Elephant Detterents and Work

Well since you have elephants, you have to have a way of keeping them off your vegetables....

So you have some string, with tin cans on them, apparently they cannot stand the noise.  Also keeps birds off in England, but here it is a larger pest problem.

So here you are...

....working for an oil company, with a terminal in the middle of a national park.....and what do you find? Jungle elephants.....I have been allowed a car and you find these little elephants wandering around on the side of the road. First time I have seen them in the wild so as you can imagine I was rather exited.

Apparently gorillas are a common site too.....

Gamba

After a night in Libreville it was time for a short hop to Gamba. This is one of the main terminals for the oil in Gabon.

Most of the infrastructure is built, owned and operated by Shell, this includes the roads. The government happily takes the money but very little of it actually goes into helping the locals.....

Airport is a shed on the side of the runway, and baggage collection is off the carts by hand....yourself.....nothing close to a 5 star treatment.

Still its warm, the people are great, and Africa just keeps on suprising you.

Why didn't the colonial powers teach these people how to brew beer?

So I am now in Gabon, ex french colony, on the west side of Africa. Been a hectic few weeks of travel but it has beed fun all the same.

One issue however is the distinct lack of any brewing skill when it comes to beer. Now I expecteded it to be some form of fizzy pop....however did they brew it in a muddy river. It is worse than Peruvian beer and that is saying something.

The french can brew some beer so why on earth could they not pass this bloody knowledge on? Its a disgrace.

TBH I am more disgusted that the Brits could do no better in Nigeria!!

Strawberry Cheesecake????

Whoever thought this was a good sandwich??

No this is not a Pastrami AND strawberry creamcheese sandwich, it is just a Pastrami one......and a Strawberry one.Dutch airlines have some fucked up food tastes!!

Nigeria Part 3

More evidence of the rain here in Port Harcourt, there was about 3 inches of standing water on the runway, and the plane was delayed for hours. The worst element however was the flight from port harcourt to Lagos, a VERY bumpy one, with the seatbelt lights never actually going off.

Arrived in Lagos, to find even more rain, the airport terminal had a moat, and a ramp on the road near the airport had 2 ft of water to drive through.

Still I made the flight home after a local Star beer......which is pretty average.....

Nigeria Part 1

Work takes me to odd places, and Nigeria was up there with the best. Airports utter chaos, roads in a complete mess, organisation minimal, except when it comes to filling in forms, this is a national sport.

When working with the oil companies you need an escort all the time, so AK47s were there to be seen everywhere. You bascially shuttle from work to accomodation....and repeat.

African food is not something I think is that great, and the canteen proved that time and time again, the green cake on the right proved this. Drier than Ghandi's flipflop!

Nigeria Part 2

The accomodation is shown here...in the rain....not a bad bungalow, and was reasonably comfortable....kept the mossies at bay anyway.

Did I mention rain? Well it rained for 3 days solid while there, rain so hard you were soacked in 10 seconds, unbelievable. Only rain that has compared to that is Singapore.