Air water and...
on Jude Timothy (Ghana), 14/Dec/2009 10:40, 34 days ago
In the office the second most important thing after my internet is the air-conditioning and since our mini explosion the other week we haven’t had anything to keep us from evaporating. So earlier this week our hopes of a resolution to our dilemma were raised when we had four engineers inside our office and one outside helping to fix something about the size of a television set. Well I say ‘helping’... but the division of work pretty much broke down like this... one guy was up the ladder working on the unit, he must have been the chief engineer because he was the only person with any tools... a screwdriver and pliers. His apparent second in command was holding the ladder whilst another was employed working the remote controland the last, as far as I could tell, was just watching the proceedings.I admit I may have done this last guy a great miss-service as he might have been there looking out for unforeseen complications, unexpected dangers or simply there to provide a soft landing for the‘chief’ engineer should he have slipped and fallen. However the fact that he was also chatting up our secretary, who should strictly speaking, have been in her own office next door, does make me rather incline to my original theory. As for the bloke outside he was, very helpfully, shouting a lotand banging the pipes with something metallic.They were there for about 20 minutes in which time I developed a sore neck from straining to look at the work as it progressed. At various points everyone was silent as if waiting for the unit to splutter into action through the sheer collective will-power of the assembled horde... which may explain why there were so many! But needless to say it’s a few days later now and we’re still waiting, although I’m more hopeful since hearing that next week a Bishop is coming to perform an exorcism.The reason the air-con is so important is that normally the temperature here is well into the 30’s at this time of year and have unbroken sunshine, however yesterday we had one of those rarely seen natural phenomena which you normally only ever see in natural history documentaries and happen in far flung lands with too many vowels in their name... that is, water started falling from the sky!!!Of course I’m not so naive as to have expected to see people race into the streets, jumping for joy, singing and dancing in celebration or at the very least having a wash... Nor that they would go running to the churches, howling and wailing for forgiveness and praying for an end to a biblical style ‘plague’. For myself, I would have gone down the road of ritual sacrifice... starting with all those roosters who have taken it upon themselves to act as my alarm clock each and every morning...Either way whatever I may have expected, and I must admit to my great disappointment, the Ghanaians just carried on as if rain was a normal everyday occurrence. At the time I was on a tro and I did wonder why the drivers didn’t jump at the opportunity to finally use their windscreen wipers, which I’m sure they consider only really adds to the aesthetic value of their vehicles, but when our driver did eventually did turn his on I realised why. The wipers had become so dirty and clogged with grease that it smeared thewindscreen with a brown film which cut the normal visibility of around 50% to something nearer 10%. I got out and walked.Anyway... now that I've finally figured out how to add pictures to my blog I thought you might like to see where I've been living these past months. It doesn't give a particularly promising impression from the outside but as you'll see once inside, although it's not Greenwich, it is perfectly ... ... ... adequate ;-)