I had no internet on the rig, so here is a collection of what I would have said if I’d been able to post.
The toilet has no seat, so I’ve had to squat over it. Which is a bit strange to me.
I had to talk to the crane crew and give them special instructions on how to life my tools to make sure the tools weren’t damaged. I went to the crew and asked if they spoke English. They all said yes. So I gave them the directions on how to lift my tools. At which point, the one that didn’t look bored and was listening intently said “Miiike” and pointed to my name stitched into my coveralls.
There is a local operator I am supposed to be training and helping him get ready to do the job by himself. He will wander off while you are talking to him, has no ability to self motivate and unless you drag him along with you and force him to work, he won’t do anything but sleep all day. I’m starting to call him Mohammed Gump.
I am getting a little irritated that I have to abide by the rules of Ramadan. I’m not Muslim, but it would be like if they came to the US during Lent and we told them to eat fish every Friday or go to jail. Oddly, nobody seems to be offended if they see you doing, but they are quick to tell you that somebody will get offended. It also nice to note that drinking water during the day is offensive, but allowing school girls to burn to death isn’t.
There is an old dog(With a beard!) that wanders around the camp. During the day, he sleeps under the buildings. At night and in the mornings, he sleeps on the sand. Most of the locals want nothing to do with him. It is a sort of sad story. He belonged to an Ex-pat that went back to the US for a month and disappeared. I scratched the dog’s ears once and gave him a piece of chicken and had a new best friend for the whole two weeks.
Speaking of dog, my roommate manages to leave the bathroom smelling like wet dog. Roommate also only reads the Bible and only watches the Passion of the Christ. I thought he was joking about the second one… but no. I saw him watch it at least 5 times.
We were given a satellite phone to use. It has to be outside so it can see the sky. Which is ok, unless there is a sandstorm going on. Which makes it fun trying to give update while spitting out sand. So they put in a phone next to us in our little bat cave. Which is great, except now we are getting calls from everybody wanting to know what is going on. Every three hours, we called Yusef to let him know what is happening. Every hour we got calls from Ryan, Santoshi, Saqib, Chris, Tim, Wayne, Dave, Mohammed, Mohammed, ImRahn, Bater, Gabriel, Sayed, and Bob. And every day somebody was upset that we didn’t tell them. One guy told me I need to call him every hour to tell him what was going on. Except he didn’t tell me his name or number. I’d call our dispatcher to connect me and he would go into a fit wanting to know who was going to pay for the call. It isn’t right that he has to pay for the call. This is one place it takes me roughly three seconds to remember how much I hate it. Normally, it takes a good month for me to get fed up with some place.
I’m leaving tonight and I should be home in a few days. I’m hoping I’m home for a little while, but it sounds like Nigeria might be on the horizon.