Disaster Maniels/Slimey Eels

Here I am in Ghana, at 4am and as sick as a dog. But that's not Ghana's fault, which so far has seemed lovely. Mind you, all I've really seen is a luxury hotel. But they had tarmac on the roads and white lines down the middle, and the traffic queued orderly, so it's a good start. I arrived here about 12 hours ago, waving goodbye to the Ivory Coast for the time being. But don't worry, I left the country on a high.

Hmm, perhaps not. My last day there turned out to be a day of considerable hassles, broken into two parts: fat white man and lanky black man. We'll start with fat white man, whom the observant among you may correctly guess to be our blustering friend, Dark Eels. Myself and my colleague arrived as normal in the morning, and for an hour remained undisturbed as we waited for our equipment. Then Eels appeared, and barely suppressing the glee on his piggy face asked me to come into the office with him. In there were two other senior people from his service company.

"We've had talks and we've realised we have no option but to kick you out," he said, with almost ecstatic joy.

"Ok."

"With immediate effect," he said, staring hard for a reaction. React! he seemed to cry. "You have to leave right now!"

"Ok," I said, and left the room and informed my colleague it was time to go.

Before we could even begin to pack up, Eels was in the room, his lifetime bubble of smugness only slightly dented by my failure to cry, wail or argue. He launched into yet another monologue - he wouldn't be interrupted, "I have to say all this, let me finish" - about all the reasons we had to leave, which weren't just financial (they were) but because of compliance and liability and... oh, I stopped listening. As he neared the end of his spiel, he wiped the sweaty joy from his forehead and told me he could very generously offer me a lifeline if I could phone my boss and pass this information on so a quick resolution could me made.

"Look," I said, and as I've been saying for the last couple of days. "Why don't you phone him? This is stuff I have no idea about and has little to do with me." Remarkably, this time he agreed. I called the Aberdeen office on speakerphone and listened as Eels bellowed loudly for half an hour. Every time he made a point, he looked up at me, grinning, wanting me to reciprocate his smiles, but I didn't look him in the eye and just looked forward, impassively. Honestly, total lack of reaction is the only way to deal with this numbing idiot. The call eventually ended with an agreement that as least bought us a stay of execution for another few days.

The details of the disagreement I can't be bothered going into - contracts and money between companies - but trust me in believing that Eels created an issue and enjoyed days of roaring, meandering monologues to me and my colleague over something that could have been sorted with a few polite emails or calls to Aberdeen. And trust me when I say that I ever catch his name in the paper and find something ghastly has happened to him - disease then death, perhaps - I will punch the air in glee. The man is one of the most disagreeable characters I have witnessed, in any field of my life.

By fortune, as the call has ended, our equipment had arrived, finally, finally, after days of delay. It took us a mere half hour to get what we needed and pack the rest away, and we were ready to escape, and catch our flight to Ghana. Alas, our hassles were far from over... as Abidjan airport was preparing a new world of nightmare for us both...

...which I'll have to leave till later, as I'm supposed to getting up for 5am for a flight at 6am. I'm getting on a boat in the evening, where some work can finally begin.

Days In Abidjan

Having been to places such as Nigeria and Angola where humanity, for whatever reason, has managed to concoct an unfortunate misery, it is rather relieving to go somewhere geared up for the misery and instead receive something a bit cheerier. Such is the Ivory Coast. That's not to say this is the place for a family holiday: it's dirty, confusing, fresh from a civil war that still divides the country, and the people speak French; but it is to say that the Ivory Coast isn't the hell I thought it might be. The people are friendly, the service a mix of the helpful and prompt or simply surly I'd expect to see in Aberdeen, and the traffic relatively well behaved and orderly - they even obey red lights.

But perhaps I cast a soft-focussed lens on the nation by suggesting things might be ok. Perhaps, perhaps not. It's difficult to say. I've been here, in Abidjan, the largest city, since Sunday and have had experiences effectively limited to our extremely charming and unusual mudbrick-style hotel complex and the sizeable but quiet yard of the service company we're working with. In between I've seen a money exchange bureau and a couple of shops, and a number of drives along pot-holed roads. Today myself and my colleague visited a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Really, a very limited sample. But despite a recent war and a potpourri of poverty-inspired problems, there isn't the feeling of total hopelessness one gets from visiting the aforementioned two nations above. Infrastructure isn't way past the point of collapse. And the people seem nice, not beaten down or just plain suspicious.

Far better, I would say, than the non-locals. No doubt some are fine: I've yet to meet them. I can assure you that those at the base are not fine. Unfine, one might say. I hesitate to name names because discretion is a vital implement in my professional drawer of cutlery, but I will spoonerise the by-worst offender as the fat tosser Dark Eels [name further edited at my workplace's request - hope this is sufficient]. Mr Eels, a fat and eminently unlikeable man in his 40s, has been causing a pain in my ears, much as the smell of an offensively oderous dog might cause a pain in my nose. Unlike a dog, I can't kick Mr Eels hard, or even soft, and I certainly can't shoot him and sell him to the Koreans. Alas. He has assumed the role of interrogative policeman, and strolls in nonchalantly and begins firing off a load of questions about our equipment, prices, personal habits, and personal backgrounds. The first day he tried this, he gave us a fair grilling, but by today we'd figured him out quite well. He is getting some large amounts of hassle from superiors for his own carelessnesses, which he blames on our company, and thus like a young boy beaten in his homelife who becomes the school bully, he is trying to pick on us. But the bully is only effective if he's hard: Dark Eels is the school fatboy. And in myself and my colleague he could not have chosen poorer targets, because we don't really care. We don't panic about his threats to kick us out the base and we don't reveal much of significance in his interrogations. We sit back and "hmm" and let him speak about his skateboarding (?! - he lies a lot) accident and drab sporting opinions. Initially, when he stormed in on full force, he was quite troublesome (and he called himself by a fake name - what?) but now he's quickly assumed a position of familiar annoyance. Like that stinky, farty dog.

Of worthier mention is the driver we've been given for the last few days, a 59-year-old father-of-six Ivorian-Ghanaian called Jean. He's been our main representative of the Ivory Coast and has been terrific. My experience of much of Africa has to not expect punctuality, and I am a person who likes things to be on the minute, but Jean has been brilliantly on time, and unassumingly helpful. He has made transportation, so often a huge hassle on jobs, really smooth and easy.

Aside from tolerating cocks and listening to Jean bemoan the state of Abidjan's ripped-up roads, I have been mostly sitting about waiting. Waiting in the yard for equipment yet to arrive. It should have been there Monday - in fact, it should have been there weeks go - but no, and yesterday and today, also no. It's looking very likely, maybe, for tomorrow morning, in which case I'll grab a couple of boxes of stuff and jump on a plane to Ghana. By Saturday I should be on a boat, doing all kinds of fancy stuff.

And that's that. Or c'etait ce, or whatever the French is.