting there, head bleeding, reliving every agonizing second of his sudden departure from the race while what’s left of his car steams gently away? The ticking of hot metal cooling? The smell? Well, it was exactly like that.

I vomited up the steering wheel and carefully extracted the handbrake lever and seat cushion from the ever so tight grip of my sphincter. Astonishingly, the car still ran and, even better, there had been no witnesses so the council could sort out the unexpected damage to their barriers by themselves and at leisure in the morning. 

I was too young to believe, or even understand, this delayed reaction stuff. I had survived, further proof to a juvenile mind of amazing motoring skill so what we now know as ‘Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome’ came as a bit of a shock to me. I was fine, my only concern the compilation of a plausible excuse. It was an accident, by definition an unexpected event the blame for which attached to forces beyond one’s control. A couple of hours later, however, I suffered severe injury as a direct result of the same accident. Oddly enough, about five minutes after my father arrived home and saw what I had done to the car.

My Mother did her best to protect me but my father was as fit and fast as a terrier and had the advantage of having survived a twenty year career in the Army so knew all the dirty tricks I had never even dreamt of. I didn’t stand a chance. Mind you, it did encourage me to learn the delicate art of body repair; firstly my own, although I will concede that Matron at the local cottage hospital and Mother Nature had hands in that; but then I had to fix the car I had so recently trashed. Amazing what sins can be hidden with the judicial use of a ball pein hammer, about a ton of body filler and all the Holt’s paint spray cans my paper round money would run to.

So all in all, I was lucky. And looking back on it, now that I am a father, so was my Dad. I had an accident, a scary one, and walked away from it. I had cost my Dad a lot of money. Bashed up and sagging with the weight of amateurishly applied body filler, the car was worthless but, even though I had behaved like a lunatic, I hadn’t killed anyone, I hadn’t killed myself and, most importantly, I had learned a lesson I would never forget.

Only a few years later, I passed my General Flying Test. I went solo in less than ten hours but doing so did not qualify me yet. Oh no. I had to complete a further 26 hours training before I was allowed to go for the test itself which qualified me for the most basic licence of all, the Private Pilot’s Licence. I could not fly at night, I could not fly into clouds, basically, I had at all times to be able to see where I was going. I could not fly fare paying passengers, anything with more than one engine or anything heavier than a Mini. I could not fly any other type of aircraft than the ones I had learnt in. If I fancied a change, I would have to pay for more lessons to qualify on type. To usefully progress, I would need many more hours of training to qualify for my instrument rating, night rating, multi-engine rating, commercial licence, the list goes on and on just as the costs rise. Everyone accepts that flying an aircraft is a major responsibility and only the competent should be allowed to do so. And yet UK law allows, should I have been so inclined and the necessary cash been available, to buy a car capable of three times the speed of the aircraft I was licenced to fly immediately after passing what is, let’s face it, quite a simple driving test. A few hours of instruction, a quick exam and the sky, or at least the horizon, is the limit. An aircraft doing 120mph in a wide open sky has to be far less dangerous than a Bugatti Veyron doing 300 mph on a crowded motorway. Less dangerous even, than a Ford Mondeo sticking to the speed limit. And yet the training requirements are so vastly different. I am not sure what most people think but I would say that a cursory comparison between the percentage of light aircraft that plough in and the percentage of vehicles that crash suggests that the Civil Aviation Authority are doing something right, and that the Department of Transport haven’t quite got the hang of things. All those hours and professional training to get the most basic of pilot’s licences yet a driver’s licence requires only a few hours pootling about, doesn’t even have to be a professional instructor, your Granny could teach you if she was inclined, followed by a quick run around the block with a DoT examiner and you are legal. No wonder parents are nervous when the law says it is OK for their adolescent and inexperienced off-spring to be in charge of a motor vehicle after only the most rudimentary preparation.

Nearly three decades on, and with my father long gone so no-one to turn to for advice, Dominic is on my heels. To be honest, it is probably a bed that I made for myself. At age two, he was driving around the garden in an electrically propelled jeep and, a couple of years later was clearly longing for more. By then we were back in Angola and, evidently taking complete leave of my senses, I took him to the new motorcycle dealership, the first one ever in Luanda. Naturally it had to be a Yamaha dealership and, of course, right in the middle of the showroom, sweetly lit by overhead 12 volt lighting and not nearly obscured enough by a large pot plant, was a PW50. Dominic leapt astride it and sat there. All went silent. Even the noisome salesman understood enough to keep his gob shut. For Dominic, the walls of the showroom were now transparent. The neighbouring blocks of flats had disappeared and all he could see was the long straight down to the first bend at Magny-Cours. He didn’t just want it, he needed it or he would expire in the next five minutes. I just happened to have enough beer tokens on hand, and enough of them inside me, to conclude the transaction.

As a father, of course I was very nervous. Anything that propels us faster than our legs can carry us is inherently dangerous and even our legs let us down occasionally (mine usually outside pubs, but so far such tumbles haven’t been fatal and I was invariably too anaesthetized to feel pain anyway). Dominic was determined to learn to ride a ‘bike and there was very little I could do to stop him. In a moment of lunacy, I had given him the means so now, instead of suddenly returning to the real world at the end of a half hour of Discovery Channel and wondering where in the house he might be, every five seconds I was darting to acute consciousness and wondering how many miles he had covered this time.

I was seventeen when I had my first and most serious accident. My son was four when he had his first and, let’s hope, most serious. Going full tilt on his PW50 (despite my advice; I am old and stupid in comparison to a young blood and should, therefore, be ignored), he failed to notice the lunatic hurtling in from his left and painfully smacked into the side of his car at, ooh, I don’t know, 20 miles an hour? Running a kid over here is seriously bad for one’s health so the driver of the then severely dented car was grateful to make it out of the neighbourhood with nothing more than a bit of phlegm on his windows and a few half empty beer cans bouncing off the bodywork as a highly partisan crowd of hitherto bored neighbours launched gleefully into the melee. Dominic was scared witless, not I suspect at the damage he’d caused but at how close to death he had been and an uncertainty about my reaction. So what should I have done? Beaten him half to death for his recklessness? The owner of the car damaged in the accident had no doubt learned not to risk driving irresponsibly in a residential area. The neighbours had ensured that I would not liable for any compensation. The damage to Dominic’s motorcycle was easily repairable and the cuts and abrasions he had suffered would be a salutary reminder, for a week or so at least while his body healed, of the folly of driving too fast for the conditions. I was sure that he had a new awareness of the dangers that can so unexpectedly thrust a stick in one’s spokes.

My father once caught me smoking. Instead of giving me the hiding I undoubtedly deserved, he sat me down on the sofa and suspecting, with some justification, that I had been at his spirits as well, poured me a very large glass of malt whisky. He then selected one of his larger cigars and made me smoke it and finish the scotch to the last drop. Neat, no water, no ice. I was fourteen at the time. I did feel ill afterwards but soon recovered. Sadly for my father, considering that his was a game and humane attempt to dissuade me from the evils of tobacco and alcohol by a man brought up as he had been with Victorian attitudes to discipline and, therefore, far more likely to resort to the rod, all he succeeded in doing was to provide me with a taste for fine malt and Cuban cigars, a taste I still have to this day. Nicotine and alcohol, although vices, are pleasurable pursuits the dangers of which are, especially for someone so young, completely incomprehensible. Are they not obviously enjoyed by so many? Not, however, by my father, who although had the odd drink and smoked a pipe, did neither to excess. Having suffered directly at the irrational and malevolent hands of an alcoholic and then watched him expire painfully as a result of emphysema and finally, the coup de grace, cancer. Sad then that his innovative attempt at child psychology should fail so miserably in this instance.

An accident, a near death experience, however, reminds us of how vulnerable and fragile we are. A youngster is, by nature, an optimist. Death is such an abstract notion and the possibility of it so far away that it rarely intrudes on the consciousness. And this is good. It is nature’s way of ensuring the survival of the species, of ensuring that there would be sufficient brave enough to poke a woolly mammoth in the ribs with flint tipped sticks to guarantee the survival of the larger group. The ability to appreciate the consequences of one’s actions is undeveloped when young. Necessarily so for if it were, the human race would have died out long ago having achieved nothing. We would have been a bunch of wimps beaten to extinction by a more aggressive species. The human race survives because of, not in spite of, the recklessness of youth as it has always been tempered by the guidance, the reining in of over exuberance, by the experienced. That is why the idea of raising the age before which one can drive is silly. I advocate lowering it. I am in favour of raising the age before one can legally drink alcohol to 21 as it is widely accepted by an experienced medical profession that early exposure to alcohol vastly increases the likelihood of developing some form of alcohol dependency later on in life, the consequences of which are profound. I am a heavy smoker but am 100% in favour of any and all legislation that limits smoking. It is never too early, however, to gain useful experience, the kind that will develop maturity, the appreciation of the consequences of one’s behaviour. Driving is not a vice it is almost a necessity, a part of modern living. I do not need to smoke or drink to earn my living but without a car I would be stuffed. Raising the age barrier will only serve to delay the inevitable. What parent has any real influence on a 17 year old, let alone a 19 or 21 year old? If these youngsters have not learnt the lessons their parents can provide before being wracked by hormonal changes, then there is an ever decreasing probability that they can seriously influence their child’s behaviour thereafter.

I am generalising of course as there will always be exceptions. Legislation is a very blunt tool, a sort of ‘one size fits all’ but in this case, I feel rather than achieve its noble aim of reducing the accident rate amongst young drivers, it will have little effect and cause a great deal of frustration and dissent. Seventeen? Twenty-one? Whatever age they start, when they first take to the roads, they will still be inexperienced. The proposed legislation rests on the assumption that all seventeen year olds are irresponsible and must, therefore, be excluded from the highways. Nonsense. Some are irresponsible of course. The majority, however, are good, honest citizens who just want to get on in life and enjoy all it’s benefits. The only thing they lack, through no fault of their own, is the sense of responsibility that only guidance and experience can develop.

In the old days, and certainly when I first learnt to ride a motorcycle, a sixteen year old could ride a 50cc moped. To all intents and purposes, a motorcycle but limited in its performance by its tiny capacity and the power it could produce. At seventeen, however, there was no limit and having passed a simple test, the young blade could then ride a motorcycle of the biggest capacity he could afford and capable, in some cases, of ridiculous speeds. Not surprisingly, the death rate amongst young riders was horrific. Recognising this, some sensible legislation, modified over the years, was introduced. Essentially, power output of the ‘bike is limited according to entitlement and experience. I am over simplifying the regulations but basically, it takes two years of riding and various tests before the full entitlement to ride whatever you want can be achieved. The age limit wasn’t raised, a sixteen year old can still get astride a ‘bike, even if of meagre performance, it will just take longer to get that unrestricted licence. Now, instead of the majority of motorcycle related deaths being in the 17 to 21 year old bracket, it is riders in their thirties. Why? Well simple, really. The new laws that have done so much to force teenagers to learn as safely as possible, have completely ignored that it is experience not age that counts by providing a fast track to the full licence for the over 21’s. The typical motorcycle casualty these days is the individual who, having secured a stable career, has met his obligations to his family, is in control of his expenditure (and is finally enjoying some disposable income), and now wishes to let his hair down a bit and revel in the last of his youth. Nothing sexier than the latest Honda Fireblade or Ducati, is there? They are not going to buy the 50cc Yamaha FS1E that I learnt to ride on and get some experience under their belt. They can afford the very best, the fastest and most powerful exotics in the showroom and passing the test is easy. Sadly, enjoying the last of their youth is exactly what all too many do. Right up until they plough into the Armco at 150mph. Or even 30mph. Losing control can be fatal at any speed. Age has bugger all to do with experience.

Instead of raising the age at which a person can get behind the wheel, they should lower it to sixteen. At sixteen, as with motorcycles, an individual should be allowed to obtain a provisional licence. For cars, this would entitle them to attend a basic vehicle handling course delivered by a registered institute after which, accompanied by a full licence holder, they may drive vehicles of limited weight and power output on public highways. This would allow parents to let their children, once they are sixteen and have passed the basic handling course, to chauffer them to the shops and on any other trips they need to make. At seventeen, their offspring may apply for a test, which, if they pass, would allow them to drive the same vehicles of limited weight and power output unaccompanied for two years at which point they would be allowed to take their final test. The successful completion of this would then entitle them to drive whatever they, or their benefactors could afford. The only exemption that an older student driver could enjoy is the requirement to drive for one year accompanied by a full licence holder. They would still, however, have to attend the basic handling course, followed by the usual series of driving lessons before taking the intermediate test allowing them to drive restricted vehicles for two years. If I know young people at all, the chance of getting behind the wheel at sixteen, even if it means being accompanied by a nagging co-driver, would be irresistible and there would be a high percentage that would take advantage of the opportunity, much to their own ultimate benefit and that of other road users. 



I could go on and suggest that persistent offenders, those convicted of several speeding offences, driving without due care and attention or reckless driving should face the threat of having to re-enter the system. There is no question that an individual convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs should be banned without hesitation but it is sometimes hard for a magistrate to hand down a sentence for a lesser offence which would effectively preclude that person from using the means necessary for him to earn his crust. Under the system I propose, however, it would be a damn sight easier for the same magistrate to limit a person’s access to powerful cars if the accused has clearly demonstrated his lack of maturity behind the wheel. Condemning an irresponsible Porsche owner, whatever his age, to driving an Aygo for two years is going to hurt. His pride for a start and definitely his lifestyle but it would not prejudice his ability to live or, more importantly, support his family. Having to sell his Porsche and stand in the queue at a Toyota dealership would leave a lasting impression.

And there are other advantages. Such legislation would create a demand for smaller, lighter, less powerful and, therefore, less polluting vehicles. As far as I can see, both sides of the political spectrum, Labour with their congestion charges and anti 4x4 legislation, and the Conservatives with their new green veneer, would welcome any initiative that encourages more efficient vehicles onto the roads, at least for the two years that all new drivers would need them. Similarly, manufacturers love a captive market and would respond with the development of increasingly innovative vehicles that, while within the constraints of legislation, would attract the novice driver. Insurance underwriters would love it. Instead of having to cover the risks posed by inexperienced drivers causing mayhem with powerful cars, they could sleep easier at night knowing that a significant portion of the risk they must cover has been mitigated and the lower premiums have not affected their bottom line. Overworked and under funded accident and emergency departments of hospitals would enjoy some relief, with the resultant reduced demand on strained finances. Parents might be able to relax, at least a little.

I can see it now. Loads of small, safe, efficient cars running around with stereos more powerful than their engines, the driver’s of which are all the time gaining the experience that will allow them to enjoy themselves in the future without endangering their own health or that of other citizens.

So there it is, a simple choice. Raise the age limit for a licence and see hordes of crazed 21 year olds going mad or start them off early and gently. I say, don’t raise the limit, lower it and let our kids gain the experience they need as early as possible. Rather than legislate to delay the inevitable, face it as early as possible. But responsibly. Read more!

(im)patience

Oh Daddy! When are we going to get to the Hippo?

Which Hippo son?

The Hippo, the Hippo in the story!

Patience my boy, there’s plenty of time. The Hippo comes near the end.

Well let’s go straight to the end then!

Why do you want to wish the story away? Aren’t you enjoying it?

Yes, but we can always go back.

That, son, is something we can never do. Read more!

On Top Gear

I have been reading Jeremy Clarkson’s articles ever since the early 90’s. My itinerant lifestyle means that I am very rarely in a position to buy the magazines that publish his musings so I rely for my weekly fix on the internet, especially the Times on line to which he is a regular contributor. Satellite TV allows me to enjoy what for me, is one of the best entertainment shows ever; incisive wit riding on a motoring theme combining two things that invariably put me in a very good mood, humour and exotic cars. The last thing I want when I settle down to a Sunday evening’s viewing before another week of hard slog then, is mind numbingly dull reviews of run-of-the-mill family saloons. I am surrounded by them every day on my way to work. The last time I was in any way inspired by a programme of that ilk was when Rula Lenska leant over the back seat of the car she was reviewing to demonstrate the roominess of that part of the vehicle's interior. I can assure you, it wasn't the contours of the split folding rear seats that entranced me.

No other motoring show has ever been so successful and therein lies a problem. So many still try to categorise it as a motoring programme when quite clearly it is entertainment and lifestyle; the entertainment being the antics, and the lifestyle the exotica most of us can only dream about. Why is it then, that a programme should be censured for not appealing to the masses, even though it attracted over eight million viewers in UK alone? I would be no more interested in a holiday programme, just as an off the cuff example, that claimed guest houses in Blackpool and donkey rides on the beach as its high points than a wee small hours of the morning Open University dissertation on yak farming on a ping-pong ball. I want exotic sun drenched villas and scantily clad maids dripping in sun tan oil. So why must I sacrifice elements of the show I enjoy so much so that a few anoraks can marvel at the fact that the latest Hyundai is fourpence cheaper than a Daewoo on a run through the town centre to Sainsbury’s and back?

No wonder Mr Clarkson is depressed.

And if anyone is in any doubt as to his state of mind, read the last couple of months or so of his articles in the Timesonline. Mr. Clarkson, nil illigitum carborundum, my friend, nil iligitum…

As with any delightful new experience, its devotees want more. That’s why people overdose; once they get used to one high, they want ever increasing ecstasy and if they can’t get it they become bored, boring or, much to the relief of those around them, kill themselves. After so many years, it must be increasingly difficult to come up with the fresh ideas needed to feed such widespread addiction. A significant change could very well be disastrous and ratings tumble. You are only as good as your last job so who wants to preside over the demise of a success? Certainly not Mr Clarkson who despite, or maybe because of, his morbid preoccupation with his fast approaching half-century, is still worried about the need to earn his crust for a few years more at least. I could not imagine the anguish of a man who contributed so much to the success of a programme overhearing the pub conversation dismissing Top Gear with, 'Oh, yeah, TG. Used to be good but isn't it boring now?'

Perhaps it is this uncertainty that manifests itself as brief, but worryingly persistent rumours of JC's departure, evident doubts over the tenth series format and content, and an uncertainty as to when it will finally be aired. I am writing from the middle of Africa so if any of these issues have been resolved already then I apologise for my ignorance but right now, from where I am sitting, it all looks so unnecessarily glum. I can understand, though, that having attempted to shoot a Reliant Robin into space and ski jumped a Mini, it is going to be hard to top that sort of outrageous drama.

Maybe a brief hiatus then. Less of the really crazy stuff that demands ever increasing doses of the utterly audacious, the formulation of which no doubt taxes the creativity and imagination of content managers and scares lawyers and insurance brokers witless. But what to fill the void with? Staid reviews of tin clothed motorised roller skates? Please no!

Top Gear has three good presenters. Clearly defined individuals in their own right. Eloquent and articulate, maybe some of their own interests could be exploited? I could imagine James May presenting an ‘old’ classic which, by name and commonality alone would realise very little if sold, yet the owner has spent a fortune restoring it to a breathtakingly new and, more importantly, modernised condition providing a contra point to the current crop of faux retro offerings from the motor industry. There are enough ‘eccentrics’ about who have done so. I can imagine him highlighting the best, unsung heroes, cars that really should have done better but for whatever reason never achieved the high demand they merited. The bargain buys. That should go someway to alleviate the thirst of those that long for car reviews and the lust of many who want a lifestyle they really cannot afford.

The ‘Hamster’ is evidently very interested in all things scientific. I am sure that he could come up with some very interesting video articles on the latest innovations, the weirder and zanier the better. And what about addressing the conundrum of youngsters who want the sexiest wheels on the planet, for severely limited financial outlay; and their parents who prefer their offspring to drive the safest, most boring car ever? How about getting a representative sample of cars and an equally representative sample of new drivers (remembering that girls will think differently to boys and Vive la Difference) and letting them decide? That would go even further to satisfy the review hungry, appeal to an up and coming future audience and I am sure that in the hands of the Top gear presenters, it would be bloody amusing. Maintain Mr Hammond’s credentials as the fastest man on Top Gear (or is that Captain Slow since the Veyron?) and get him to drive a Formula 1 car, or an Indy car, how about a Nascar?

Let Jeremy continue his assault on the lunatic fringe that man the barricades of political correctness. Let him answer the questions that many of us have, those whose mortgages are now thankfully paid off and have rediscovered disposable income and now want to know what they should buy. Is there a new car out there that would fit the bill or should it be Jeremy’s nemesis, God forbid, a beautifully restored classic?

Critics say the programme bears little relationship to reality, encourages a yob culture and is politically incorrect. The first two criticisms are utter nonsene but I cannot deny that TG is wildly PC insensitive. I do relish, however, the fact that at least someone has the couraqge to fling the garbage back in the faces of the severely mentally challenged, arrogant twits who tell us what is correct. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to involve the public more. Clearly, eight million viewers are not sufficient endorsement (the head of BBC must be bewildered by the unfairness of it all), so get some of the public in front of the cameras and onto our screens. It is good to see the interaction in the studio between audience and presenters; even better to let a lucky few get their hands on the cars. Now wouldn’t that be absolutely compatible with a programme designed to make us dream? There’s a limited number of ‘Stars’ out there but an awful lot of normal folk, the hard working man-on-the-street joe now used to interactive programmes, reality TV and instant on-line surveys. Get some of them involved, after all, it is these same citizens who have come out in the defence of a damn good programme.

Top Gear obviously likes to travel so how about showing us some of the best drives in the world? And I don’t mean the usual crop of Italian alpine curves or romanticised US highways, I mean the best in the world. And those of us that have travelled, I mean really travelled, all know of such places. Top Gear is a global phenomenon now so why not appeal to a global audience. There may be occasions when Jeremy would need reminding that when in Rome, especially if the locals carry AK 47’s, it might be better not to poke a verbal stick in their eyes but his commentary would still undoubtedly be hilarious. If he cheers up, that is.

I see plenty of mileage in Top Gear but it might have to get off the Autostrada and explore a few more B roads but please, please don’t let it turn into a pastiche of the really inane 5th Gear or a TV equivalent of ‘What Car?’ Like I said, Top Gear is entertainment. It provides an hour-long weekly escape from the day to day drudgery that most people have to endure.

There are over eight million in UK and a whole bunch more abroad who like Top Gear as it is. For those few who don't, there are dozens of other channels out there, both terrestial and satellite and the average four year old can help you switch between them so there is no excuse really. No-one has tied you to a chair with telephone flex and is forcing you to watch Top Gear. If you still insist on statistics, go into Smith’s or Exclusive Books and look around. There’s shelf loads of it and for a few quid, you can exercise your God given right to overdose without boring the rest of us to death. Read more!

The Cat's Paw

Managed to contact a lawyer through the local German ‘mafia’, the expat group who stick together like super-glued flesh of which, by birth I am an honary if not terribly active member. Naturally, a man as busy and corpulently successful as Herr 'T' would only see me on a Saturday if I bought him lunch, and being Bavarian this included 5 litres (yes, I was quite impressed as well) of Bitburger Pilsner. I didn't even know they sold it here, whcih is probably why he insisted on choosing the restaurant as well.

The long and the short of it is that it is vital that the divorce is not contested. Otherwise, she could go for half of everything again. That'll teach me to laugh at guys like Richard Burton but at least Mr Burton masochistically repeatedly married his wife thereby legalising his subsequent flaying. I have paid out once already and am still trying to get the same four year process concluded and yet there always seems to be just one more, invariably costly impediment that must be surmounted. It is like hiking in the Alps. You go cantering and singing over the crest of, ooh, I don't know, about the thousandth hill so far only to discover that all these highly paid experts have somehow forgotten to tell you about the sodding great mountain that still sits between your exhausted body and Switzerland. Sound of Music? There is something noisily rushing through my mind at the moment but it has more homicidal than poetic overtones. Naturally, the lawyer confirmed all my worst fears by explaining to me that his practice would fight loyally on my exclusive behalf and that everything would go OK...unless I ran out of money.

In my favour, I have kept everything out of my name. On the bad side, the court will want to see my bank statements. Bad enough with the amount of money I have pushed through it of my own but bloody disastrous when all the company money that went through it to build the site is noted. Try convincing an Angolan court faced with a foreign plaintiff and an Angolan respondent that none of that was mine. I think I need to take the bank manager out for lunch. I think I will be buying a lot of people lunch in the coming few weeks...

I was hoping to file my accounts and reports to head office today so that I can finally go on leave tomorrow. Server’s down. I have rung Dubai and they assure me that they will get me on line again. In the meantime, I am idling around mainly trying to stop Dominic, who is with me at the moment, setting fire to anything. He’s unfortunately a chip off the old block and shows all the signs of being a true pyromaniac. And while he doesn’t know what to do with them once he has won them over, he regularly charms the wits out of a seemingly never ending series of highly attractive women. Yesterday it was the Chinese waitress in the restaurant. God she was stunning. Took him about five minutes to get her name and telephone number. Not bad considering that her command of either English or Portuguese was about as good as Dominic’s Mandarin Chinese. Sitting opposite a cynical Teutonic lawyer, I did my best to keep up the pretence of being a responsible, cruelly cuckolded husband all the while that Dominic exhibited every sign of being a highly trained hound bringing the best birds home to its master. Believe me, if it hadn’t been for the presence of the worst kind of witness and with Marcia locked up in a tower for safe keeping by her family and all, relief of the sort that Dominic was arranging and I could have so easily closed in on would have been particularly welcome. Having to accept the addition of frustration to my list of woes is particularly irritating. All the accommodation on the site is full so I cannot nick a spare mattress out of one of the other rooms and at eight, Dominic is well able to fight for his space in the bed so I slept on the floor of the container, separated from hard, unyielding steel by only a millimetre or so of linoleum. It was a rotten night not helped by the dogs who, loyally intent on demonstrating that they at least still loved me and delighted that I should choose to sleep with them, tried to lick me to death and shared everything they had with me, including foul breath, buckets of saliva and clearly starving ticks.

Just received a phone call from the lawyer. I must pay him $5,000 before we can pass ‘Go’, and to get round the board, so long as I do not land on any community chest or go to jail squares, will cost me another 10-15, just his ‘legal’ fees you understand. Gulp. I told him to get on with it. Odd isn’t it? I was hoping that the whole deal wouldn’t cost me much more than five grand but took 20 out of the bank on Friday. Bastard must have been hiding behind the pot plants.

Is 14.00 too early to start on the scotch?

Oh, what the hell. Read more!

Semper in excremento sum, solum profunditas mutat

‘Always in the shit, only the depth varies’ should be my motto.

Realising I had better do something fast to sort out the Marcia issue, I felt it about time to fix bayonets and come out of the trench fighting. I wouldn’t just tackle the ‘Pedido’ issue, I would get to the root of it and file for divorce. I realise that one of the consequences may be my deportation from the country but I am trusting on the support of friends and, hopefully, my soon to be won over new family to avoid such a calamity. Like those poor bastards on the Somme, though, I have run straight into a withering hail of machine gun fire.

What I needed was a decent lawyer. Choosing a lawyer has to be about as scary as choosing the means by which one will be tortured. Do we prefer the bamboo splints under the fingernails or the wet towel over the face? Perhaps a good beating with rubber hoses or a toasting over hot coals? However horrible, if the pain is defined and anticipated, one can at least prepare for it. In this case, all I have to aid me in my choice is a series of nameplates on doors, the potential horrors within completely unknown to me but enhanced by nervous imagination.

I am really frightened of lawyers. They seem to have the finely honed skill of assessing their victim’s, I mean client’s worth and then exhausting all of that in the pursuit of an increasingly academic outcome. Securing the divorce their client wanted may be another success for them but the fact that their client is now ruined doesn’t seem to count against them. A victory is a victory, even if it was a Pyrrhic one. Perhaps this is why I have left it four years before finally taking the plunge.

First thing I did was to ring my wife.

I was pathetic. The last thing a wife wants to hear is their estranged husband bleating on about how much he loves his girlfriend and how he only wants to build a new life with her. For no matter how long said husband has been with said girlfriend, as far as wife is concerned, the silly girl is just the latest in a no doubt long string of doomed alliances and merely further justification of her decision to leave said husband in the first place. Naively bearing one’s chest like that only gives her one more opportunity to stab it with a bread knife.

Reeling on my back foot, I hung in there and eventually an agreement was reached. Naturally, all costs are down to me. The wording of the paragraph in the petition dealing with custody of my son will have to be formulated with the delicacy and careful eloquence that would tax a trained and experienced diplomat.

Having been given the green light, I now had to appoint a lawyer. With so much riding on the outcome, I lacked the courage to make the decision by myself so solicited the advice of those few trusted friends I have here. As they are all normal, well balanced individuals, other than for business matters, none of them has had any experience dealing with lawyers in the resolution of personal issues. They could also recognise a mine field when they saw one and none of them wanted the moral burden of a recommendation that could so easily go horribly wrong. Polite and sympathetic as they all were, not one was willing to make any kind of commitment and I received only the vaguest references. Oh, they all seemed only to eager to man the dressing station and patch me up if I survived but the final assault on enemy positions would be my honour. Essentially, I was on my own.

In the years that I have been here advising clients on asset protection and risk management, I have made a few contacts and am aware of some of the more reputable legal firms. Most of them are affiliated to Portuguese firms and support the various industries here in Angola. Not one of them, not one, would touch a divorce in Angola. It is hard to remain confident when, having delivered my protestations that I had the assurance of my wife that the divorce would be uncontested so it was merely a bit of form filling and filing, I saw the man on the other side of the desk barely able to hide an incredulous sneer at my evident naivety.

The subsequent conversation always went something like this:

‘So you separated over four years ago?’

‘Yes’

‘And this separation was confirmed by a Notary Public and registered with the court?’

‘Er…No.’

‘I see.’

At this point the lawyer would fiddle with the papers on his desk, avoiding eye contact, preferring to glance instead at the door through which he was no doubt praying his clerk would emerge to breathlessly remind him of that ever so important appointment with the Minister now waiting for him in his chambers. The clerk, of course, would fail to appear and the lawyer would sigh.

‘You married under the regime of ‘Communiao de Bens’ (joint assets)’.

‘Yes, but at the time of the separation I paid my wife out. I gave her the house in Maianga and I sold the house in Cape Town’

‘And these payments and transfers of title were recorded and duly notarised by a Notary Public?’

‘Er…No.’

Now there was no disguising the look of utter stupefaction on the man’s face.

‘Since this, erm,' his eyes searched the room for the right phrase, 'non-legalised separation, you have made investments?’

‘Well, yes of course, I have the house in Benfica, the farm, another big plot in Benfica and I am buying a riverside plot on the Rio Kwanza.’

I could see him doing a quick mental calculation.

‘And your wife, how much is she worth, do you think?’

‘Haven't the foggiest idea. Apart from the house, not much I would have thought.’

‘You see the point I am making?’ He studied me carefully as a schoolmaster would a particularly dim-witted pupil, in an attempt to discern any kind of comprehension whatsoever.

Despite what I had previously felt about lawyers, these were reputable individuals that had no desire to preside over the financial destruction of a client.

‘I really hope that your divorce will be uncontested but, sadly, we find ourselves unable to take you on. I really do wish you the best of luck’

And they were sincere, I am sure of it. I am also convinced that they were left incapable of understanding how anyone, with even the remotest modicum of common sense, could allow themselves to be so exposed. In a nutshell, it was because I was scared of losing access to my son. This isn’t my world. I am a very small fish in a large, very strange pond predominantly inhabited by predators. Hiding in the weeds has kept me alive so far but only served to delay the inevitable. Perhaps I wasn’t hiding in the weeds all this time after all. Maybe I was just dancing on the end of a hook. I will find a lawyer and I can only hope that small as I am, and at my age, I can still swim as fast as I am going to have to over the next few months.

My current motto may have proved singularly appropriate to me. I wish, though, it had been, ‘Semper letteris mandate’.

PS: On the subject of awful latin, 'Divorce' is latin for 'extracting a man's wallet through his penis' Read more!

Devon Sims, aged six.

Sky News is the TV equivalent of the high street rags referred to as ‘Red Tops’, those daily journals with the lurid headlines that accuse you from the newspaper stands in the same way that equally illiterate morons emphasise every other sentence in emails using block capitals. Like the Red Tops, Sky News is very popular and on my site, democracy (unless I lose patience and put my foot down) generally rules so if it isn’t sport, then it’s Sky News that blares out of the satellite TV system. Any man that has been married more than a few years will have learnt to shut out unwelcome intrusions so I can happily conduct my day to day affairs oblivious of the constant, dire drivel of in your face, jump straight into the living room style journalism that characterises the network.

For the last two weeks, however, I have watched with increasing dismay, the coverage of the Madeleine McCann abduction. Instead of taking tea in my room every morning, I am now jumping out of the shower, dressing hurriedly and slurping my breakfast down while glued to the screen hoping like mad that I will see the breaking news banner announcing the little girl’s safe return to her anguished parents. Instead, it’s a feeding frenzy. The London studio has been emptied of its ‘top’ journalists (I say that in the loosest sense) and we are treated to live, on location reporting at its disgusting, vile worst. I have no doubt that the intense media interest will put pressure on the poor Portuguese police to redouble their efforts but, if I know the Portuguese, their love of family and all its values, they would be doing all they could anyway. Their own population would demand it. Such crimes are almost unheard of in Portugal and I can understand to a certain extent how the Portuguese press, reflecting popular opinion, suggests that this heinous crime could not possibly have been committed by a Portuguese national. And yet, completely forgetting so many equivalents that ended in tragedy and grief in UK, the British press have lambasted the Portuguese authorities for inefficiency and have completely ignored the constraints of the laws under which they operate. Laws, I might add, that do nothing to inhibit the ability of the police to investigate, indeed enhance it, and do much to protect the rights of the individual. If, as a policeman, I reacted to a tip off and kicked a citizen’s door in only to subsequently discover that the information was flawed, it is a damn sight easier to apologise to the individual and pay for a new door than see his whole life destroyed and his wife and children permanently traumatised by seeing their daddy’s photograph in all the papers under headlines proclaiming him all but tried and guilty of some disgusting crime. Shit sticks, even to the innocent and Sky are tossing a lot of it around. And none of it is helping the police to concentrate on the job in hand, which, surely, has to be more important than ratings? As a policeman desperately trying to find a poor little girl, I would love to operate in secrecy. Just see how many bloody doors I would kick in then.

Two weeks of this has left me feeling desperately sorry for the family, terribly concerned for the welfare of the child, pity for the Portuguese authorities and completely nauseated by Sky News.

Just when I thought that they had got to the very bottom of the sleaze barrel, they come up with Devon Sims. This is a Sky News exclusive. It could be exclusive because of the keen investigative journalism of the Sky News rep in China. It could be that Mr Sims approached Sky News for help in publicising his plight. It could also be that no reputable news agency was willing to touch the story in the manner it was finally aired. The end result, however, is that Sky got its story, and Mr Sims was left wandering down the road, clutching his son’s hand, no doubt into a heap of trouble and probably the waiting arms of the Chinese police.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Sims case, Devon Sims is the six year old son of a British businessman and his now estranged Chinese wife. Sims senior has been working in China for over a decade and during that time he married a Chinese girl and had a son. Sadly, two years after the birth, the marriage fell apart. Even though the Chinese courts granted visitation rights, he has not been able to see his son for four years and has now resorted to kidnapping his boy off the street near to his school. While the Sims case cannot match the McCann case for tragedy, the report, or the manner of its reporting, was just as cynical. In addition, the parallels between Mr Sims situation and mine are uncanny.

I too, live in a foreign country. I also married a local girl and had a son. My marriage also broke down leaving me to tussle for access. Immediately after the break up, with boiling blood and no common sense whatever, I left the country with my son and returned to England. I was now jobless and the sight of my boy wandering forlornly around the garden in a strange country broke my heart. Whatever happened between his parents, he still had the right to see both of us. I got on the plane and flew back.

Mr Sims may have thought that the British Ambassador in Beijing could help him. Sky News were evidently aware of Mr Sims imminent arrival in Beijing on the night express since they were there to film it. Selecting that day to turn up at the embassy could not have been a coincidence with the UK Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett due to give a press conference at the embassy later in the afternoon. Mr Sims, obviously at the end of his tether and under increasing stress as the full realisation of what he has done dawns on him, could be excused for assuming that the Ambassador could do something for him. Sky may argue that they have provided valuable publicity for the Sims’ plight but they really should have known better than to be complicit in an act that will severely undermine Mr Sims’ position. Mr Sims could very likely go to jail. He will lose his job, if he hasn’t already lost it and will lose all rights to Devon. There would be no chance of him ever being allowed to holiday in UK with the boy. One may argue that he wasn’t enjoying any of his rights anyway so what other course of action was open to him? Just because it seems that all options have been exhausted cannot be an excuse for resorting to an act not only illegal, but self-defeating and with no chance of success. A far better story would have been the Sky news reporter dissuading Mr Sims from prosecuting the act and then accompanying Mr Sims to the Embassy so that he could hear for himself how, under the circumstances, it would be extraordinarily difficult for the British to intervene on his behalf. To be seen to support a felon, as Mr Sims is now, would be impossible for the British authorities. Had Sky prevented the crime and then used its influence to gain an audience with the Ambassador for Mr Sims, it could have set the scene for quiet diplomatic negotiation and still provide all the publicity desired. And what of the boy? Devon is at the heart of all this and one must question whether any of this is in his best interests. Hard though it is, in such situations parents must set aside their own feelings and be prepared to sacrifice certain ‘rights’. To be near my son, I have resigned myself to a life here in Angola and I will make the best of it. When the boy is sixteen, he can decide for himself.

The reporting in both cases, the McCanns and the Sims is shocking and shows a cynical disregard for the victims. Instead of concentrating on looking for Madeleine, the Portuguese police now have to divert valuable resources in managing the media to prevent their investigation being scuppered by indiscrete revelations. The degree of collusion in the commission of an ill-conceived and illegal act in China will never be known but again, the reporting was irresponsible. Whose interests are being served? The poor families involved? The right to know of viewers? Or simply ratings?

There is not much that I can do except hope and pray for both families. And stop watching Sky News. Read more!

Pedidos and Multas

Life in Africa has its extremes but most of its inhabitants live either at one end of the scale: grinding, unchanging poverty; or at the other, fabulous wealth and all its benefits. The rest are spread out more or less evenly between. So unless you are a recently deposed president whose body has mysteriously surfaced in the bay, porcupine like with a load of machetes sticking in your back, then life is generally the same old drudgery, a never changing routine, but while it is immensely difficult to work your way up the food chain, it is frighteningly easy to slide down it so fast and unexpectedly you couldn't be more bewildered if your legs fell off while riding a motorcycle.

I first met Marcia over two years ago. I had separated from my wife some two years before that but, for reasons of permanency in this country (after nearly fourteen years I still do not enjoy residency status), I have not yet had the courage to divorce her. Being married to an Angolan seems to help with the visa renewals, however temporary. Being here allows me to be close to my son who, unless I kidnapped him, could never live with me in Europe. A difficult situation then, and one that I happily accept in order to have some influence on my son’s upbringing.

In Angola, it is considered unnatural, positively weird for a man of my age not to have a girlfriend, or maybe three. My ex secretary Bella, therefore, took it upon herself to introduce me to a succession of delightful and mostly highly eligible spinsters in the hope that I would hit it off with one of them. Despite much effort on her part, she never succeeded. Until Marcia, that is. I am convinced that Marcia was an afterthought, more a companion for Bella at one of my dinner parties than another possible candidate for 'Mrs Tom'. Marcia was enjoying a few weeks leave from university in Belgium and I am sure that Bella only brought her along for someone to talk to as she could never be sure which of my eclectic group of friends I had invited this time and, as a result, what the evening’s conversation was likely to consist of.

Halfway through the evening I confessed, rather unkindly I will admit, that I had never met anyone so dizzy as Marcia and could never imagine myself having a serious relationship with her. Marcia and I have been together ever since.

Until yesterday evening that is.

When I met Marcia, I owned a piece of land in the southern suburbs residential development that I had bought with what little I was left after the separation agreement. While I was away in Uganda, she grabbed the reins and built a beautiful house on the property, which is now being sold for a quite frankly ridiculous amount. Disciplining my finances (which meant denying me access to cash; I kid you not, I tried to make a withdrawal today and they said I needed Marcia's OK), she bought a considerably larger plot on which we will build another eight houses. While managing all this, she bought a farm in Lubango which, while never having turned in a profit, has paid for itself and the land has gone up in value ten times. Last Saturday was my birthday and on Sunday morning, while I slept off the effects of a jolly good knees up and a near drowning the night before (don’t, as a 48 year old heavy smoker, go for a midnight swim in a fast flowing river with a gutful of whisky), she secured a prime river side plot, a lifetime’s dream for me and one which will give me somewhere to park my sport-fishing boat, another lifetime’s dream.

Life could not be better then; going swimmingly in fact, if you’ll excuse the pun. Until we got home.

‘We need to have a serious talk’, this out of the blue as we neared the site.

‘Eh? Serious! Why?’ Mental images of hauling prize Tarpon out of the Atlantic and into the teak lined cockpit of my Hatteras accompanied by the adulation of those that had been lucky enough to receive one of my invites evaporated suddenly. The driver, a stoic, diplomatically locked his eyes on the road ahead and politely pretended to be deaf.

‘Best wait until we get home’ was the ominous reply.

Disconcerted? You have no idea. I was not only wide-awake but stone cold sober as the driver pulled into the yard. What the effing hell had I done now?

I have never understood women and with two failed marriages behind me never bothered trying with Marcia, preferring to accept these sudden mood swings as a fact of life but the prospect of a set to was no less unpleasant. I tried to recall all the conversations of the night before. Had I said anything crass? I know she was annoyed at my near drowning even going so far as to say, a little unkindly I thought, that she would have apportioned no blame to the skipper of the boat as she knew what an idiot I was. OK, I know that it was my fault that I went overboard but to allow me to drift for nearly 10kms in a crocodile infested river before hauling me out again was at least a trifle unprofessional. I could not think of a damn thing that I had said or done that could have annoyed her so I resigned myself to a bit of a verbal bashing, my survival depending on faculties diminished by fatigue and alcohol.

‘I think you regret splitting up with your wife.’

We were back on the site, in our room and I could not have been taken less unawares if the guard had leapt out of the wardrobe and beaten me over the head with 1937 Morris Oxford starting handle. Of course I had no answer and the inability to respond immediately, to eloquently deny such a vile accusation was further proof of my guilt. My problem was that I tried.

‘Are we talking about the same young lady that used Angolan law to keep my house in Luanda and required me to sell my house in Cape Town if I wanted to see my son again?’

‘I think that really, you want to have her back’

‘...and the three kids she has had in the meantime? For Christ’s sake, she’s had four kids by three different men and cost me a fortune and you, you silly cow, think that I would take her back?’

I was outraged but realised an instant later my outburst had cost me the high ground and I was routed. She packed a small night bag and left.

To add to the discomfort of watery lungs and the misery of spending my first night without Marcia for reasons other than operational, a spider bit my hand and I am now dragging a very painful boxing glove around. I did not sleep a wink and goodness knows what I looked like at this morning’s briefing for the delegation that are the Ambassador’s guests to Angola.

On the way to the briefing, my driver’s telephone rang, oh, I don’t know, about a thousand times and I knew, just knew, it was Marcia. I held my tongue for at least half an hour, about 100 yards of Luandan traffic jam, before finally cracking.

‘What did she say?’

The driver nonchalantly negotiated a pothole before replying.

‘Donna Marcia says that you want to use the profits from the house sale to rebuild your wife’s house’

‘WHAT?’

‘Yes, she says that you are just using her to make enough money so that your wife will abandon her boyfriend and come back to you’

The thought of my wife coming back to me was almost as terrifying as life without Marcia.

I got back to the site after the briefing and scanned through my emails. Urgent, reply soonest, accounts due etc. Nothing imperative then. I skulked off miserable as hell to my room and listlessly scanned the websites for the fishing boat that now would remain but a dream. What use a nice riverside house and Hemmingway standard sport fisher without Marcia to share it with? I was beginning to wish that I had drowned.

Then the phone rang. Marcia’s aunt, a ferocious creature who I can well believe, as family lore suggests, beat her husband stupid. So, they were bringing the big guns in.

‘Thomas’

‘Yes?’

‘This is a very difficult situation.’

‘Yes’

‘Marcia is but a little girl, you understand?’

‘Yes’

I hadn’t a clue what she was driving at but couldn’t argue with her so far.

‘The family had hopes for you’

The use of the past tense was worrying.

‘I know’ I lied. The mobile phone felt greasy and slippery against my ear I was sweating so badly.

‘What to do, what to do?’ Mai Ines said. What to do indeed. I wasn’t even sure what had happened let alone be able to formulate a plan to deal with the disaster.

At this morning’s briefing, the subject of corruption, or what was perceived as corruption came up. With the example I was given, I tactfully suggested that at times, not only in Africa, it was better to throw money at the problem, the end result being far more cost effective than what would inevitably become a long drawn out course of action which, while morally unquestionable, might lead to much bigger problems in the future. It was such a choice that I was faced with now.

Most of us are used to civil law but there is also moral, or traditional law. Like anything devised by men, neither is perfect; something forgotten by our more militant brothers who use literal interpretation as justification for commissioning some really quite hideous crimes and practices but, in their true spirits, both types of law try to encourage adherence to socially accepted norms. In my case, whilst not transgressing civil law, I had offended moral law. Marcia, young by any standards, especially in the eyes of her adoring family and definitely by comparison with me having just turned 48 two days ago (by mid-day today I was beginning to realise why my birthday was at least, in part, a catalyst), had lived with me for over two years and I had never formally requested permission of her family for her to do so. I had never made a declaration of my honourable intent. I had not submitted the ‘Pedido’. In the eyes of her increasingly sceptical family, she was living in sin with a foreigner who at any moment could up sticks and return to the wife in UK that no-one knew about and to exacerbate my already shaky position, I could not deny that I was still officially married to another Angolan. Apparently all the local stationers sell the pre printed forms that assist the illiterate make ‘The Request’ so I really had no excuse.

Time, then, to follow my recently given advice and throw money at the problem. I called Victor, one of my steadiest drivers, a man I have known for over a decade and explained the problem to him. What I needed, I said, was a Consiliatori, an advisor. That most trusted of individuals to whom one bares one’s innermost secrets and problems and then slavishly follows their advice.

‘It’ll cost you’ he said, and then he rang Mai Ines.

It’ll cost you a lot more,’ he said when he had finished on the phone, ‘the family are going to fine you’.

This, apparently, is what will happen.

Marcia is banned from spending another night with me until Honour has been satisfied.

The family will meet this afternoon and decide the form and amount of tribute I must pay.

For my ignorance and lack of respect, a fine (Multa) will be applied.

This will all be embraced in a formal letter, which if I am lucky, will be ready for collection tomorrow.

Having analysed the contents, I will get a rough estimate from Victor before going to the bank and withdrawing the required amount and then go on a shopping spree.

Once I have everything on the list, which will include bolts of cloth, groceries, suits, you name it (I am sweating about the fine, I have grown rather fond of my new pick up truck), I then notify the family formally with the letters and forms I must submit, that I am ready.

They then notify me of the time and place (which could take ages if they all have to trawl in from the provinces and there is some doddering old uncle whose opinion, even though he has never met me and is only vaguely aware of marcia's existence, is essential, but he lives somewhere in Portugal) and the result is by no means whatsoever a foregone conclusion. If I have seriously pissed off the family, the whole could be a carefully engineered and costly exercise in public humiliation. Is Marcia worth it? Of course. Could I cope with it? I haven’t been so scared since I was gargling the Rio Kwanza two days ago.

And that brings me back to the beginning, the bit about extremes. I was on the biggest high, the future looked absolutely rosy, Hemmingway dreams. I had started the climb by myself and with Marcia, soared to new heights. Now I am staring down a hole so deep and terrible I feel sick. I was guilty of an arrogance that just may cost me almost everything and destroy all my dreams, hopes and plans for the future for I cannot do this without Marcia. Whatever it takes, I will do all that I can to get away from the edge of the awful hole I am staring down right now. Both sides may feel they have the moral high ground. Both believe that they have behaved honourably but, right now, I am going to chuck as much at the problem as I can and bugger what anyone else thinks. It will be cheaper and miles better for me in the long run. Bloody Africans. I said I would marry her. Is the word of an Englishman worth so little nowadays? I guess not if one fails to show due respect and then caps it all by demonstrating one's mortality. If I had drowned, my legal spouse would have got everything.

And that just wouldn't have been fair. So who can blame Marcia's family for forcing me to do what I should have done ages ago? Read more!

All the Stags you see on this blog...

...and many more gorgeous examples are available at http://www.springgrangeclassics.co.uk/

It's just that they are all bloody right hand drive... Read more!

Mid Life Crisis continued...

It'll be known as 'Tom's Folly' I know.

I have been scanning the auction results, H&H, Brookes etc. and I still cannot find a car that would satisfy me as much as a well sorted Stag. I want four seats. I would like something lazy and effortless to drive and I would like an elegant car. I used to race but am now at the age where if my driver exceeds 100kph I get nervous (40kph in town). Last time I was in UK I was white knuckled and sweating just driving from Heathrow and onto the M25, only relaxing once I got north of Luton. They're all maniacs in England now and so desperately aggressive. I was a soldier by trade, the family always stuffed their intellectually challenged offspring into the military, in my case aged 15 (the more fortunate or dedicated of my siblings became architects and engineers). I have plied my trade on three continents but I was never so scared as when walking through Leicester (near which I was sent to finish school so that I could join the British Army) and seeing all the thugs that comprise our youth nowadays roaming the streets with complete disregard for their fellow citizens. As a young lad, I was once stopped by a constable and asked for my name. My response, 'Micky Mouse' earned me a good thrashing and engendered a renewed respect for the police. Sadly, in today's litigious society, such a swift and effective response is no longer an option available to long suffering law enforcement officers. My nervousness at the fast pace of life in Europe, however, does not mean that I would not enjoy cruising swiftly on an uncrowded Autobahn or, once the car arrives here, the coast road down to the excellent fishing of the Barro de Kwanza or that most amazing of drives, 30 odd kilometres of switchback curves climbing over 2,000 metres up the Serra de Lebas escarpment on the way to my farm, a route that rivals anything the Alps can offer.

I live in Africa but my family, what's left of them, live in Baden-Baden. It would have to be a pretty special car if, when parking in the Kurhaus carpark, I am to avoid the cold disdain of Teutonic aristocracy. And I do intend to tour Europe in the car before finally shipping it here. As my late father always advised me, an immaculately presented classic will always carry more kudos than any kind of modern offering. At the time I considered that as his excuse for running around in worn cars that reeked of dogs, Balkan Sobranie and garden fertilizer, pretty much like his suits. I understand what he meant now. So if modern cars fail to excite, and I am considered eccentric (at least) for wishing to invest 50K on a Stag, can anyone suggest an alternative? Read more!

Funeral Season

I first noticed yesterday afternoon. Perched on the side of my bed, the laptop on the desk, a position I adopt every day for hours, I was suddenly uncomfortable. I arched my back to stretch my spine and felt old. Transferring my concentration from the interminable reports I was writing, I did a mental systems check. Spine? It aches…sort of. Head? Not a headache, exactly, but a wooliness, a slight pressure in the temples and behind the eyes; like a hangover but not. Muscles? I can’t identify an individual muscle or group that hurts, I can stick my finger into my thigh and it causes no discomfort but, taken as a whole, they just don’t feel right. Temperature? Seems normal or is it a little bit warmer than it should be? My skin is cool, but it is also clammy and I am sweating even though the air conditioning is on and I feel chilly.

I must be tired, I guess. Six months ago, this site was a junkyard. The portion of the Railway Company of Luanda marshalling yard that was never used except for dumping its ferrous and, unfortunately, organic waste. Now it is a small power station producing 30 Megawatts, 20% of the capital’s overall requirement. To get production on line by the client’s target date, we worked the final 72 hours without sleep and stood there, dirty, bedraggled, sweaty and stinky as the cameras rolled and the Minister witnessed the switches being pulled for the first time. But that was over three months ago. I cannot still be feeling the effects of that. I have had plenty of sleep since then.

I came to this job straight from Uganda, already riddled with Bilharzia. Its debilitating effects are well documented but I received the treatment via DHL from Belgium over a week ago. Since then I have been feeling great. Can’t be that then.

I am being audited for the first time by head office. Operations, HSE and Finance, these three areas are being examined, picked over and dissected in detail. The tone of the final report will be a comment on my ability as a manager. Must be stress then. But the auditor is an ex project manager himself, very experienced. He has been all over the world. Instead of criticising how much money I have spent building and subsequently running the site, he is encouraging me to spend more. Apparently I need more computers, more vehicles, this is a hardship posting so we should all be entitled to more allowances. Every criticism (I have had a couple of diesel spills and the client has had loads) has been fair and well considered and immediately followed by a suggested solution. This is quite unlike any other auditor I have ever known. I always thought that auditors were the people that came along after the battle and bayoneted the survivors. This guy, a dyed in the wool, pragmatic Gordie who has seen and done it all, only seems to want to help me. I have, therefore, no reason to be stressed.

The auditor fancied prawns for dinner. It was Sunday and everywhere was closed but Marcia, my girlfriend, managed to find some and I cooked. The prawns looked, and by all accounts tasted, delicious but I had no appetite so after serving the crew, I went to my room to read.

I was woken by the shrill tone of my phone. I was fully dressed and stretched out on my bed. I fumbled for my glasses but by the time I had them positioned on my face and had the phone located, it had stopped ringing. Eleven missed calls. I looked at my watch, bleary eyed and aching all over. The watch swam in and out of focus. Three minutes to six in the morning I read. I checked the call register. Marcia had been ringing. But if it was already morning, where the hell did she sleep last night? I tried to return the call but got unavailable. Perhaps by now her phone battery was dead. Oddly, I did not care. The fact that she never came home should have worried me. The fact that she had tried to phone so many times should have worried me. The fact that I could not get through to her should have worried me even more. Instead, I realised that I was freezing and I switched off the aircon.

In an hour, I would have to get up to be ready for the auditor. The portion of my clothes that had been sandwiched between my body and the bed were soaked with sweat, as were the sheets and pillow. My teeth started to chatter. The pillow felt like a block of wood and the mattress was suddenly transformed into a mass of uncomfortable lumps. The sheets seemed gritty, as if I had eaten toast and carelessly contaminated the bed. I was thirsty but the water I drank from the fridge was too cold and tasted foul. My throat hurt as I tried to drink it. A painful spasm gripped my stomach and I headed for the toilet.

Locked in my own private cubicle of misery, I heard the container door open and Marcia call out.

‘I’m in here’ I gasped and for the first time wondered where she had been all night. Selfishly, I was more worried about the car. With the intimacy and frankness that only comes with living in close confinement with someone for years, she wrenched the toilet door open and looked at me with pity. ‘Still bad?’ a reference to the long running but, as I had assumed, now cured Bilharzia, ‘can I put a film on? Sorry I’m so late, I just wanted to see my Mum to bed’ she continued.

Of course, she had gone to her Aunt’s funeral but a film, at this time? Wasn’t she tired? I asked. Apparently not. I resigned myself to the fact that I had lost my last hour of rest and slumped down onto the bed.

‘How did it go?’

‘It was OK but Mummy is a bit upset’

‘I’m sorry about that, really I am’, and I did feel bad. Mai Ines is a very nice, if sometimes abrasive person but I do like her a lot, and felt for her at that moment. Let’s face it, there cannot be many men who can boast a mother-in-law who, when her daughter kicks up, suggests that the son-in-law is at fault becuase he doesn't beat her enough. I do not beat Marcia at all which is probably why her father thinks I am a softie.

Without taking her eyes off the screen she said, ‘you have malaria again’. An unconcerned, matter of fact observation, delivered in the same manner that a wife in UK would note that her husband is coming down with a cold.

Of course, the same, all too familiar symptoms. It’s getting to the end of the rainy season so there are large standing pools of water and the little bastards have had time to breed and are now looking for the blood they need to continue the species. It was malaria alright and I felt dreadful. Even if I took the pills immediately, they would take hours to kick in and, I looked at my watch, I had just six hours until I was expected to be on my feet and ready to go through the finances.

I looked at my watch again. Midnight. Midnight? But when I woke up it was a few minutes to six. Or, it dawned on me even if the sun wasn’t about to, around half past eleven if myopic eyes confuse the position of the hands of the watch. Bollocks.

I was awake now, the anaesthetic effect of sleep lost to me and Marcia’s film, Pan’s Labyrinth, deeply disturbing to a fevered and obviously confused mind.

And that is the thing about malaria. Its onset is insipient and easily confused with any number of other ailments or even just fatigue. Yet not treated quickly and effectively it kills more people in Africa than anything else including famine and all the brutal wars that characterise the continent. I at least can afford to have a bottle of Sulphate of Quinine handy, the sugar coated kind not the cheap locally available brands. I do not even have to endure the bitter taste that in a few days will return me to rude health. If, though, I have contracted malaria living as I do in an air-conditioned container, well fed and with access to knock down sprays and repellents, how many of my immediate neighbours living beyond the security fence in abject poverty, surrounded by green, stinking larvae infested lakes have succumbed? These, the very people most at risk and least able to afford to quickly treat the illness like I can?

When the pools left by torrential downpours dry out enough between showers, the neighbourhood kids set up bits of old scrap as goal posts in front of my site and play football, girls mixed in with boys. They run this way and that, charging barefoot after the stuffed and bound ball of plastic shopping bags which does for a football, laughing and shrieking and if a goal is scored, both sides jump up and down with the joy of innocent play and of life. I have seen their games so many times they are all but invisible to me now. Like the rest of the world then, by the end of this year's malaria season I can hardly be expected to notice that one or two of those bright eyed, shining little faces aren’t there anymore. Read more!

Clearly, a mid life crisis...

I have on my desk some papers from the bank. They were delivered today. The fact that they are now with me means that my house is exactly that. Mine. As a result, two standing orders that I have kept up for 25 years, one to the bank and one to my insurance company, have ceased. In a couple of weeks, I shall be 48 years old. Now I think that this happy coincidence merits a bit of a celebration and a healthy dose of self-indulgence. If, like me, a new car springs to mind as an obvious solution then, unless you are completely happy with the legislation choked designs on offer nowadays, no new car readily springs to mind. For a start, they all look pretty much the same, drive the same, and cost a small fortune. Is it an Aston, or a Ford? A Bentley or a VW? It is a credit to the designers and manufacturers that they have, in spite of the Nanny State, managed to maintain any kind of brand identity at all. Today’s cars are miles better and safer than they were and so much more efficient. And green too. Well so is my Dyson vacuum cleaner but even that is made in the Far East and no-one could call it sexy. It is a tool and, despite the marketing hype, so are most cars nowadays. The rest are fashion accessories. There are many who would not agree with me but in the spirit of indulgence that I grant myself, I allow licence to be a grumpy old sod. I cannot think of one new car that could excite me enough to make me go out and buy it.

I owned my last Stag in the early 80's when I was serving with the British Army in Germany. It only let me down a few times, usually points closing up over long journeys and only once seriously, when the plastic fan mounting ring split allowing the blades to flex sufficiently to carve up the radiator.

My gipsy lifestyle since has never allowed me to consider buying one again and to be honest, I had completely forgotten about them until now. Considering where I live at the moment, my friends are confident that I have finally taken leave of my senses by considering one again.

There will be purists among you who will be horrified at what I propose but please, bear with me. The Stag was a much-maligned car, its quick descent into relative obscurity more the fault of 70's British management than the concept itself and certainly not the fault of the glorious Michelotti design. No-one in Angola has ever heard of, let alone seen a Stag. In a country rich with oil and diamonds, the elite and emergent middle classes are keen to enjoy themselves now that the long running civil war is finally over. The streets, therefore, are choked with the latest top spec BMW's, Mercedes and Porsche Cayennes. Kids run around on expensive quad bikes and youths pull wheelies on the latest motorcycle exotica. It is all extraordinarily tasteless.

I was intrigued, therefore, when my Angolan driver spotted in amongst the photos I happened to be sorting out, a picture of my old Stag and was clearly impressed. I think he assumed that it was some new and exciting sports car, the sort of luxury carriage that every overpaid expatriate has waiting at home for him. Being only a few years old at the time the photo was taken, the car looked immaculate as, indeed it was. God only knows what has happened to it in the intervening 25 years. The thing is, though, untainted by any pre conceived notions or snobbery and ignorant of the model’s history, he just looked at the photo of a pristine Stag and said, ‘Wow!’


That evening, I surfed the web a bit and came across the site for Spring Grange Classics in Leicestershire. The following morning, armed with photographs of immaculate Stags culled from their site and a reawakened interest for the car, I pulled in a few more of my Angolan employees and asked them what they thought. To a man, they were impressed. One even went so far as to say that if I parked it outside Miami Beach (a very trendy beach bar and restaurant in Luanda where all the beautiful people go), I would end up walking home having been unable to resist the best of the undoubtedly numerous cash offers I would receive for it. My girlfriend, cosmopolitan and Belgium educated, dismissed it saying that she did not like old cars. So her opinion doesn’t count.

I could buy a restored Stag and import it to this country but its life span would be shorter than that of Jeremy Clarkson should he foolishly ever return to Alabama. Low octane fuel, boiling temperatures, choking traffic and road surfaces reminiscent of the moon in places, the car in its original specification would quickly expire. And I am sure that Stag cognoscenti would not thank me for ordering one of these rare cars into the field of battle that is Angolan traffic, for once here any expatriates, human or especially automotive, that die in the line of duty are buried where they fall. There would be no body bag big enough to repatriate a Stag’s remains. Its listing on the Triumph Stag register as MIA Angola would be its only memorial.

Clearly then, there would have to be method in my madness. The original engine, despite all the experience gained by specialists over the years, would never do for Angola. Suspension and brakes would need sorting; no low-slung silencer would survive the first pothole. Air conditioning would be essential. In this country the top only comes down in winter when it is dry and the sun is less likely to toast you to a crisp. In summer with all the heat, rain and humidity, without aircon you would steam like a breakfast kipper. Finally, no right hand drive car can be registered here so it would have to be left hand drive.

When the serious deficiencies of early Stag engines became apparent, desperate owners resorted to some pretty extreme measures to make the things reliable, one of which was the Rover V8 conversion. Now I remember some really horrible installations, Heath Robinson wiring and bloody great humps fibre-glassed onto bonnets completely destroying the svelte lines of the original design. Many would argue, with some justification, that if Triumph management had not been so parochial, this was the engine that the Stag would have had. Some further research turned up a specialist, RPI Engineering, who can supply brand new V8’s ‘ready to run’ and do exotic carbon fibre intake plenums. If they can squeeze 5.0 litres of motor along with all its intake systems under the bonnet of a Morgan sports car without chopping and welding the hell out of it, then they could most certainly fit one under the bonnet line of a Stag. Then I discovered a firm in Northampton that do BMW sourced limited slip differentials, subframes and disk braked hubs with appropriately upgraded suspension, ‘and how about a nice BMW automatic gearbox to bolt to the back of your Rover V8? A wise choice, Sir’.

I would like to have the interior refurbished in leather. No problem, there are countless specialists out there who can supply everything, all of it matching the colour of my choice. I am sure that Spring Grange could re-spray the body any colour I chose.

I was amazed. So few were produced, goodness knows how many are left on the road, yet there is a whole industry out there supporting the model. The only thing that I could not find, and I have to admit I only considered looking for this extremely unnecessary luxury as I was so flushed with my success thus far, was a kit to power the soft top. Even so, I would not be surprised to hear that someone has already found a way to do it.

Now I have written to Spring Grange Classics about this and will take their advice (and would be grateful for anybody else’s advice). Recognising that they will need to do a bit of careful and time-consuming research I have actually asked them to provide me with a quotation for producing the quotation to build the thing, if you see what I mean. The specification that I suggested, briefly, is as follows:

Left hand Drive
Air Conditioned
Blue Leather Interior and trim
Blue Wilton carpets
Metallic Silver paint
Dark Blue Mohair Soft Top
BMW disk braked hubs all round plus LSD diff and appropriate suspension mods.
BMW 4 speed auto gearbox
4.0/4.6 litre fuel injected V8

There may be, as I suggested at the beginning, a few howls of protest from the purists but I will get the car that I want. I will take a Stag and I will make it fit, not just for my purpose but for the environment in which it will operate. Think of it as one of those works rally cars that were chopped and modified so that they could compete under harsh conditions and are now so much more valuable than their ordinary equivalents. It will cost me the larger part of a Bentley Continental but I can assure you that I will look less of an ass driving into the embassy car park in a pristine Stag than I would do in something as tacky as the new Bentley. To be truthful, I might actually get to park in the embassy car park rather than having to tell my driver to keep driving my Isuzu 4WD round the block until the ambassador’s cocktail party finishes lest he actually sees me riding in the heap (thinking about it, I might tell Spring Grange to stick a couple of patriotic Union Flags on the wings of the Stag, that ought to clinch the deal). Never mind what the ambassador might think, although we should all give His Excellency’s opinions the grave respect they are due, I can’t wait to see the reaction at Miami Beach. Maybe Britain can once again export the best luxury Grand Tourer it ever produced nearly 30 years after production ground to its final, frustrating conclusion.

The thing is, I cannot be the only one who has suddenly discovered disposable income and now dances gaily down insanity beach. How many others are there like me, completely uninspired by today’s automotive designs and their faux retro offerings? Big car corporation marketing executives, take note.

Addendum:

I have come round to keeping the Stag as original looking as possible so the colour will be Carmine Red with a beige leather interior. Read more!

Jump on the bandwagon; it’s there for the taking.

Imnakoya laments the fact that with so many talented African artists, such a dubious initiative by a non-African can gather so much funding.

The black looks site describes the project as a ‘highly offensive, disgusting exploitation of African women’

The only report on this that I can find in the international press (a cursory internet search I have to admit) was on the blog of Peter Walker, a Guardian on line correspondent, whose article, ‘A Travesty of Beauty?’, made no informed comment and ended with a lame: ‘Brave and liberating or appallingly misjudged? Surely the question remains open.’ Perhaps Mr. Walker was merely setting the scene for informed debate.

The latest resourcing update for the World Food Programme in Angola makes for depressing reading. The requirement is for some $90 million dollars over the next two years. The biggest donors so far are the USA with just over $4.5 million followed by France with $3.6 million (the two countries with the most valuable oil production and exploration concessions in Angola), followed by Japan, the UN and Angola itself with donations of around $2 million dollars. Portugal, the former colonial power in Angola came in with a generous $200,000 and Norway with half that. That leaves a shortfall of nearly $65 million, or precisely 71.84% of what is needed.

Visit the websites of GOAL and other worthy charities, and you will find the same thing. WFP hand out food. Nothing complicated, no hidden agendas; until something better and more sustainable comes along, they will try and put sustenance into starving bellies. GOAL, from my experience, do something similar, although not on such a grand and well funded scale. They will try and provide shelter for starving and abused orphans; will provide clean water and health education, at the very least a sympathetic Irish shoulder to cry on. They all, though, are trying to dip into a pot that very definitely has a bottom.

With funding never likely to meet demand, one would imagine that only the most deserving projects would benefit from the largesse of government development programmes or altruistic corporations and individuals. Although sometimes harsh and often crude, it would not be unreasonable to assume that each proposal would at least in part be measured on its ‘cost to beneficiary ratio’, the idea of helping as many as possible per limited dollar expended. Being humans, however, means that no matter how hard we try to remain objective and dispassionate, emotion will always play a part in our decision making process. Emotion is a good thing. It is what distinguishes us from animals and makes us more or less civilised. Without it we would not have the desire to achieve, compassion, or love. It is also the weakness that the less scrupulous can exploit.

Imagine if, as a morally bankrupt individual, a person was able to identify a highly emotive and topical cause. Imagine if that person went still further and connected the first with some other cause equally current and just as emotive, its emotional appeal would accelerate the project proposal straight to the top of the bureaucrat’s in-tray.

I have no idea what Norwegian artist Morten Traavik was on when he had his ‘Eureka’ moment but whatever it was, it must have been good stuff. I can imagine him sweating it out in his sauna, ice-cold aquavit in one hand, a huge spliff in the other. Some lissome young lady swatting hot coals with the branch of a fir tree, when all of a sudden it occurred to him to link the landmine issue with the ‘empowerment’ of African women.

Traavik has managed to persuade enough people and organizations to fund a beauty pageant for female landmine victims, 'Miss Landmine 2007'. He even managed to get the Angolans to donate $15,000. His stated intention was to select one girl from each of Angola’s 18 provinces. In the end, he managed just ten in spite of the fact that he paid them for their services.

His intention, after an exhibition of his work soon to take place in Oslo, is to create a Cosmopolitan style magazine featuring the lucky girls posing with a variety of specially designed clothes and prosthetics. For whose benefit, one wonders? I cannot see the average Angolan amputee rushing out to buy the magazine; they are lucky if they can beg enough on the streets to be able to eat. Even the future of the original ten Miss Landmine’s is not certain. Traavik’s website clearly states in reference to the sustainability of the project, ‘…for the project to grow and develop, with or without the assistance of the original Miss Landmine team’.

Whichever way you look at it, the project does smack of cynical exploitation.

What concerns me though, is not so much the moral indignation that this project arouses, as the sheer waste of valuable funding. The project may well do some good. It will help to spotlight the inhuman horror of landmines; it will raise awareness of the victims, albeit amongst a limited audience; it will undoubtedly have earned for the ten girls greater self-confidence and no-one should blame them for accepting money to take part. But please do not try and convince me that this was the wisest use of scarce funding. Look at it this way. Who gains the most from this project in the long term? The ten girls, or the artist?

Another thing that worries me is the standard of photography. A child with a disposable Kodak could take better composed and lit photographs than the examples that Traavik has displayed on his site. Even the quality of his work is questionable.

I have no idea what this project will cost in the long term but it will be a significant amount. With all the serious and well-conceived proposals out there begging for funding, how is it possible that presumably sane donors decided to fund this project, a project that benefits so few and offends so many?

Mr Walker charitably provides the alternative interpretation of 'brave and liberating'.

'Plain daft' is the expression that springs to my mind.

I have a good idea for a project. It appeals emotionally to those that are interested in oppressed minorities, animal rights, gender issues and rightful ownership. It is called, ‘Land Rights for Gay Whales’. Read more!

La Guerre Oublié

Luanda, 1994

There were times when I wondered what the hell I was doing here. Tired, disillusioned, all I wanted to do was go home.



Then a Frenchman (or was he Belgian?) took this photo and gave it to me. Every time I felt ready to give up in despair, I would look at the photo and I would remember what it was I had to do. Keep going. I was only one of countless thousands that all over the world give of themselves in an attempt to stop the further suffering of innocents like this tragic little boy.

"It is amazing what reserves you can call on if you only know how to dig deep enough."

(Company Seargent Major Everitt Welsh Guards, Normandy Company, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst addressing a group of Officer Cadets) Read more!

A pretty lonely job...

Read more!

Don't mention the war...

Read more!

A different point of view

"That foolish wife who makes a slave of her husband, is after all known as the wife of a slave only! The wise wife makes a god of her husband and is herself called a goddess."

My girlfriend took a friend of hers to a play a couple of nights ago. She was very excited about it in the days leading up to the performance saying that it had been advertised on the radio and loads of people would be going. Apparently, it was all to do with the duties of a good wife. Could be a good plot for a satire, I thought.

She then went on to say that the play would illustrate a number of commandments to be observed by a good wife.

The commandments included such things as the requirement for the Good Wife to ensure that His clothes were all washed and pressed in time for His, presumably unpredictable, departure. That His food should be served on time (ready for His unpredictable return) and naturally be Haute Cuisine. A reminder that on the farm, it is the cockerel that crows; and also that in the case of an undisciplined mind, it is the body that suffers. That when He speaks, the Good Wife listens and obeys.

If this wasn't to be a satire, then I would positively encourage my girlfriend to go.

The last time I went to any sort of theatre in Africa was to a cinema in Quelimane, Mozambique. The film was about a group of Caucasians who were unfortunate enough to survive a plane crash in some Godforsaken jungle only to be subsequently roasted and eaten by the natives. So soon after the end of a bloody civil war widely acknowledged by the population as having been prosecuted by avaricious Caucasians, the film went down very well. As the only Caucasian in the audience, and well illuminated I might add by the reflected glow of the screen, I began to feel like one of those hobbled chickens I saw every day for sale by the roadside. Not an experience I would want to repeat by being the only male member of an outraged female audience if the play was not a satire. Instead I arranged to meet the girls at the Chinese restaurant afterwards.

Either way, satire or not, this play was going to be a window on Angolan society. If it were a satire, then it would mark a new step towards the emancipation of women in a male orientated society. If it weren’t, it would be a shocking endictement of the treatment of women in general. I was keen, therefore, to gauge the reaction of the girls.

My girlfriend thought it was brilliant.

‘But was it a serious play or a comedy?’

‘Oh, it was hilarious.’

‘But serious hilarious or just so stupid you had to laugh?’

‘It was funny, you know, funny.’

I turned to her friend.

‘They just roared.’

‘Roared?’

‘When the wife beating started, I couldn't believe it, the audience just roared with laughter.’ She continued, ‘It was bizarre.’

I should have gone myself, of course. Unless my girlfriend or her friend care to go into greater detail, I am still unsure of the real purpose of the play.

Still, it was great fun to see the pair of them, not outright feminists (but I am sure that had I said anything crass and sexist, one would have held me down while the other stabbed a chopstick in my eye), laughing about a play that graphically portrayed wife beating.

Odd isn’t it. If I had made light of wife beating, I would have suffered a particularly brutal form of acupuncture using any of the implements to hand on the restaurant table. Yet amongst themselves, the two girls were laughing. They could see the funny side of what to me is quite a dark and terrible thing. I did not see the play so don’t ask me what could possibly have been funny about it. Evidently, however, there must have been something that tickled them. Sitting at the table, though, and watching them chatter away, I realised that whites can joke about whites, blacks about blacks, homosexuals about gays and Catholics about Catholics and so on but if one was to cross out of his own group and laugh at a member of the other, he is a bigot, a racist, a homophobe. Angola may not yet have found anything to laugh about its colonial history and the horrors of the civil war but this, surely has to be a start. If they can laugh at what in Angolan society has always been set in stone, the right of the male to be master of his house, then maybe soon, they can start laughing at other things too. Culturally, that makes them more advanced than the old world. The life expectancy of a Frenchman walking into an Islington pub and taking the piss out of ‘Le Boefs’ would have been markedly less than that of a first world war fighter pilot. Would it have been possible to perform such a play in politically correct Britain?

It occurred to me that the march toward political correctness has done more to perpetuate the bigotry and resultant isolation of so many ‘marginalised’ groups than immigration quotas, the British National Party or neo Nazis ever could. Marginalised by whom? The very groups that through the legislation they have foisted upon us to protect ‘minorities’ mean that we will never see the likes of Dave Allen or Benny Hill again. When Lenny Henry spoke about ‘Snowflakes’ and ‘Honkies’, I was never offended, I laughed my cock off.

Rather than force us to like each other, which has always been a damn good way to ensure that we hate each other, why not encourage us to laugh at each other? If we can cross racial and cultural boundaries with tears of mirth in our eyes, who needs PC? Read more!

On Expats and Milton Keynes Man

I have to turn my attention to the Portofino Restaurant and adjoining Bush Bar.

Considering that Intels, Integrated Logistics, have to cater for a truly multinational clientele, they haven’t done that bad. OK, so the prices are pretty extortionate, for Nigeria that is, but think of the poor sods sweating their lives out in the Smoke. At least 40% of their salaries overtly gobbled up by the taxman and, since the peoples party came to power, God only knows what percentage scoffed up covertly. Just a cup of coffee needs the crinkly stuff, not the shrapnel.

I have no idea which eloquent individual pointed out that most men live lives of quiet desperation but whoever he was (and I am in the Bush Bar now, therefore, devoid of an internet connection that would allow me to check), he was bang on the nail. So how come these guys here have the gall to complain about £1.70 for a large scotch or £5 for a decent pizza? Especially when, for a decent tip, you can get the waitress thrown in as well?

Now don’t get me wrong, I do not necessarily approve of everything that I see around me but I have been around long enough to accept certain things as they are. The point that I am making is that for a lot of these guys, this is paradise and still they complain. If they have no money by the time they get home, wherever that might be, then that is because they have drunk deeply from the cup (big tips needed for excessive quaffing) but at least they go home with a gutful if not a wallet full. The poor bastard creaking under the strain of unbearable financial commitments merely to survive in UK has no choice. Deep joy for him is risking his wife’s wrath (thankfully they haven’t discovered Wahala in Milton Keynes yet) by stopping off at the closest ale house to the office at Marble Arch and sinking a few illicit pints before walking across the park to catch the train (always assuming that it turns up), arriving home, hours later, to a cold dinner, kissing the dog and kicking the kids, reading the mail (all marked ‘URGENT’, ‘PERSONAL’ and addressed to First Name, Last Name, Esquire, i.e. bills or bank statements, the latter seemingly favouring red ink) and then being expected to be a ‘good father’ (read school report, council child #1, sympathise with hockey injury sustained by child #2, you arrived late which is why youngest, child #3 is still not in bed and hyper active, so bath the little git and read story) while darling wife is on her fourth G&T and you haven’t even had a whiff of the malt and the fire has gone out ‘cos the darling wife has already decided it is too late and besides, logs are expensive and we’re economizing. Oh, and by the way, she tried to use her Selfridges card and it didn’t go through. And yes, she has a headache.

No wonder London’s green areas are filled with lonely, bitter old men (in their early thirties) with plastic gloves and pooper scoopers following some bloody under exercised mutt around and wondering what life is all about. Milton Keynes must be a compost heap by now.

No, let’s face it. There are some serious disadvantages to being an expat and doing the type of work that we do but, on the whole, it’s not bad. Going back to the UK taxman, I’d rather have my head tapped with an overgrown walking stick and be sat upon by a flatulent native for a few days while mosquitoes drain my blood than be literally sucked dry by the vampires that profess to be ‘elected representatives’. At least when I finally get back, headache and all (not to UK, I’m talking about Port Harcourt, or Cape Town or Belize City, anywhere I happen to be calling home at the time), I know exactly where I can go to find some caring young thing who has never heard of Paracetamol’s effectiveness as a contraceptive and will make me feel like a million dollars (however briefly) rather than be somebody with a marginally acceptable post code yet reduced to shoveling dogshit off the sidewalk. And still these bastards complain. Unbelievable.

So here I am in the Bush Bar. OK, there are cheaper places in town and I am planning the next acquisition, this time in São Tomé, so I really do not want to be quaffing too deeply (there are too many wild pig and game fish in São Tomé that would look better dressed and on my dining table) so I am watching the expenditure, albeit not as hard as Milton Keynes man. Let’s face it, though, if I run out of money it’s because I have been bloody stupid. MK man only needs an official letter saying his poll tax band has been redefined and the council official dealing with the case is an ex-government press officer, and he is fucked. Or it will be the interest on the Selfridges card that sees to him. Either way, he’s looking at a transverse walk off Blackfriar’s bridge with his suit pockets stuffed full of bricks while at the worst, I will wake up with the mother of all hangovers and an ex wife who hates me because I am the one not answering emails now. Read more!

Two fingers, Harley style

I was unable to write at all last night, as the chaps, and especially the VIP visitors that have descended upon us for a few days, seemed out of sorts with a TV that wasn’t working. Odd that, for when it was working, the chaps at least seemed to prefer the attractions of the Mosquito Bar to the repetitive output of satellite TV. Perhaps they felt duty bound to keep the VIP’s company for not one of them suggested a run ashore.

I decided, therefore, that I would try and hook the laptop and the computer projector up to the stereo so that we could all watch a film. The first hurdle was the variety of power points, none of which seemed suitable for any of the cables I had. My projector was fitted with a South African plug, something I realised I probably would not need again, so I lopped off the plug in order to replace it with an English one. This was when I discovered that the wires inside were coloured brown, greeny blue and white. Impossible to check how they were connected up inside the plug as it was one of these moulded affairs that was clearly designed to stop people like me messing with it.

OK. Is the greeny blue wire more green than blue, in other words, could it be the neutral cable? Or was it more blue than green, which would make it the negative cable? Or did the combination of colours bear no relationship whatsoever to any internationally recognised system of colour coding? I decided that brown was definitely live. No idea why, for there was no logical thought process allowing me to arrive at that conclusion. That left me with a 50/50 chance of getting it right, if I wasn’t already wrong that is. Reluctant to test the cable wiring on an expensive and correspondingly fragile projector, I asked Akim the house boy, (not the HR Manager, sadly) to fetch the kettle. He duly returned with a large, shiny catering sized chrome kettle. I plugged it in and keen to help, Akim switched it on while resting his hand on the metal surface.

Now I had often warned Akim about his almost incessant habit of mopping the floors, presenting as it did a slip hazard for the house guests. I do not think that in this case the slipperiness of the floor contributed to him falling writhing to the ground like an Ox with its throat slit as much as its moistness which, in contact with his bare feet, provided the perfect conduit to earth for the thirteen or so amps that flashed unexpectedly through his body. The golden rule of first aid when dealing with a victim of electrocution is to isolate him from the electrical source. This Akim had done for himself to spectacular effect by clearing the coffee table in a single bound propelled by involuntarily galvanised muscles. I have no idea what the language was that he resorted to in extremis as he unsteadily picked himself up from the floor, but there was palpable awe in his mantra. Given that his eyes were like saucers when they lit upon the kettle again, I am certain that his relationship with it in the future will never be entirely comfortable.

Satisfied that apart from a few bruises and a tingling arm he was otherwise undamaged, I swapped the cables over. Akim, he really is a good sport, ran down to the junction box at the corner of the street to reconnect the neighbourhood to its electricity supply. On his return, however, he seemed reluctant to assist me by performing the quick test again so we had to wait until a pleasant sizzling noise reminded me that I had forgotten to refill the kettle after Akim had emptied it so stylishly. At least I knew the plug was now wired up correctly. I gave the kettle back to Akim who, I observed with interest, wore his flip-flops to traverse across the lounge.

Next problem was this awesome box that formed the major part of the stereo system. Apart from a myriad of very bright and highly distracting flashing lights and welcome messages, there was a confusing abundance of connectors, knobs and buttons all housed in a menacingly angular black and chrome case. Now I am not one normally intimidated by electronic equipment of any kind but on the only other occasion I used this device, to play a CD, it took me a good ten minutes to work out how to get the CD tray open. When it came to getting the CD out again, I have to confess I resorted to judicious use of a table knife. The malevolence of the object knew no bounds. Eventually I decided that only one type of cable would do. It required the same connector at both ends, the type of connector one finds on Walkman headphones, and I did not have one. I was ready to accept defeat at this stage but the rest of the chaps, having been royally entertained so far, were reluctant to let the lack of a cable end their fun so soon. It is astonishing what these VIP’s have in their briefcases. In no time I was faced with a bewildering array of cables matched only by an equal number of suggestions as to where I might connect them. Happily a suitable cable was found and the head VIP exercised his right to select the film.

The Rick Moranis version of the Little Shop of Horrors is, I think, the best film rendition of this famously amusing play. Projected as it was across the entire width of the lounge, the image was about eight feet high. The sight of a giant vegetable, taller than a man, consuming the mortal remains of a dismembered dentist evidently left quite an impression on the collection of house staff that had assembled on the patio to watch the film through the French windows. Glancing from the darkened room I saw a row of dumbstruck faces and popping eyes garishly illuminated by the reflected image on the wall. I suppose they look at plant life now with the same superstitious respect that I did as a young boy after seeing ‘Day of the Triffids’. At least ‘Audrey II’ was not as mobile as the Triffids even if it was far more voluble towards the end. ‘Feed me Seymour, feed me now! Must be Blood! Must be Fresh!’ and that classic song, ‘Sure looks like plant food to me’. I can think of a few people that look like plant food to me too.

It was seeing that film for the first time that made me go out and buy a Harley Davidson. The sight of Steve Martin hopping off his classic Harley and it parking itself by the kerb was just too cool. Even the fact that his character in the film was a sadistic maniac didn’t detract from the obvious rebellious connotations of black leather jackets, V Twin motorcycles and a disdain for helmets. Constrained by the etiquette and tradition of a British Army officer’s mess, I longed to let my hair down, even if at the time it was only two centimetres long and if left to its own devices would stick up rather than hang down. Snorting his own personal supply of Nitrous Oxide, he was always going to ‘have me a snort of Gaaas, I’m really going to enjoy this one….’ while Rick Moranis fumbled ineptly for his revolver. Well I had a gas on my Harley. The damn thing had no brakes worth a damn and on a wet road you could get through half a rosary before bringing the thing to a halt. It had the turning circle and manoeuvrability of a fully laden tanker and you could only lean it into a corner about three degrees before a shower of sparks reminded you that it had grounded again. At least it wasn’t like my Ducati. That would lean over so far that if you absent mindedly left your foot under the gear lever ready for the change up, the approaching road surface would force an unexpected, definitely frightening and, in one case, disastrous and very painful gear change. With the Harley, though, nothing happened quickly. Even losing control of it on an icy road in Germany and falling off it was a leisurely affair, the ‘bike signalling well in advance its inability to stay upright followed by an almost apologetic slow motion capitulation to gravity. Ample time for me to ensure that nothing vital to me, like a leg, was left in the way of over two hundred kilograms of Milwaukee steel on its way to crushing contact with unforgiving tarmac. That ‘bike was a hoot. Whereas on the Ducati, I would insert metal pegs into my knee sliders to leave a trail of incandescence as my friends and I clawed our way round the fast curves of the Harz mountains (such youthful hooliganism), the Harley, with a lot less sphincter constricting effort, would leave a far more impressive pyrotechnic wake as I steadily abraded the side stand kick tab on one side and the lower exhaust mounting bracket on the other. My old mate Dirk went one better. He fitted footplates to his Harley and in no time at all had them impressively chamfered to fifty per cent their former mass. Purists would decry such abuse of an American Icon but they’re missing the point. The very soul of a Harley was borne out of a refusal to buckle under an enforced adherence to rules, someone else’s idea of the norms and conventions of society. It gave a sense of freedom, of prison shackles cast asunder. An icon indeed, but one ridden by iconoclasts. A real gas. Read more!

Driving Woes

I have a new driver. Actually, I have had two new drivers so far. Big Paul, my minder during my first tours in Nigeria has been reassigned to some other manager for fear that my final departure at the end of the contract will result in him being perceived as surplus to the manning requirement.

After Paul I had Cletus. An unfortunate name that, especially for a man, for no matter how careful one enunciates the word, it sounds unnervingly close to ‘clitoris’. Or perhaps that is just me. Anyway, Clitoris, I mean Cletus, has a heavy right foot. He thinks nothing of bowling the car along at eighty to a hundred clicks weaving his way from one side of the road to the other, threading the car through traffic as predictable as a menopausal woman. Cletus does not need to see daylight. The merest glimpse of dawn’s early morning half light is sign enough of the tiniest gap into which he launches his car. Visions of someone carelessly stepping into his line of fire and being catapaulted over the bonnet, roof and boot of the car leaving the inevitable one flip-flop lying in the road invaded my consciousness every time I rode with him. He never bumped into anything, however, and his vocabulary was extensive and varied enough to leave other road users no doubt as to where they fitted into the feeding chain; as well as supplying the distraction of seemingly endless entertainment for an otherwise nervous passenger.

Now I have Mba, pronounced ‘Oompah’. He is the complete opposite, and we are talking extremes here. The other day, a seemingly healthy Cletus developed a debilitating and, frankly, quite distasteful skin condition requiring his immediate relief from all duties. In other words, there was no way on earth that I was to be confined in close proximity with a man who appeared to be involuntarily divesting himself of his outer layer faster than a decomposing reptile.

We all know people who somehow or other have ended up in professions completely unsuited to them. I, for example, should have been an artist. A trendy lefty, yoghurt knitting extremist wearing pullovers made from recycled McDonalds cartons and daubing canvases with a variety of indescribable media and getting a government grant for doing so. Instead, I am in the security business. Mba is such a man. To end up a driver, he must have had an influential uncle who, deep down, really hated him. Let’s face it, if you want to get rid of someone, a hopelessly inept relative that your sister keeps bugging you to help, arrange for him to be a pilot. And if you hate him enough, you will still be able to sleep at night and not think of the ninety or so innocent souls who crashed into oblivion with him.

Well maybe Mba’s uncle didn’t hate him that much, or didn’t have enough influence to make him a pilot, so being a driver was the next best thing. Mba is never going to run anyone over. He isn’t going to lose control of the car at high speed and leave me smeared along the Aba Expressway. No. He, his car and anyone unfortunate enough to be in it, will one day become a bonnet mascot for some over-laden articulated lorry with no brakes that Mba, oblivious to his surroundings, has pottered in front of at twenty kilometres an hour while staring at something that everyone else would recognise as the speedometer and him wondering why the numbers go so far beyond the needle. Instead of visions of cart-wheeling roadside vendors, I now have nightmares of being borne screaming on the front of some bloody great truck all the way to Onne Port to be found lying face down on the dockside with ‘OVLOV’ stamped on my back. When I say ‘found’, I am assuming, of course, that someone would actually notice a partially dismembered and obviously discarded ‘Oyibo’ in a place like Onne.

Driving with Mba in traffic is rather like being on a boat in a fast moving and turbulent river. Only this boat has its engine running in reverse so even though the current is carrying us forwards, all the flotsam and jetsam sweeps past us around the stern and close along the sides before being swept ahead on the current. I have this unsettling feeling that I am going backwards relative to my immediate surroundings. This in itself is bad enough as it goes against the grain in the competition that driving in heavy traffic inevitably becomes, and increases the frustration of not being in control that every passenger feels. Worse is the fact that our sedate progress is accompanied by an almost incessant blaring of horns from behind. I used to like driving with the window open. I would gladly sacrifice the comfort of air-conditioning in order to avoid the sensation of being forced to ingest the foul biological output of an unwashed driver. With Mba, though, every angry road warrior that finally manages to squeeze by him hurls a variety of blood curdling abuse clearly culled from Cletus’ extensive repertoire through my open window. If they can emphasise their indignant rage by clopping me on the arm with a bit of hose or electrical flex, so much the better. Mba wisely keeps his window closed. I do the same now but go one stage further. I usually close my eyes as well. Read more!

Stab the Dealer

Warri is an interesting place by all accounts and it sits slap bang over the top of a huge reservoir of hydrocarbons. This should make it a very rich area. After all, the oil companies have been there pumping the stuff out for years so all that employment and money coming into the area should have done some good, right? Sadly, the answer is: no.

A long time ago when Nigeria was created by the casual stroke of a pencil on a map spread out on some regal dining table recently cleared of venison and quails eggs (or Paté de Fois Gras and Chablis, must read Thomas Pakenham again), the territories now collectively known as Nigeria were home to over a hundred distinct ethnic groups. Around Warri, there were three main groups. One were farmers, another group hunters and the last fisher-folk. Since actual ownership of land was as alien to them as having only one God (or wife, can’t remember which) until the British came along, apart from the occasional scuffle, there wasn’t too much trouble. Or perhaps there was but let’s face it, if it wasn’t reported in the Times, it never happened. When the Brits turned up, among other things (such as small pox, syphilis and religion) they brought education. Only one of these three groups took up the offer, the Itsekiri, oddly enough the smallest tribe, so hardly surprising they hooked up with Big Brother pretty damn quick. The long and the short of it was that being educated, they came to dominate the administration and, after independence in 1960, it was they who formed the state administration (and had higher than normal rates of skin lesions, venereal disease and were all Anglicans). Again, this wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem but for Oil. Or, more importantly, the filthy lucre that can be made anywhere where Oil is to be found.

Pretty soon, the companies recognized that they had no choice but to contribute to the local economy one way or another. In Warri, it was to the Itsekiri administrators that Development Aid and Social Help (DASH) was paid. Naturally, the Ijaws, the biggest tribe in the area and the fourth largest in Nigeria, and the Urhobos, a medium sized tribe but dominating the Warri mainland (the Ijaws are nomadic riverine folk), felt that they were losing out. The result? Ethnic clashes that were sparked by the tiniest little incident. If it were confined to the locals bashing each other’s heads in, then I suppose the oil companies would not be so concerned. Or they would be concerned, as individuals but, corporately, what could they do about it? The trouble is that the aggrieved groups, the Ijaws and the Urhobo, take it to the multi-nationals. Rig invasions and hostage taking are common. Rig managers joke that when it happens, they take them straight to the kitchens and let them gorge themselves. Ok, they were making light of a serious situation but the fact remains, some of these communities are starving. None of the development aid appears to filter down to their level. It seems to them (the starving ones, not the rig managers) that the only way that they can get even a little of what they see as their fair share is to extort it one way or another from the multi-nationals. If that means lifting the odd expat or two or holding a whole rig and its crew to ransom, then so be it. They (the multi nationals) all pay up in the end so I guess for the natives it’s a tactic worth employing.

For the expat whose head has just been introduced to the heavy end of a Mkpara (a sort of walking stick with a bloody huge knob on the end,) and then been dragged stunned into the bush to be sat upon for however long it takes his employer’s to decide to cough up, (bearing in mind, the persons doing the ‘sitting upon’ have just wolfed down a ton and a half of rations and so much rich food at once? Well, I leave it to your imagination) it must be a fairly traumatic experience and not one the average sane person would want to repeat. I mean, I know that they are all paid ridiculous salaries and it is all tax free but there are limits. Spend a few days contemplating the mysteries of the native digestive system while being eaten alive by mosquitoes and even the attention of a UK tax man (persons expelled from the Nigerian police force for being too extreme) would be a welcome alternative.

Just caused a little Wahala of my own. Chap can get jolly hungry hunched over a keyboard typing away and since I was in the middle of explaining Warri I didn’t want to lose the plot by spending more hours sitting in traffic on my way back to the canteen. So I decided I would try, for the first time, the culinary delights offered by Mr Bigg’s, a local and fairly widely spread chain of fast food emporiums. Technically, we are not supposed to walk for security reasons, why else go to all the trouble to give us cars and drivers? Actually, I am convinced that a significant proportion of expat managers have lost the use of their legs entirely. Shareholders should know that half of what is booked as Driver Overtime is for the luxury of having a driver and car sitting outside the manager’s house on the compound so that, when the moment he finally feels peckish arrives, he can climb into his car, be driven one hundred and twenty five yards to the Portofino Restaurant, eat his meal, book it to expenses and then be driven home again accompanied by the waitress (also a bookable expense) before some hours later finally releasing the driver (oh, and give this young lady a lift home as well, there’s a good chap). But as Mr Biggs is only a few hundred yards away from the office, I thought that a little fresh air would do me good so I decided to walk. Besides I would like to keep the use of my legs a little longer. I had Big Paul to keep an eye on me as well, don’t forget. Now if I tell you that the colours on which Mr Bigg has based his marketing strategy are bright red and yellow and that all the scripts used in his advertising material are in some cartoon font from Corel Draw you should get the idea on which famous catering company he has based his corporate identity.

Nigerian’s I have decided, by the way, look upon queuing the same way as they do driving. It is a blood sport.

Mr Bigg’s may look like (you know who) but the service is even slower and the staff have honed contempt for the client to a fine art. At least Mr Bigg doesn’t waste time giving his staff stupid little badges with gold stars so that customers can instantly recognise those with a true gift for pissing off poor old Joe Public. There is no need, they are all equally adept. Mr Bigg has, however, succeeded where (you know who) hasn’t. He has discovered how to make rubber and cardboard taste nice and his meat and chicken pies are really quite outstanding. Now in Nigeria, it seems that it is perfectly OK to shit and piss in the street, throw your rubbish into it, including the wife and kids because of the Wahala she gave you last night, even torch your neighbour’s house simply because five miles away somebody you never knew (but was from the same tribe as you) was killed by somebody else you never knew (but came from the same tribe as your neighbour). But, stroll down the road eating a meat pie and strewth! Thought I’d caused a bloody riot! Apparently, it is just not done for a gentleman to eat in the street. OK, I know that holds for most other civilised countries as well, with the exception of the country where (you know who) comes from, but in a country where just about anything you can think of except safe driving goes on in the street I hardly expected to offend anyone by consuming one of Mr Bigg’s fine meat pies in public. All goes to show, if your driver says that you really should sit down inside Mr Bigg’s and eat yer meat pie, then that’s what you should do. You do need razor sharp senses, though, when these guys are trying, in their own inscrutable way, to give you some advice. Instead of telling me what would happen if I ate outside, all he did was suggest that it might be better for me to eat inside. The mistake I made was not to ask, ‘Why?’

Back to Warri. Just recently, the trouble flared up again. Somebody that nobody knew got slotted by somebody else that nobody knew only they were from different tribes, this time the Ijaw and the Itsekiri. Or was it the Urhobos and the Ijaws? Who knows, all that mattered was that everyone suddenly went around torching their neighbour’s houses (probably tossing a few wives onto the bonfires as well, after all, a big wahala is a big wahala and mustn’t be wasted), which meant there were more people that nobody knew killed by a lot more other people that nobody knew and more houses were torched and so it went on, the death toll steadily rising. And it would have carried on if President Obasanjo hadn’t become concerned at the loss of revenue as one multi-national after another cleared out pretty damn sharpish like (sorry, if His Excellency hadn’t become concerned at the appalling and unnecessary loss of life. Still haven’t got my work permit yet, got to be careful) and sent in a load of extra police and troops to really shoot the place up, causing even more loss of life until eventually they all ran out of ammunition. Or beer, I don’t know which but it stopped anyway. Now, in the affected areas, and I have to say, we really are only talking about highly localized patches spread around a huge area, you can’t move twenty yards before running into a police, then an army checkpoint. Given the piles of empty beer bottles and spent cartridge cases that you have to weave around, this makes for very slow progress. At least there is a form of peace at the moment. There is a curfew from 6pm to 6am during which time the security forces can practice their marksmanship skills on empty beer bottles or any soft objects desperate enough to venture into the open (usually husbands caught in the wrong bed by curfew and trying to get to the right bed to avoid Wahala, and expatriates who are recognizable not just because they light up well at night but because by that time they are definitely legless and being driven).

What this means for the companies that remain behind is that they have to employ ever more sophisticated security measures. What were already small armies of military and police units grow to battalions with more firepower than a medium sized state. All this costs money, vast amounts of it. What costs cannot be hoisted onto the company affected are, presumably, borne by the state although, believe me, companies are forced to pay the lion’s share. And still expatriates are kidnapped and production severely curtailed if not shut down altogether. Who loses? Everybody.

The companies are taxed to within an inch of the bottom of their purses as it is. With so much revenue going to the state, how can it reasonably be expected that a company must now provide all the infrastructure and social services that are normally the responsibility of the state? Surely it is enough that they employ a reasonable number of local workers under accepted terms and conditions and pay them on time? Why should the company be further taxed by having to provide a replacement for the host country’s social security, medical and welfare systems? They’re oil companies, not a national health service. They find and produce oil for profit, they are not civil engineering companies there to build roads and schools for free. Having entered into mutual exploration and production sharing agreements for which the host state receives its royalties, is it not the responsibility of the state to provide adequate security? Instead, companies do contribute and allow themselves to get involved in all sorts of local initiatives none of which would be available to the population of countries such as the UK or US of A, and certainly not in Russia. In any other country, if you get a job, your employer is not interested in how you get to work, just make sure you turn up on time. If you can’t, they’ll employ someone else who can. Here, unless transport is laid on, the offices and plants would be empty. And it is unbelievable trite to say that there is no effective public transport system so an employer is duty bound to provide the service. Rubbish. No Nigerian company does so. If they can get to church three times a week, the football match every Saturday and to all the bars and discos that burst with clientele every night, they can bloody well drag their carcasses to work under their own steam. Instead the companies provide the services required to improve the lot of their employees and indirectly the local community and provide much higher than average conditions of service. That is why everyone wants to work for them. So with all the fighting and banditry in an around Warri, the companies lose out as costs surge, production falls away and profit disappears.

Eventually, the effect on the bottom line is unbearable and the company pulls out or severely reduces the size of its operation. Its people are told to go home or are laid off. There are no more social projects, no more assistance. It is the people who suffer. Directly those who lose their jobs and, indirectly, all those who benefited from the significant proportion of the population who were employed and injected cash into the local economy. Not so long ago, a multi-national drilling company in desperation sold off its onshore drilling operations in the delta, the hardest to protect from the criminal activities of local community elements, to a Nigerian company which promptly laid off over half the bloated workforce and stopped paying the ‘ghost’ workers, those employees from the local communities that the multi had been forced to employ to maintain ‘quotas’ but who only ever turned up to work on pay day. Among those laid off will have been some good, honest and hardworking individuals whose only crime may have been to belong to the wrong tribe.

The state suffers too as revenues inevitably collapse. Although it tries to push off as much of its own responsibilities as it can upon the shoulders of the unfortunate multi-nationals, a tactic for which it gleefully accepts the support of bleeding heart liberals, it too faces rising costs for policing, not only the criminal activity but the rising discontent among its voters. As a result, it is not only the criminals who suffer under the blunt tool of state security, it is the population whose freedom of speech and right of assembly is curtailed under the jack boot of oppression.

A vicious circle, then, the blame for which can be laid firmly at the door of institutionalised corruption. The multi-nationals are an easy target. They are portrayed as rapacious conglomerates, conning the poor, ill educated leaders of developing countries into grossly unfair exploration and production agreements. Excuse me. Are these the same poor, ill educated leaders whose bank accounts have telephone number balances in their numerous offshore accounts? The same leaders who use state resources to brutalise their opposition and then go on holiday by private jet to their villas in Europe which are secured using host country security resources at the cost of the taxpayer? Those leaders? And if anyone suggests that the criminal activity in the Delta region is not institutionalised corruption, they are fooling themselves. A little while ago, an expatriate was kidnapped from a supply vessel anchored a couple of miles offshore. The security officer on board the security vessel went ashore to try and negotiate with the kidnappers. There being no mobile phone network there, he took a Thuraya phone with him and offered its use to the kidnappers so that they could seek guidance during the negotiations with whoever it was that was responsible for the kidnapping. Thuraya phones, as do all mobile phones nowadays, have a very useful function. It is called the ‘call register’. A check of the number dialled revealed it to be that of the Special Advisor on Oil and Gas of the State Governor’s office.

A suppressed population is in no position to clean up its government’s act. The world needs oil and all its by products if we are to continue to enjoy the standard of living to which we have become accustomed. We need the multi-nationals to push into these often awful areas, to find and produce the product. Given the salaries they need to pay ordinary, sane folk to abandon their families back home and risk being kidnapped and beaten up, even killed in some pretty inhospitable places; the enormous costs involved in developing the new technologies required to extract an ever dwindling resource; the enormous financial risks to which they are exposed, why can’t they be allowed to turn in a decent profit? Why should they suffer criticism from the foaming-at-the-mouth vitriol pushed out by so many different pressure groups? Organisations like Global Witness provide a valuable service in many instances. They do alert an otherwise lethargic and indifferent public to some pretty awful crimes against humanity but, occasionally, like Green Peace, they appear to go off the rails a bit.

The United States has, perhaps, the toughest anti-graft laws in the world. It is hard to understand, certainly by a casual observer such as myself, how such laws will fairly and equably be enforced when its own government, and state appointed, therefore, hardly impartial legislator, depends wholly on the patronage of the very organisations most likely to be tempted to resort to graft. How can the developed world criticise the apparent greed of third world leaders when scandals such as Oil for Food and the obscure process by which contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq were awarded plaster the broadsheets? It may surprise some, but these poor, ill-educated third world leaders can read and sit confident in the knowledge that most understand the moral of throwing stones in glass houses. While most of us are not so morally bankrupt as many high government officials and presidents of all nationalities, I defy anyone to put their hand on their heart and say, if there was no chance of retribution whatsoever, they would not be tempted to dip their hand in the till every now and again. It is just that these people have a very big till and are obviously using shovels rather than their hands.

With a playing field the surface of which resembles more the Mourne Mountains than a billiard table, any multi-national who hopes to provide a return on investment for its shareholders will inevitably, with so many corrupt players in the field, be faced with the choice of retiring from the game or indulging in a bit of creative accounting to cover those consultancy fees, facilitation payments and signature bonuses. Transparency is obviously a good thing. I for one, however, would not thank Transparency International or Global Witness for trashing my pension plan by persuading the multi-national in which I had invested to earn the ire of a country containing its significant investment by opening up its books to the scrutiny of the world, and, more importantly, its competitors. I would rather stick my head in the sand and just hope that the problem would go away of its own accord.

The problem with today’s litigious society is that there must always be a guilty party. For someone to be guilty, there must be a weight of compelling evidence sufficient to condemn them. The compilation of this evidence will require, especially in this case, some pretty skilled investigation the course of which will be impeded at every step or, some fortuitous disclosure. If someone is found guilty then, naturally, punishment follows. Knowing this, anyone even remotely implicated in such questionable business practices, either directly, indirectly or merely by association will most likely do what any other, normal person would do. Keep their mouths shut. In the meantime, the game carries on and tyrants can continue to subject their citizens to awful privation in between European holidays, the population around Warri will continue to be subjugated to the will of the warlords and I can sleep at night knowing that I can fill my car in the morning and my pension will pay out.

Rather than try and expose what is already, to anyone with a bit of common sense, a self-evident fact; rather than waste a lot of time trying to put shackled bodies in the dock; why not have a go at a system that requires a political party to sell its soul to any devil with spare cash and an agenda in order to survive?

No one likes to play with a stacked deck of cards. Rather than attack the multi-nationals, direct a bit of attention towards exposing the hypocrisy of the governments involved. It is their foreign and domestic policies that force the game and dictate the rules. Don’t dig at the players who cheat a bit. Stab the dealer. Read more!

Mills and Boon present...

Hot Luanda Nights! (Part I)

I was sitting at my desk, bored as hell when the call came through. After hours of watching rain course down the glass fronted façade of the goldfish bowl they called an office, lethargy had really set in and I let the phone ring for a bit.

Probably only a demand for an overdue time-write sheet and I certainly wasn't in the mood for accounting for what the hell I'd been up to all last month. Mind you, if I didn't do something, I wouldn't get paid. Avarice rinsed away idleness and I stabbed the speaker button.

'It's about that crap you wrote last week,' the threatening gravel of the editor's voice was unmistakable.

'Er, what crap?' I enquired tentatively.

'Berk! How much of your drivel have I printed recently? The stuff about expats in Africa.'

Ah, I remembered that piece......

'More and more expatriate fun seekers than ever are flocking to Luanda's sun kissed white beaches to enjoy tequila clear waters and no tax codes. Ears ringing with promises of idyllic lifestyles, hot and cold running maids, luxury transport and duty free everything, new arrivals, eyes bright with anticipation, sweep through the brash modernity of Luanda's plush International Airport eager to immerse themselves in paradise.....'

One of my better pieces that. A rehash of an old article I'd found in some US rag, a dose of imagination..... sorry, 'artistic licence' and five minutes scribble in the saloon of the Jolly Farmer and I'd got the boss off my back.

Until now.

'What about it then?' I demanded.

If the bugger was going to give me a hard time I'd go down fighting.

'I want you to go there'

'Go to Angola! You must be effin' mad, there's a bloody war on in case you hadn't noticed,' I was bolt upright in my chair by now, 'and besides, I haven't had me jabs,' I was beginning to sound petulant.

'Bollocks to yer jabs, it's them that'll need the jabs after you've been there. The war is over and I want you out there fast,' and he went on to explain how my five minutes of beery literary output had provoked a bit of consternation in some circles, the idea that overpaid expats were living it up while all around them kids were starving to death and getting shot and bombed and suchlike. Apparently there were British companies out there and I was to find them and expose their lack of social awareness and appalling absence of humanity.

'Oh that's nice', I mustered as much sarcasm as my fluttering stomach would allow, 'I have to go and risk my neck so you can be seen as the editor of the rag that made the multi's feel suddenly all guilty and change their ways!'

As usual, he demonstrated a complete disregard for my feelings and two days later I flew Aeroflot, via Moscow, to Luanda.

Four days later I actually arrived.

'I had the chance to join an American Multinational' said one lotus eater when I finally caught up with him sitting on the terrace of his luxury villa in the residential complex next to the airport, 'but when I applied to join this company and got the job it was, well, you know, a lifetime's dreams fulfilled.'

He smiled wistfully as the window panes shook and an Antonov hauled itself slowly into the sky, gentle plumes of kerosene fumes competing with the sweet smell of the quaint little bairro just visible beyond the barbed wire security fence.

'No,' he sighed, 'I wouldn't have it any other way' and he motioned to his almond eyed maid for another gin and tonic. I flapped my hand in response to her enquiring look to decline yet another of these monstrously potent mixtures, after all, it was only ten in the morning.

As she gracefully manoeuvred her lithe torso in through the French windows and between the expensive furniture beyond, her small feet made no sound on the lush Persian carpet. The effect of her gliding was enhanced as her diaphanous dress pressed against her body and appeared almost transparent when dappled by the rays of sunlight that penetrated the lush green foliage surrounding the terrace. Was there a hint of something more in his gaze as his eyes tracked her form until she disappeared into the large and airy drawing room?

Dressed in a Thai silk shirt, colours redolent of the tropics, linen slacks and Gucci loafers worn without socks, he looked every inch the young man made good. Nice to see they employed ethnic minorities as well, I thought. Aware that his furtive interest had been noted, he grinned disarmingly and replaced his Ray-ban aviator sunglasses to confound the frankness of his dark eyes.

'Look,' he suddenly leaned forward, 'A chance like this comes along once in a lifetime and I'm jolly well going to enjoy it to the full'. He reclined luxuriously into the soft cushions of his planter's chair, 'It's just a pity the job's only for five years, a man could get used to this!'

His English was good, very good, but I could not place the accent. I'd heard that the company, although English, had trawled round the world looking for applicants.

The driveway was dominated by the massive bulk of a top-of-the-range Toyota Land-Cruiser, its metallic maroon paintwork reflecting the warmth of the surrounding countryside. From the just visible headrests I could see that the interior was all soft leather and I could imagine the comforting warmth of wood veneer finishes and tactile switchgear. The stereo was probably awesome.

His maid returned bearing a tall crystal glass. Ice clinked gently as slim fingers, moist with condensation delicately placed the drink within his reach. She was, I have to admit, breathtakingly beautiful with artificial hair cascading around smooth, ebony shoulders. With a little dental work she would be perfect.

The Antonov returned, one of its propellers wind-milling uselessly. It was so low that I could clearly see the pilot waving. I waved back and then the moment was gone.

Antonov? Didn't I read somewhere that they had been banned? Must be one of those exemptions people keep talking about. I shrugged and turned back to my new friend.

The Antonov nearly made it across the thresh-hold of the runway. The resounding cacophony of aluminium being torn by red, heat baked earth made further speech temporarily impossible. Reaching into his glass he plucked an ice cube and gently lobbed it into the sapphire blue of the swimming pool. Like memories of London smog it dissolved quickly in the blood warmth of the water, expanding ripples the only evidence of its existence.

'What about the family?' I continued when the sound of screaming had subsided to just the soothing crackle of flames consuming grass roofs. I didn't know if he had a family or where they were but I imagined them sitting in lonely isolation somewhere called home.

'Yeah, the family.' He absentmindedly twisted his gold signet ring, a large logo tastefully engraved on an inch wide disk of black onyx. 'It would've been nice to have them here but, she has her job and the kids are at school.'

He fell silent and I imagined him considering the one downside to his enviable existence. Brightening quickly, he shook himself out of his reverie and gave me a flash of perfectly even teeth, 'But I'm lucky see, 'cause my wife's happy when I'm happy!'

I took in all around me and tried to imagine his spouse jumping for joy in Home Counties traffic. Couldn't see it myself.

'Isn't it time you went to work?' I enquired, feeling slightly uncomfortable as the maid, having slowly unwound her dress within my field of vision now lay basking in the sun next to the pool.

'Relax, I don't do my shift 'til next week, I think I'm doing the TAAG flight on Thursday but can't be sure. The interpreter will let me know, now there's a doll!'

He winked at me knowingly before taking a long, luxurious pull at his drink.

The maid was now pouring suntan lotion between her breasts, and a small pool of amber liquid glistened like honey in the sun. Slowly she smoothed it into her skin, fingers tracing under the flimsy material of her top. A bead of sweat gathered momentum down my back. My mouth was suddenly very dry, I wished I'd taken the offer of another drink.

'Wait 'til you see her friend!' He murmured provocatively. I started and tried to regain my composure, certain that I looked guilty as hell.

'It's OK, you can look as much as you want, that's what they're there for!' He chuckled, 'You English are so stiff but you soon change. They all do.'

This was more like the stuff the boss wanted but I would explore that later.

'So the money's good then?' I continued.

It's a good company to work for,' he admitted, 'they really know how to look after their people, they're not cheap like some of the companies here. I get three, no four times what I used to get. I've bought one house and rented it out and now I'm buying another one.'

Christ! I thought, I can't even manage the mortgage payments on a grotty flat in Brixton and some bloody ex Cummins bloke is rolling in it. This was starting to look better and better.

'Anyway,' he levered his body out of the cushions, 'it's been nice talking to you but I promised my wife that I would take her to lunch.'

Now I was confused.

'Wife? I thought she was, well, back in England or wherever you come from!'

'England?' he looked at me strangely, 'my wife isn't in England!'

'You said that it would be nice to have the family here but couldn't because your wife worked and the kids were at school!'

'Exactly.'

'But don't they live here?'

'Of course not, this is the boss's house!'

'Well who are you?'

'Me? I'm his driver!'


To be continued..... Read more!

Stop talking Rot!

I seem to be bloody popular this evening. This is about the fifth time that someone has knocked on my door to engage me in conversations on topics as varied as the effects of American foreign policy (significant) to the party political doctrine of UNITA in Angola (what doctrine?). What am I, a research journalist on the Economist Magazine? They are all part of the Nigerian management structure so I must be polite even if they cannot respect the privacy of a chap working in his bedroom at nine o’clock at night.

FC Porto have just scored an equaliser against Manchester United. One all is the score. Akim, the Human resources manager insisted I come out of my room in order to see a repeat of the goal. I dutifully stood there in front of the TV and watched what was, I have to admit, quite a good goal but after a little bit he looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you follow football?’ I said ‘No, I’m not interested in football’. I am convinced he thinks I am poufter now. Seeing that this would likely be my parting shot and I was off back to my room, he proceeded, out of the blue, to run off a list of African leaders that he claimed were not corrupt. By what standards? His? Relative to Nigerians? Or some other measure obscure to me? That is the trouble with people of his ilk. If my interests and beliefs do not coincide exactly with theirs, some sort of failure on my part to confirm their wit, I am instantly considered odd and somehow intellectually inferior. Since everyone has differing ideals, there seems for some, a constant need to argue, sometimes to a bloody conclusion. Nationalism (tribalism here), Religion, Politics and Sport; between them they have done more to thin the gene pool than the Anopheles Mosquito.

Actually, Akim old boy, I prefer duelling with pistols. I have a couple in my room, fancy a go? Git.

At least I am back in my room now. This time I have left the door open. Maybe that way they can see that I AM TRYING TO DO SOMETHING!!!!! Or perhaps I’ll at least get a clear shot at one of the buggers down the corridor.

Think I’ll just give up and have a scotch. Or two. Read more!

Right man for the Job?

There are literally thousands of travel guides for just about every destination in the world. Just go into Smith’s in UK or Exclusive Books in South Africa and you’ll see shelves groaning with them. There are Fodor’s Guides, Michelin Guides, Rough Guides and they cover all the known haunts and even obscure Pacific islands and towns and cities. There isn’t one though, not one for São Tomé & Principe that I could find.

It is possible, I suppose, that sitting in some dusty bookshop in Lisbon, there is one produced around the time that STP was still a province of Portugal and the country’s only export, cocoa was still dependant on indentured labour but there appears to be nothing in English and nothing widely available. Let’s face it, if it isn’t available at Amazon.com, 95% of those that could afford to go there are not going to know it exists. I would really like to write the first internationally available and widely distributed guide to São Tomé. I would imagine, though, that writing a country guide, especially the first one is a serious business. It would require a high degree of open-mindedness to allow for all tastes and highly responsible reporting to transmit a balanced and objective view. The first guide on a place would be disproportionately influential for it could easily impact such a fragile and tiny economy.

Perhaps I am not the right man for the job for no matter how hard I try, for example, I cannot think of one good thing to say about Nigeria. That’s not quite true. I can think of something. The emigration queue at the departure terminal of Mohammed Murtala moves along quite quickly and the officials were always very polite. I can honestly say though, that I cannot think of any possible reason why anyone in their right mind would come here unless they were being paid to do so. Sure, there must be some interesting places in Nigeria, some Sehenswürdichkeiten and most Nigerians you meet are nice people, but, when you think of all the hassle and expense it would take to get there, never mind the risk, there are millions of other places in the world one should go to first. Iraq for example.

When I first arrived in Nigeria some seven months ago, I was consulting to two clients. The contract with one client has now drawn to its inevitable conclusion and unless I find something else to do, I am faced with the prospect of only working one month out of every three. Now in any other country of the world that I have worked in, this would have left me sleepless with worry. What the hell would I do with myself? How would I meet my commitments without depleting jealously guarded yet still woefully inadequate reserves? Where would I stay now that the house is sold in Cape Town? Yet the prospect of having two months clear before having to return to Nigeria, even with the attendant financial uncertainty has left me strangely quiescent. I imagined myself being able to completely relax. I thought about fishing for Tarpon off São Tomé, of compiling a photo journal of the islands and exploring from dawn till dusk. And in the evenings, drinking Caipirinhas, watching the sun sink beneath the equator and writing that travel guide.

I have now been asked if I would consider working six weeks out of every nine in Nigeria. Coming so soon after dreams of extended relaxation in unspoilt São Tomé, the thought is alarming, even if it does mean a heck of a sight more money. I would much rather see a little guide that I had spent months putting together sitting on the shelves of airport bookshops or being able to submit ‘author’s notes’ to Amazon, even if the return didn’t cover the investment to produce the draft.

Thinking about it, maybe I am exactly the sort of person who should write the guide. Things are not perfect in São Tomé by any means. Apart from it being awkward to get to, there is little electricity outside the capital, few properly surfaced roads and everything has to be imported. Coming straight from Nigeria to São Tomé, though, absolutely everything is bound to be far more enchanting and less chaotic by comparison. The guide would be a eulogy to paradise. I guess there is only one way to find out. Read more!

A night of Bliss with the Possessed

There has just been another traffic accident outside my office. Nothing remarkable about that, there are at least two or three per day and they are only interesting if the matter cannot be amicably resolved. Then there is real wahala and the outcome is anything but predictable and usually highly entertaining. This time a police car was at fault for making an illegal U-turn into the path of oncoming traffic. No wahala this time as the police have two things on their side. Firstly, as upholders of the law, they can never be wrong and secondly, they have guns and as upholders of the law they have a God given right to use them. What caught my eye this time, though, was a man running by the roadside, presumably hurrying so as not to miss first blood should there be any. He wore a red T-shirt emblazoned with ‘Where the possessed go to mingle’. Well what the hell does that mean?

It was like the stickers announcing, ‘A Night of Bliss’ that suddenly appeared all round the office. Now I had to be careful lest a simple desire to prevent the building being defaced offended some deity so far unknown to me and I found myself the subject of a Jihad. This ‘night of bliss’ was the religious equivalent of a marathon jam session but instead of all night reggae, armfuls of writhing girls and as many spliffs as you could choke down, this was a two day sermon by some unheard of preacher where the only relief would be fainting from the heat. I have no objection to people suffering for their faith, if it is self inflicted. To each his own. In fact I can think of a few faithful where the thought of them suffering would warm my heart but I’ll be buggered if I have to put up with my nice, bland office environment being turned into a bill post board. The no smoking signs are offensive enough. I am sure they knew that there would be objections and had thought it through in advance. These stickers would adhere to the hull of a nuclear submarine. Ripping them off doesn’t merely pull the paint off underneath, usually you’ll dislodge a couple of breeze blocks as well.

48 hours of oppressive heat and some zealot convincing everyone that we are all going to hell unless we repent and that true evidence of remorse is to donate to the ‘church’? I would have been convinced I was in Hell already and would gladly have paid to get out. A night of bliss has other connotations for me and my wife would send me to hell soon enough just for thinking about it. I guess by the definition of these zealots, I am possessed. So maybe this unknown place where the possessed go to mingle is exactly the place for me. Maybe it is an all night jam session, loads of reggae, girls and intoxicants. Next time I see the guy in the t-shirt I’ll ask him. Read more!

Wahala Man

I have just passed the two week point, halfway through my first tour with the client and I can now say that I am no longer an Eleme Junction virgin. Last Tuesday night my cherry was well and truly plucked. My wife is driving me to frustration as I at least try to sort out the administrative details of our separation and the impact it will have on the children’s education and general well being. Difficult enough by email, damn near impossible if she doesn’t answer any of my messages. Anyway, it is very important to leave the office by 4.30 pm so that you at least stand half a chance of clearing the notorious Eleme junction by 5 pm. Failure to do so on some days, sadly unpredictable, can leave you trapped the wrong side of the roundabout from home.

Downed bridges and the general layout of a town squeezed in on dry bits (or dryish bits) between the countless waterways that characterise the delta region, mean that there is literally only one way in and out of the whole city. This is a metropolis with 40 square kilometers of construction spread over an area of over 80 square kilometers. And only one road in or out. Where does all the traffic in and out collide, all too often literally? Eleme junction. A mud patch with a decaying concrete tower in the middle where five major roads meet and everyone needs to get across. For police and traffic wardens, it provides an unprecedented opportunity to augment their meager official salaries. Infractions are not only tolerated, they are encouraged. Traffic all socked in on your side of the dual carriageway? No problem. Jump over to the opposite carriageway, switch on Lucas Force Fields and drive up to the junction on the wrong side of the road. Have 20 - 30 Naira ready and when the policeman jumps you at the other end say, ‘Please Man, I beg you’, give him the crumpled Naira and he will cheerfully allow you to cut in ahead of the legitimate queue. Since everyman and his dog is doing it, all that’s left in the legal lane is a carpark full of those that cannot afford to pay and those few law abiding citizens left. I am afraid that expats fall into that category as well, the law abiding ones, not the poor ones (well, at least at the beginning of the month). Imagine what would happen, immediately to the expat, and later to the reputation of his company if a car with a foreigner in it was involved in a head on collision with a Nigerian while the foreigner was doing something illegal. There wouldn’t be enough left to scrape into buckets. So, knowing that the next day I was off to that peaceful enclave called Warri, (more on that later), where I would be unable to access a working telephone, never mind the internet, I waited and waited and waited for an important email from my wife. Did it come? Did it hell. At ten past five, my driver, Big Paul, (more on him later too) did a little agitated dance in my office and did his ‘I beg of you, man’, in an effort to get me going. Tooo late, sucker. Me I mean, not him. He did his best.
Normally, if you make it to the MTN building before grinding to a halt, you’ll be OK. Perhaps an hour later the driver will finally be able to manoeuvre the car over a ditch, between a broken down truck and a wooden shack selling CD’s and dodgy booze (more about this, too) and finally squeeze his way across Eleme and take you, head throbbing with diesel fumes, back to the Intels camp. Hit the traffic before Rumoukwurisi Junction, however, and you are doomed. This, of course, was exactly what happened last Tuesday. Ok, Woumoukrushi Junction is only one kilometer further away from Eleme than the MTN building.

‘Hey Paul, we’re only one kilometer further away, how much longer can it take?’, I say in my optimistic voice.

With a face already a perfect picture of gloom having resigned himself to an unavoidable and ghastly fate, he said with disturbing sincerity, ‘Be locky to see de camp before 10’.

Ten pm! No, he’s kidding, it can’t be possible. Well it bloody well was possible.

Most people reckon that they have been in traffic jams. Anyone faced with the misery of having to use the M25 on a regular basis will have experienced something approaching traffic jams. I say ‘something approaching’ because unless you have really experienced a true jam, as in everything well and truly jammed up, what happens on the M25 doesn’t even come close. On the M25, it is possible to be stationary for a while, but it usually is only a while and by ‘while’, I mean time measured in minutes or tens of minutes, not hours. The traffic is always edging forwards in the right direction a few yards at a time so it is possible to calculate an average speed, even if it is only walking pace. The sort of Jam I am talking about is the kind where your car devalues by 30% in the time you have been stuck in it and when you finally get out the other side Bristol motors have already brought out two new models and UK has had a change of government (Italy, eight changes of Government). I mean, I have heard of guys who have finally made it home to find that their wives have successfully sued and divorced them for abandonment and obtained a court order allowing them to dispose of all their joint assets in absentia. These are the mother’s of all traffic jams. Nothing moves. Everyone switches their engines off (which at least means the bloody horns stop). Passengers give up and start to walk. The road, already clogged with bumper to bumper and door handle to door handle traffic becomes a seething mass of humanity, a river of people squeezing like soldier ants around leaf litter in a rain forest. This giant millipede of steaming vehicles stretches all the way to Emele junction and does battle with four more giant millipedes coming in from all the other routes that unite there. No quarter is given or received and even the traffic wardens realize that if nothing is moving, there is no passing trade anymore so they give up and go home. Or lie about in groups smoking and drinking the day’s takings. The sun sets slowly on the carnage and the pall of exhaust fumes hanging over everything like a shroud is illuminated eerily by countless sidelights. The shapes and shadows of trucks and cars are amplified into monstrous leviathans by the yellow glow of nearby gas flares, which turn the city skyline into a scene from the blitz. All around are scurrying shadows, and the Wahala men move in. This is the dodgier part of Middle World and I am sat right in it with no escape.

Wahala in Nigeria means ‘trouble’. You have a row with the missus? She gave you Wahala last night. Give the waitress at a restaurant a hard time and she will curse you in the kitchen and spit in your chips and let all her colleagues know that you are a Wahala Man so that they will all spit in every meal you order henceforth. The community invade your facilities? Big Wahala at the compound, Boss. And then there are the opportunistic thugs riding around on 125cc motorcycles who know, they just know, that most people will not be able to take sitting five hours under these conditions before finally cracking and starting to walk. Their drivers will beg them to reconsider. Will beg them to take care, will beg them not to carry anything with them, to leave everything in the car. This last piece of advice seems to be taken literally as those that do decide to walk generally do leave everything behind. Including, obviously, their common sense. These are rich pickings. It is dark, there are no police in sight (none sober, anyway) and there is no way on earth that a security team can get to them. Easy. Hold ‘em up, quick shake down, guaranteed to get a mobile phone at least, and then away on the only form of transport that has a chance to get through the melee, a motorcycle. These then, are the Emele Junction Wahala Men. But how to tell the difference? The thicker the jam, the more wasps around it and like wasps, the motorcycles descend on the clogged artery for, paradoxically, even though among them will be the Wahala men, the majority become the only functioning taxi service offering an alternative to slow asphyxiation and a sweaty and cramped night in the car. If you walk, the Wahala men might see you. After all, it will take at least 45 minutes and expatriates, who are generally Caucasian, do tend to stand out a bit. On the other hand, try and find a bike boy that is a lot smaller than you (just in case he is a Wahala man, you might get lucky and snot him before he can pull anything off) and for 200 Naira, he will give you the most terrifying ride of your life back to the camp. If you double the amount, he might ride marginally slower.

In Luanda, the streets were filled with street boys who, like an army of willing flunkeys were happy to take orders for, and supply anything from, a can of Coke to a tall, slim mulatta (with her own hair if you can manage it mate!). Here, no such luck. Apart from all the dodgy stuff I have already described, there is nothing available out there to ease the pain of being slowly smoked to death like a breakfast kipper folded in half in a tiny Japanese tin box with a driver that, no matter how much you like him, makes you really appreciate how difficult it is for them to find clean water to wash in. I mean, there are not many cars, even with a full tank, that can sit there for five or six hours and keep the aircon going without turning their engine oil to sludge and running the bearings or at least overheating and dumping all their coolant out onto the road. Anyway, I could not believe that it was simply impossible to buy a bottle of whiskey in the street. In desperation (be reasonable, I was by then three hours past my customary top up time) I walked (yes, alone, I told you I was desperate) up to Emele Junction where there was a collection of stalls built up in the most inconvenient, traffic flow impeding places. All I could find was something purporting to be brandy. Of the golden elixir, not a drop to be had. So I bought the brandy and carried it back to the car. Getting the top off was the first hurdle. It had one of those soft metal screw caps with perforations that are supposed to separate when twisted. Not this one. Twisting the cap rounded off all the thread and the perforations held together like the Mafia. Once open (well, they don’t call him ‘Big Paul’ for nothing, hands like shovels that guy) a quick swig had me gasping and fumbling for my glasses so that, with the aid of the car headlight (sorry, force field projector), I could read the label. Examination of the label revealed that it was a ‘distillate of agricultural origin’ and contained colouring (caramel) and flavourants (none specified, but having tasted the vile concoction, the mind boggles). I have drunk some hooch in my time but this one took the biscuit (as well as the roof of my mouth, my tonsils and the lining of my stomach). My pecker, having been warned by those already affected organs immediately curled up and went on strike.

That then, was the last straw for me and at 10.30pm I finally cracked. I dumped everything of value in the car with Paul, carefully unhooked and folded up my common sense and hailed a bike boy. Three pulled up on the opposite carriageway, facing the wrong way for the traffic but the right way for me, if you see what I mean, and I could see more doing U Turns between the trucks so I picked the smallest of the bunch, got on the back and closed my eyes. I thought that closing the eyes would be a good tactic to avoid another coronary but a stunning blow to my elbow alerted me to my mistake. This kid was shooting for gaps that even octopi couldn’t slither through and I always understood that when it came to slithering, only octopi and lawyers couldn’t be beaten. Oh, and government press officers. Trouble was, the gaps might be sufficient for a malnourished kid on a wafer thin Fizzy, but put a middle aged portly expat on the back and something is going to bang against something else, that something else invariably being hard and unforgiving. Like the corner of a truck trailer (right on the collar bone that one), load of steel piping hanging off the back of a pick up (just above the right eye), or a rusty old bull bar (knee), or a sticky out even rustier exhaust (ankle, got the tetanus and stitches the day after). I finally crawled into the camp, very battered, even wearier and trudged round to my house with jackhammers pounding my head from the inside out and a bladder desperately trying to make a deal with an unresponding willie. It was only when I was standing in front of the door, mouth already watering at the prospect of a tumbler full of malt, only then that I realized that my keys were in my computer bag. My computer bag was with Big Paul and Big Paul was on the wrong side of Emele Junction. I could have cried. Maybe the Wahala man got me after all. Read more!

A Man's World?

While I was in Lagos I was warned against going to the Mosquito Bar in Port Harcourt, not its real name of course but one with which the expats have christened it, so obviously it was the first place I went to. Now with a name like that, one would imagine that it lies in some mosquito infested swamp, and indeed it does, but happily that was not why the club gained its nickname. In spite of the fact that Port Harcourt has enough expats to fill a telephone directory, Nigerian girls, and especially the professional kind, know each and every one of them. Which are players, which aren't and the tendencies and preferences of those that do. Play I mean. Naturally, they can also recognise a 'new listing' at 200 paces. Walking into the Mosquito bar by one’s self was like being dropped into a cave full of malnourished vampire bats. If spandex hot pants and tight tops could rustle, I am sure that the apparent sound of fluttering wings would have further enhanced this impression as these avaricious creatures emerged from the shadows and closed in on the kill. I agree, however, that ‘Mosquito Bar’ is a catchier name than 'Vampire Cave' and is also kinder to the girls. Alright, I suppose metaphorically speaking they do suck blood out of you one way or another but at 3,000 Naira ($20) a shot, it really is only a mosquito bite compared to a vampire’s appetite. I am sure you get the picture.

Survival, therefore, depends on quick wits if one is not to disappear beneath a feeding frenzy. The trick, it seems (and it worked for me), is to grab any one of them quickly, plonk her down in a chair, buy her a drink and spend five minutes in earnest conversation with her. Evidently having made my choice the others, through some professional code of conduct refined over time, retire a barely discreet distance and prowl the edges of the newly created space like hungry lionesses waiting for a campfire to die down before nipping in for a quick kill. Consisting as the club does of a large enclosed courtyard with mature trees in well watered health the impression of being alone amongst hungry predators on the Serengeti is all the greater. If your new companion leaves you for whatever reason, to powder her nose for example, these carnivores will nip in and grab a chunk of flesh (usually a cigarette or two, perhaps a drink). Chat nicely to her, however, and keep buying her drinks and she will be your best friend (and not risk leaving you alone too often). Even better, with breathtaking maturity/professional co-operation, she will concede that all men have different tastes so if I did not want to ‘carry’ her (from pidgin English, ‘carry de gel home’, I guess), she would help me select wisely from the stable. OK, maybe not the entire stable, just those that belong to the same worker’s co-operative union that she does.

Outstanding! Glass of scotch in one hand, puffing luxuriously on a genuine Romeo y Juliette (from Lagos, not the ones from Havana), I could sit in comfort while my elegant ring master invited her selection one at a time to join us at the table. It was entertaining to say the least and the atmosphere, I must confess, surprisingly agreeable. Even the music wasn’t too loud, remarkable considering that at first I mistook the disco speakers to be two black armoured cars with their rear doors wide open (well, I don’t know how much profit these places make). Better still, and unusually for a joint like this, and believe me, in the course of my duties (honestly, duties) I’ve been in a few around the world, the lighting is half decent so there is even a chance that a chap can avoid the near cardiac arrest that switching the bedroom light on when finally getting home can sometimes cause, especially if the selection had been made in wartime lighting and under the fug of alcohol.

I once tried to take a few photographs of the place in an effort to capture something of its indescribable merits but within seconds all the girls were vying with each other to throw the most erotic poses conceivable (in a public place anyway), at which point my bipod became a tripod and I suddenly lost interest in photography.

A few words of caution, though, (apart from the usual hazards of casual congress, especially in Africa). Now it is not my intention to belittle, insult or in any way denigrate these fine young ladies. I am merely pointing out the facts as they are. I am not commenting on the socio-economic factors that have encouraged these girls to take up their chosen profession nor am I moralizing. So all the tree hugging yoghurt knitters about to leap all over me frothing with riotous indignation can all please sit down again. Or leave the room. I did mean riotous not righteous, by the way, I’ve seen enough of these buggers outside embassies, abortion clinics and vivisection laboratories to know what I am talking about (we security men get invited to all the best parties). And I am also not going to suggest that the virtue of young Nigerian maidens is protected by their brothers with the manic intensity of Greek farmers even though I have noticed that generally the more attractive the bait, the severer the penalty. Some Afghani girls are gorgeous but messing with them is really akin to pushing your tool into a bacon slicer. This rule, however, doesn’t seem to apply to girls in Nigeria. Not to say that there aren’t any breathtakingly repulsive ones around (remember the bedroom light switch? Heart attack? Never mind). But there are some stunningly beautiful girls here and no religious police or shotgun toting relatives. Unfortunately, (for me anyway, call me old fashioned but I kind of like natural, as God intended sort of stuff) not one has her own hair. This in itself is not a problem as there are some fine bone structures out there that are best displayed rather than hidden by a Sunsilk controlled mop, but here ‘European’ hair is considered a must, so the variety of Axminster hair do's is bewildering. And it gets better. Committing themselves whole heartedly to the idea that man really can improve on God's creation (or woman can in this case), they even shave their eyebrows off and draw new ones in with an erratic stroke of a half inch paint brush dipped in pitch. I always said that I liked them (girls, that is) with a touch of the tar brush but I prefer the kind that doesn’t come off on pillow cases. You must be getting the idea, though. These girls have a 70’s Bronx notion of what men find attractive. I blame the Hustler Corporation for dumping all their old unsold stock into third world markets.

As I was saying, the facts. All these girls would make outstanding wives. They said so. They would honour and obey (their husbands, of course) and would never, NEVER cause any Wahala. They would dress as their husband wished, wear their hair as he liked (so long as he bought it from the market for them), would work like dogs to keep the house, garden, farm, whatever, tidy, and would make themselves anything from skinny to obese as required and, of course, they LOVE kids, (and nice clothes, and jewels, and big cars, and a big house in UK so that all the relatives can come and stay. Forever). They all want to open hair salons so that they can contribute to the family income (allowing Ideal Man to consume as much Star as he likes with a clear conscience) by weaving more nylon into even more girls heads so that they in turn could become Best Wives in the World to other Ideal Men and open more hair salons and not only are they all happy so are Dupont and all its share holders. And they are ALL excellent cooks, assuming you like pounded yam, fried rice, garri (a sort of congealed wallpaper paste made from cassava), stewed goat’s meat and fried chicken. I have not, you will notice, mentioned their sexual prowess, I would have thought that self evident. Which reminds me, you will not find a single bottle of aspirin in the house. Nigerian wives NEVER suffer from headaches.

So, I hear you ask, how does a chap win the heart of what surely must be one of the finest wives available anywhere in the world? The process is actually quite simple and is broken down into easy stages so that even the Tool Pushers can understand. No, not the clients of the Mosquito Bar in general or those that have just had their tools pushed into a bacon slicer by some Mullah’s apprentice. I mean ‘Tool Pushers’, those hardy folk, the back bone of the oil industry who do most of the hard work. Well, they aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the box, are they? Enough of tools.

Being drunk on first acquaintance is not a requirement but, all things considered, being drunk does not appear to be a hindrance. In fact, potential wives (these ones anyway) seem to feel it their duty to sit out the whole evening drinking that vile, sweet, non alcoholic malt concoction, Maltina, because it is dirt cheap thereby leaving their future husbands at liberty to lay out wads drinking huge quantities of beer or whisky. Well, he has earned it, the dear. Honestly, such selflessness. Wouldn’t see it in an Islington wine bar, would you? Come to think of it, you wouldn’t see it in Luanda either where the girls can consume even more whisky than their client, or in Berlin where they drink champagne or the Zona Rosa in Mexico City where they drink the most fantastic and expensive cocktails I have ever seen. I can’t tell you the drinking habits of Brazilian girls because I have never been there. My ex once told me that if I ever went there by myself, I needn’t bother coming back. Pity I didn’t go, that kind of deal would have been a damn sight cheaper than the one I finally got. Let’s face it, the unused portion of a return ticket to Rio is a lot easier to swallow than half a house in Cape Town and maintenance until the kids are twenty one.

Now we’ve all heard those jokes how in a Man’s World being able to consume sixteen pints of Pedigree in one sitting would be sexually provocative, but in the Mosquito Bar it actually seems to work. The more signs of inebriation that a chap exhibits, the more eligible young spinsters seem to flock around him. And they’re just so damn considerate. Recognising that a good, honest, hardworking man is likely to get a little unsteady on the pins after an evening de-stressing by imbibing one Star after another, they carefully support him with strategically placed hands, and help him to perambulate from table to bar, bar to table, table to urinal, nothing is too much trouble for these kind souls. They even go so far as to assist in delicately adjusting strategic bits of anatomy so that Ideal Man has a good seat. Thinking about it, they seem to spend a fair bit of time doing that. Well, let’s face it, there is nothing more gut churning than accidentally sitting on one of your own testicles, is there?

So what about behaviour? Or rather what in middle England would be considered bad behaviour? Doesn’t seem to be a problem. Nigerian wives expect their men to relax and enjoy themselves. Not for them the shrinking violet who behaves with the utmost decorum and keeps his eyes firmly locked on his wife ignoring the fillies cantering around him. A roving eye that anywhere else would be met by a swift kick under the table or a three day long headache is greeted here with, ‘You like her? She’s a good girl, you want me to call her over?’ Unreal.

Now I don’t care what they say, white men cannot dance. It is as simple as that. When it came to making whites, along with melanin, God missed out that in built metronome that all other races have (with the possible exception of Eskimos, but then I have never been to an Eskimo night club so I could be wrong). What is significant in this case is that white men think they can dance. Not only that, they think that they are so good, that people enjoy watching them dance. I know that this is a huge generalization (and there will be more, this isn’t a thesis after all) but try watching a bunch of drillers that have just spent a celibate and alcohol free month on a rig let their hair down in a place like the Mosquito bar, or the Blues Club or anywhere else that they can kill a few hours before being poured on the plane to Lagos and then off to Europe, the States or Australia. I mean, they don’t even bother to get changed. The bus pitches up straight from the heli-pad and out they tumble, all clad in bright orange or red boiler suits and footwear appropriate to the industrial environment in which they work.

Nevertheless, the girls greet each arriving shift with the same warmth and affection as they did the last and seem genuinely pleased to see the lads enjoying themselves, and cluster in groups giggling (with delight I presume) when the mob takes to the dance floor. No doubt encouraged by the enthusiasm of the audience, cavorting does not remain restricted to the dance floor but spills across the courtyard and into the bar, and some, with true gladiatorial spirit climb up onto the bar, drop their trousers and wave their parts around while singing, ‘Wee Willy Wonker’ or some other catchy tune (they are usually Scottish, I have no idea why). Incidentally, it always amazes me what alcohol does to the memory circuits. Drunk or sober, every chap knows that it is impossible to shuffle across a hotel bedroom floor with trousers around ankles let alone the top of a rickety bar well lathered with beer and mined with a variety of glasses, bottles and handbags. The result is always the same, tackle in hand, their little Sambas end with flailing limbs and a little squeal as they crash into an equally drunk group of tool pushers who, with the aid of sturdy rig boots demonstrate to the hapless fellow just why they are called ‘tool pushers’ and have an undeniably awful reputation. All this, the girls take in their stride and whoever it was lucky enough to be with Samba Charlie will recover what is left of him and sympathetically massage him back to good humour.

So where is the note of caution, then? Expats have a reputation, perhaps thoroughly undeserved given the number of divorcees running around, for making caring family men. Nothing would please these girls more than to score a decent husband. You carry a girl and you assume it is business, and indeed it is. In part. The girl, though, assumes that having chosen her you are making a commitment. See the same girl again and the impression that a lifelong romance is blooming is reinforced, and you’re setting off over the edge of a slope as steep as income tax and as slippery as a government press officer. Let her move in with you and you’re off down that slope so fast the pounding in your ears won’t be love’s heart beating, it will be the sound barrier breaking. I’ve heard of guys who, their ardour somewhat cooled, have tried to quietly finish with their girlfriends (it was all getting a bit obvious and we don’t want the boss to find out, do we?) only to have her appear in the office lobby wailing at the top of her voice about heartless rejection and the injustice of it after all she had done for the guy whereupon she proceeds to list to a by now very interested audience of soon to be (for the Romeo anyway) ex work colleagues just what sort of things he asked her to do in bed and with which household implements.

If it gets to that stage, and it not too infrequently does, the only way out (apart from the fire escape) is to pay compensation for the time she wasted with you immediately followed by a fast jet out of the country. One guy was too stupid for words. Having reached a settlement he went for one more bonk for old times sake before he pushed off on leave. She got him at the airport. Cost him another 100,000 Naira. Yet there are guys who do not want to ride every mount in the stable so what’s chap to do? Be very careful, that’s what. And then there’s the other note of caution. It is business, at least to start with. Everyone knows that the going rate is 3-4,000 Naira. The punters do and so do the girls. Don’t, whatever you do, no matter how many Star’s are swilling around your insides, forget to confirm that before she carries you back to your place. Camp security, along with your neighbours, are only too willing to attend an early morning matinee performance of ‘he made me do this and I’m a good girl and don’t normally do that ‘cos it’s illegal and that’s why he agreed to pay more’ etc. and that’s if you’re lucky. Yet another expat, really drunk by the end of a Saturday spent in the Portofino restaurant bar, persuaded one of the waitresses to come home with him. He thought he’d already closed the deal but I know this guy, once he’s had his customary gutful, he’s pretty much incomprehensible even to a fellow Englishman, never mind a pidgin English speaking local so all the seeds of a ‘misunderstanding’ had been sown. Services having been rendered the girl held out her hand and politely asked for the one hundred US dollars that she had been promised (about 14 thousand Naira). There are various accounts of the verbal exchange that followed suffice to say that he wasn’t exactly nimble on his feet and the frying pans in the houses here are bloody great lumps of cast iron that not even Le Creuset can match for weight and destructive power. I have seen mob hits that looked tamer by comparison.

One final piece of advice before we drop this subject. Be careful with mobile phones. A survey published by Italy's largest private investigation company said that in nearly 90% of cases, it is mobile phones, or rather careless use of them, that betray extra marital activities. As an expat, and especially in the oil industry, it is very likely that you’ll be using the same mobile as your back to back, the guy that does your job when you are on leave. No real problem if you both have similar interests and get on well. Tragic if he’s a backstabbing git. Under no circumstances, if you have any desire whatsoever to maintain a discreet relationship, should you hand out your phone number. Do that and it’s another sign of commitment and the inherent right for them to phone at any time of day or night. And watch that dreaded giveaway, the caller ID function. I know, at work you want the people you call to know that it is you calling (and not a recently dumped concubine hell bent on revenge) so that they will answer, so of course you must have your caller ID activated. Get a few pints down your neck and start feeling a bit lonely, however, and I guarantee that you’ll hit the one key dial without thinking and as soon as you’ve hung up having arranged a meet, she’s pressing ‘list calls’, ‘last call’, ‘options’, ‘save’, ‘[your name]’ on her mobile and you’re doomed. Read more!

Port Harcourt

On arrival I realised that Port Harcourt is a deal wetter than Lagos. As the aircraft bumped its way down through low cloud, I had glimpses of lush forest interspersed with myriad water channels and the occasional eerie glow from massive gas flare offs. So much for the environment. We landed amidst a jet wash induced shroud of spray on a runway that looked like more like the Kiel canal than anything reassuringly solid like a two mile strip of 30 cm thick concrete. Now I understand the other definition of aquaplane.

Leaving the airport the first thing that struck me was that every fifty yards or so there was a church. God's Peace Church, The Loving Revelation Church, The Church of the Gospel Brother's (presumably sisters went next door) and Church of the Risen Anew (they must be born again zombies. Come to think of it, they do have voodoo here) to name a few quaint examples. Oh, and the dirt. Great steaming heaps of refuse of all kinds joined by a thick lumpy mess compacted by a thousand pairs of feet. If you think Luandan Bairros after a downpour are disgusting, try the quagmire and litter coagulation they call sidewalks here. Everything is wet, sodden or dripping. Once white painted walls are smeared with the black growth of some tropical fungi. Even the more respectable residences look neglected, as if they have been lifted straight from the set of Papillon. As for what in Angola they called ‘Construção Anarchica’ (anarchic construction), the pathetic collections of everyday scrap somehow transformed into impossibly tiny homes, illegally sited on any available piece of unclaimed land and housing families, in-laws, aunts, uncles and cousins, well, the hardships these unfortunates must be enduring is unthinkable. Just recently in a place called Warri, another Godforsaken patch of many on this continent, situated halfway between Port Harcourt and Lagos they have been fighting again. Of the hundred or so ethnic groups in this artificial nation, three of them living amongst each other in the mosquito infested swamps of the Niger delta happen to hate each other with a vengeance. And of course, the client operates there. I say Godforsaken but the region is not totally forsaken. Millions of years ago the Niger geological structure, the climate at the time, the resultant animal and vegetable growth and subsequent decay created the ideal conditions to trap the hydrocarbons produced by the complex chemistry and physics of decomposition under pressure in an anaerobic environment. Basically, the whole sodden mess is floating on oil and after decades of development (or exploitation depending on whether you know how to knit yoghurt or not), there’s still loads left. And the amount that is ‘left’ is increasing all the time as the multi nationals become even more skilled at finding and extracting the stuff and certain countries do anything to have sources of oil that they don’t have to buy off someone with a tea towel on their head. Quite simply, everyone, the multi-nationals, the government, the population, they all want their fair share. Trouble is, everyone has a different idea of what’s ‘fair’ and if a few heads get bashed in debating the issue, well, that’s business.

Let’s go back to the driving. I have driven just about everywhere, Houston, Bratislava, Tripoli, Jo’burg, Mexico City, once even foolish enough to race a motorcycle against a Frenchman with zero grey matter inside his helmet around the Periferique of Paris, but only now do I fully appreciate what 'no rules' means. The traffic is horrendous. A dual carriageway full on one side gives licence for what the German’s call Geist Fahrers, ghost drivers, the rather careless practice of launching vehicles onto the opposite carriageway and driving into oncoming traffic with reckless disregard for anyone’s life never mind their own. As an aside, having seen it on numerous occasions now and never once, not once having personally witnessed a head on collision, I am going to take a close look at the headlights fitted to Nigerian cars as these projectors must have the power of the Starship Enterprise force field. And don’t forget, Nigerian drivers are much meaner than Klingons, ‘nuff said.

I have also not yet had the opportunity to study the Nigerian equivalent of European vehicle type approval regulations but I imagine that extracts would go something like this: Brakes, optional (especially on heavy goods vehicles); horns, mandatory (the horn is a device used to alert other road users that your engine is running); Bumpers, not necessary (you have headlights, what the hell do you need bumpers for?); Wing Mirrors, mandatory (for knocking beggars, cripples, street urchins and hawkers into the ditch, glass in them, optional); three foot length of chain, mandatory (for swinging menacingly out of the driver’s side window to intimidate oncoming road users when driving the wrong way up a dual carriageway. I kid you not). And the definitions section: Tyre canvas, a wear indicator device which, when visible means that the vehicle may only be used for a further 10,000kms at maximum cargo overload before the tyre explodes (another wear indicator meaning ‘time to steal another tyre’); accelerator, the car’s on/off switch; exhaust, a one foot piece of corroded pipe from which issues alternate bouts of thick, black belching partially combusted diesel fumes or four foot flames; gearbox, a device the primary function of which is to decelerate the vehicle (there are usually five or six retardation rates to choose from e.g.: 4th gear, gradual deceleration through to 1st, rapid deceleration and Reverse gear, emergency braking); sidewalk, a muddy area either side of the road to use in an emergency if the gearbox fails (it is usually filled with soft objects which bring the vehicle safely to rest with the minimum of structural damage); soft objects, pedestrians.

My office is about 6 kms from the accommodation. I have heard horror stories of personnel being trapped for seven hours on this particularly awful bit of dual carriageway. Seven hours! Imagine sitting at Primeiro do Maio in Luanda in the boiling sun, the paint being eroded from the car by the constant tapping of beggars, cripples, street urchins and hawkers all trying to sell you the very latest in Chinese/Lebanese plastic technology, weevil infested biscuits, cashew nuts partially roasted in dubious conditions, walnuts resembling partially decomposed genitalia, religious icons, anything that the Lebanese traders have brought in from China. The worst that I have endured so far is two hours, but then again, I am a Nigerian virgin.

The other day, for the first time, I took a cruise around the town centre. We are about thirty minutes/four hours/two millennia (I did mention that the traffic was unpredictable, didn’t I?) from the center of Port Harcourt, an area grandly referred to as the GRA, the Government Residential Area. It is here that one will find the hotels (Meridien at $300 per night, of course) and the clubs. The Blues Club is currently the most popular with expatriates and the one, therefore, to avoid for the time being. I say the time being because it will only hold ‘most favoured expat club’ status for a determined period. What is a ‘determined period’? The time it takes for the gangsters/muggers/hoodlums/hi-jackers to realise where the crop has ripened and is ready for harvest. A few quick, lucrative hits and after that, the frightened sheep will disperse widely before the flock once more coalesces like moths to a street light (not a good metaphor that, the street lights do not work here) and they all herd off to a new club and away we go again. Having said that, Nigerian club owners do at least make an attempt to secure the outside areas of their clubs by providing both their own security and bribing police officers to forget the rest of their beats and concentrate themselves there. I once saw a dark blue pick-up parked in the shadows with a bunch of very earnest young men in the back (alright, they looked like hardened criminals but they were in uniform), armed to the teeth and all wearing obligatory sunglasses (in case the street lights actually came on and blinded them). Down the side of the vehicle was written, ‘Operation FIRE for FIRE’. Well, at least they’re honest, shoot and us and we’ll shoot back (or spray the whole neighbourhood with automatic fire, who cares? At least the client gets value for money, one way or another).

That attitude actually typifies the standard official response to security incidents. Invasion of expatriate office facilities by ethnic groups is common, especially in oil producing areas. It usually starts with a couple of individuals gaining access by whatever means and then throwing open all the doors and windows whereupon the rest of the village emerge from the rocks beneath which they had concealed themselves and pile in. Most companies and all multi-nationals have Community Relations Managers whose unfortunate duty it is to negotiate with the baying mob that has just abducted the general manager, given the security manager a good hiding and ‘liberated’ the canteen fridge/freezer, the janitor’s bicycle and all the bog-roll and toilet seats that could be found in the building. Negotiation usually goes something like this:

Community Leader (holding machete in one hand, partially masticated roll liberated from kitchen in the other): ‘You have not met your obligations to the community, we want jobs for all these boys!’ This at a volume and intensity of a Kardmann rock concert speaker.

Community Liaison Officer (CLO): ‘But 80% of our employees come from your community, we have no more vacancies, there are no more jobs to be filled…..’ The rest is drowned by a chorus of threats and tribal chanting, the security manager is biffed again and machetes are scraped across the floor with a high pitched grating noise that sets everyone’s teeth on edge (except for the security manager’s, he is still looking for his).

CL: ‘Well in that case you must pay us 200 million Naira!!!’, the machete now dangerously close to the perspiring CLO’s throat.

CLO: ‘That is impossible’, and with the bravery for which he is woefully underpaid, ‘I am authorised only to make a payment of 20,000 Naira.’

Knowing what is coming, the security manager beats his own face against the wall and subsides gratefully into peaceful oblivion.

CL, eyes popping and enormous veins springing out of his neck: ‘That is an insult, you are insulting me, how DARE you insult me?!!’ and the assembled masses cluck their disapproval and edge forward to get the best possible view of what surely must be the inevitable and soon to be administered death blow.

CLO: (balls the size of planets, this guy), ‘Well, YOU insulted ME! 200 Million Naira indeed. So, now that we have traded insults, maybe we can talk sensibly?’

And, generally, so the exchange continues until finally, the General Manager is returned, the security manager is allowed to wake up and stay awake, an appropriate amount of liberated goods are returned (to save face all round) and a box containing 200,000 Naira, ten jars of coffee, a few cartons of milk and what's left of the bog roll are handed over to the community leader. I say generally because sometimes things do not go as well and that brings me to my point. The one about the ‘Standard Official Response’.

If things are going badly and, don’t forget, even though there is security on the building, if they actually took any of the intruders on (God forbid, shot one - no - that thought is too scary) the whole place would be trashed by the intruders. They would then go away and come back with the rest of the community and trash the place again. So, if things are not going that well and it is decided that a little official help from the police is required, then the form is as follows. All expats try and hide as best they can (the A3 paper draw of the photocopier is a good place if you are still reasonably elastic, after all there aren’t that many places left to hide in a modern, open plan office). Then the police burst in with guns, leather whips and lengths of rubber hose and beat everyone up in sight. Everyone. Utter mayhem ensues. Furniture is tossed about and used either for defence or offence depending on which of the many scuffling groups has the upper hand. Office desks are thrown over revealing the less elastic expats who immediately scuttle frantically into fresh cover like cockroaches in a suddenly illuminated kitchen. In the end the building is cleared, the police agree a suitable ‘call out fee’ and everyone starts to pick up the pieces. The security manager sends out his CV to all corners again and wonders why, if they went to all the trouble to return the fridge, they kept the door? Read more!