My First Bad Day at Work (prefaced by two eye-opening road trips to remote job sites)

I had my first bad day at work today. It was the product of the days that preceded it that were above average. Today is a Thursday, and I can easily say it all started on Tuesday. I’ve been working on two separate projects for the majority of my time so far. A fair amount of time is being spent learning all the ins and outs of the office but the majority easily is spent discussing and designing and familiarizing myself with the codes and their origins over here.

Tuesday had a job site meeting (or more appropriately, a ‘clarification meeting’) 2.5 hours away (north of Durban) at a bridge site where ian (my carpool ride) and coworker gary would be introducing the project to all interested contractors and subcontractors. The bridge has been designed by bcp and all that remains is the receiving of tenders (bids) from qualified contractors. Rather than go into Thursday I’m gonna go into some details about two very very different parts of south Africa, both of which are very different from what we’re accustomed to here.

The meeting was held in the town hall of a village on tribal land. I’m always comparing this place (especially the townships) to mexico. The analogy still sticks except I’m not sure if goats and cows wander around mexico to this extent. About this village: it’s quite large and like an Indian reserve in the states, it is owned/governed by the south African government. Instead it has a chief (with seven wives of course) who was born into the job. There is no law enforcement, all issues and concerns involving land appointment go through the chief and his advisors. He is given a stipend from the south African government so he does not collect a tax from his people thus they don’t pay any tax. The village, quite a large one comparatively I’ve been told, is near and on land with a little jungle home to a bird found nowhere else in south Africa let alone the world. This makes this little bit of nearby jungle quite a tourist destination for birdwatchers which is where bcp comes in. the road in and out of this town used to be hand made (yes literally) and people wishing to travel to this part of south Africa needed 4-wheel drive as well as resilient backsides. bcp has been in charge of the road being built through this village until it meets up with another unpaved road that is currently undergoing the same process. This road includes a couple bridges (one of which is already done). The existing bridges are literally underwater during heaving rains and currently have a significant amount of the abutments broken off and downstream a few meters. The new bridge will be several meters higher thus increasing the span and required engineering but this is not a major project like the one I visited last time I was here which crosses the mgeni river.

Because of the potential conflicts between the local “government” and a construction crew driving through creating noise etc, bcp appointed a liaison to the chief on the payroll. The liaison is a white bloke named “titch” who grew up on a farm with his german parents and all his zulu neighbors. So he grew up speaking zulu and german. When he grew up he went to an Afrikaans school. He later learned English in school and now speaks that at home with his wife who is from England. He used to work for the parks service and has no technical experience… he’s just someone that can talk to both sides.

After going over the contract documents and project description everyone drove out to the site 22km away (16 paved, 6 unpaved). I drove with titch who explained the village, the chief and how everything works there. The Africans still don’t believe in land ownership and thus nobody owns property. You ask the chief if you can have a piece of property and he approves or disapproves. You then build your home on the property however you want out of whatever you want. Most are brick (it’s cheap) with a thatch roof (or metal) with wood framing holding it up. Sometimes glass windows. Sometimes not. I unfortunately left my camera in the boot of ian’s car so I couldn’t take any pictures of the amazing village. One other thing that was amazing, and titch told me it would blow my mind when I saw it, was how the vegetation changed 100% after going over a single hill. It had been lush green grass with jungle like what you would see apes moving around in and then, poof, you’re over this one hill and you’re in what they call the thornfeld. Acacia trees, cacti, and aloe (stuff with thorns) and no more green grass. Why? “This side doesn’t get any rain.” That’s Africa. Just like how my side of pietermartizberg gets A LOT more rain than the howick side where a lot of my coworkers live. I wish I had my camera but I’ve been assured that I’ll be back there in several months once construction gets under way.

Two last points about titch and this road: during the drive we passed black children of every age in their school uniforms (slacks, white shirts and ties). It was like Hogwarts just out down the road. They were walking back in this moderate heat (it would have been far worse just months ago) up these pretty big hills back to the village we had just left. These boys and girls in their shirts and ties were going to leave this paved or unpaved road they were walking on hike into the hills with the brick and thatch houses not big enough to park a large car in. maybe it’s just me but it boggles the mind to contrast the school uniforms with the walk and the homes they’re walking back to. Compare it kids in the usa who drive half a mile to school and wear clothes that they bought at a department store that came with holes in them already. And also consider what an education means out here. Not that much.

Secondly, titch showed me a piece of land on a hill that the chief is letting him build a retirement home on. “virtually unheard of” they say to have a tribal community let an outsider in like this. But I guess that’s why bcp chose titch.

Next on the list: the b.e.e. black equality empowerment. In construction projects it dictates that every project needs to have an emerging contractor of a minimum skill level with a certain percentage of underprivileged (aka black, Indian or women) on the payroll. Jews don’t earn them points. Every contractor or sub is ranked by the dept. of transportation. The main contractor needs to be a ‘stage 6’ and he needs to employ a ‘stage 4’ or higher. Every stage 6 rep at the meeting was white (except maybe one) and every stage 4 was black (and young). There was even totally bored and disinterested girl in her mid to late 20’s there. My guess is having a girl representing a company while a guy sits there next to her and asks questions makes a company more likely to get picked. That’s just my guess.

I was mostly on board on that 2.5 hour each way drive up the coast to see more of the country. And I did. We left maritzburg (pmb) at 6am so I was tired when we got back.

Moving on to Wednesday, I had another field trip, this time with bruce himself. This one was a 3.5 hour drive south to inspect a project we’ve been brought in to check another firm’s obviously questionable design. Bruce and I left pmb at 7am and got to the site where we stayed for about 1.5 hours looking at information we’ve trying to get emailed to us for a week and walking around in a culvert I’ve been running numbers on for the past week. The culvert had 10 meters of soil above it and was about 2.5 meters tall with about 5cm of water running through it. Walking down there, james the site supervisor for the engineers we’re… auditing… told me I should put on some gumboots before we go down there. Now, before I left, Tristan explained to me that they call condoms in south Africa “gumboots”. Turns out it’s really slang when gumboots originally mean rubber boots… the equivalent of what we call “rubbers”. roll that one around in your head for a bit...

Speaking of which, the sabc news are talking about how the government is discussing creating red light districts especially for the world cup in 2010. they’re seriously considering this to accommodate international guests.

I took quite a few pictures of the site visit and the drive there and back (it was a loop). I’ll post them eventually. By the time bruce and I got back to the office, it was time to leave for an office cocktail party for one of the directors who is retiring after 25 years from the roads dept. a 30 something year-old is starting next month and an older engineer, peter, is moving up to take his place in the roads dept. the cocktail party gave me a chance to work on figuring out the office soccer team and ways to watch and play some pickup soccer in the coming weeks. It also gave me a chance to, as usual, get questioned by the administrative women in the office about how I’m living and how can I possibly stand it? The most popular question I’m asked is: “how do you cook at your small place?” and then second is: “YOU DON’T COOK?!” tied for third are: “CEREAL?!!!” and “YOU’RE KIDDING?!!!”

After the cocktail party I tried to watch south Africa play sri lanka at cricket at ians but I was in need of sleep so ian took me home where I fell asleep and missed the first close finish of the tourney so far thanks to the sri lankin bowler breaking a record I had asked about moments before falling asleep. 4 wickets in 4 balls. I had asked earlier, “has anyone ever bowled 2 wickets in 2 balls?” 2 in 2 is extremely rare but possible.

That brings me to today, Thursday. I spent the morning going over the new direction we’re going with the culvert analysis now that we’ve been to the site and can move on. So I started moving forward but got held up by a question about some software that took me around the office trying to figure out the solution. Then I was finally shown how to bill my time (I asked, “how do I bill time that’s spent learning how to bill time?”).

Here’s where I got stuffed; my work visa is still not ready. So I don’t have a bank account. I’m being paid out of petty cash whenever I ask. Without a bank account it’s tough to buy a car. However, I’ve recently learned that I need a ‘drivers license’-type license from the d.o.t. to buy a car regardless of money and visa. Basically once I get the license, my company can put up whatever money I need to buy a car. Problem is Candice, the girl that answered the phone every time I called from the states, said she could take care of it before the weekend if I got her pictures of me. Everybody told me different things that I would need and different places to get them. I walked a couple blocks to the store “game” which is like longs drugs and found out they don’t take the picture that I would need. Pippa suggested I take the company bakkie and rob drew me a map. I then wandered around trying to find the keys only to find out that it wasn’t even there. Kevin had it. So then I tried to get a ride from one of the secretaries. Finally bridgit to me to the Victoria mall where I paid 30 rand to have a guy take a picture of me with a 3 megapixel camera (not even on a tripod) where they printed out 4 copies and handed it to me 15 minutes later. On the way back I joked, “I’ll bet the second my ass hits my chair when I get back, bruce will check to see if I’m done with the numbers he gave me”. Sure enough 5 minutes after getting back, bruce walks in. he’d heard I was out getting my picture taken but I don’t think he knew it took me the entire afternoon. Grrr… and tomorrow is the month-end braai. Wow, I’m something like 3 weeks behind and I haven’t even been here that long. Our offices have locks on them so I think I might just lock the door tomorrow to keep people from meandering in and asking “howzit?”. The one thing of importance: making plans with virgilio to see 300 tomorrow night. Shazzam!

I think that’s enough to last awhile. Remember: send me an email letting me know how things are going wherever you’re at. I should have email at home soon (I hope) so I’ll try to answer all the emails that’ve been sitting in my inbox unreachable to the likes of me.

Cheers,

Jonah