On January first, 2012, over here in Nigeria the subsidy for petrol was canceled due to the fact that there was no money for it in the budget. So now the fuel price went up from NGN 65 to NGN 138 and more. This is an increase of 112%, not bad, isn't it?

Strange enough is also the fact that Nigeria, as one of the bigger deployers of crude oil, has almost no functional refinery inside the country. All existing refineries are out of service due to lack of maintenance. Or maybe even due to politics. Because responsible for the import of fuel are relatives of the former president. And I bet they will take any effort to keep their business running instead of having the fuel produced in the own country.

On the other hand it is also interesting that a country that produces an average of 2 million barrels of crude oil a day has no money in their state's budget. I am asking myself where the oil money goes to then? At an average price of 100 US-Dollars per barrel Nigeria earns 200 million dollars a day, which is 6 billion dollars a month or 72 billion dollars a year. Even more when you consider the oil production to be above 2 million barrels a day.

But back to the topic. Due to the way of increasding fuel prices by over 100% from this Monday on people will go on strike to force the government to reduce prices again.

From my perspective it would have been more wise to increase the prices bit by bit, as already by April 2011 the president announced to kill the subsidy. Time was there enough, only the brain was missing.

Last week I went to Calabar for a crucial meeting. In the end it turned out that half of the attendees did not have a clue what we were talking about.

But anyway, at least the hotel was ok. And I am adding here one more picture to the anthology of "Room with a view" which had been started by Frau Klugscheißer.

The rain has stopped now for over two weeks. "Dry season", says my wife. So we are expecting harmattan to start soon to bring down the temperatures.

While it was raining, daily temperatures reached 26 to 28 centigrades. Now daily temperatures are around 35 centigrades. In November, northern hemisphere.

Anyway, time has come for popo:



(Or for those who don't know what this is: they call it also "papaya")

Yesterday it was announced in the newspapers that from yesterday on for the next seven days five gas-fired power stations will be shut down due to maintenance on the gas supply pipelines. Results will be load shedding and temporary power supply disruptions all over the country.

In fact, power is almost not available all over the country, as the remaining power stations cannot cope with the load.

As a thinking person using my brain I am asking myself why the maintenance on the gas supply pipelines cannot be carried out one by one power station, keeping the remaining 4 power stations up and running? And how many experienced personnel is available to execute this maintenance in parallell?

Anyway, these questions nobody is asking, as the news directly came from the upper ranks of government.

Instead rumours are being heard that exactly this upper clique rather would prefer to sell the gas abroad for seven days than powering up the own country. Of course there is a lot of money involved which will end up in the pockets of only a few people. Therefore the people can suffer.

Nigeria, when will you ever change?

Herr Gorillaschnitzel hatte vorgelegt und seinen rasanten Arbeitsanfahrtsweg per Pizzaschleuder auf die Tube gebannt.

Daher konnte ich nicht dahinter zurückstehen und habe auch einmal probiert, ob die Kamerafunktion meiner Digiknipse das abkann. Und wie! Sogar in Breitwand-HDMI, sagt sie. Was allerdings die Tube draus macht?

Sehen Sie selbst!

This one is an example out of the box "whenever you buy pirated DVDs of Chinese origin, just don't read the description".



As we can see someone translated parts of the English text into Chinese and then back again. This backwards translation was most obviously done by someone who has no idea about the English language at all. But what to expect? It has to be cheap!

So here we are again.

Currently there's some refurbishment going on outside our office building. The house is 4 stories high, so scaffolding is needed on the outside to fix the new tiles. But this wouldn't be Africa if things were not slightly different to the rest of the world. So this is how scaffolding is fixed here:



Unfortunatly the light is weak inside the staircase, so the picture is a bit blur. But I think you can see that there's one bar from the outside entering the staircase through the window. And then there's a second bar preventing the first one from sliding out again.



Here you can see that the sharp edge of the scaffolding directly points into the emergency escape route in the staircase. But where is the HSE officer to complain about?

He simply doesn't exist.

More than 60 locations all over Nigeria are part of this project. Some of them more important, some less. Especially the bigger ones where different contractors are involved need periodically interface meetings to clarify questions and solve problems before they occur.


One of those locations is Calabar. Located in the far southeast of Nigeria it is a quite safe place to travel to. Just a bit less than an one hour flight away from Abuja Calabar is offering a completely different environment. In Abuja there are bushes and trees, yes, but generally there's a lot of dry grass and brown shining through. But here in Calabar everything is green. It starts already when flying in over thick, carpet-like forests where roads and small creeks virtually disappear inside. Then, once outside the airport, you will see big areas covered with grass and plants, all growing and blooming. Last time I was there it was harvesting season for pineapple, so everywhere along the road were small tables and stands offering freshly harvested pineapples. A bit back from the road you could see the pineapple plants and there, in between, the houses of the farmers trying to make some business.

Calabar. Not only that I had to go there for business reasons, as well parts of my family are living there. A nice opportunity to see them again. For me as white man. And as I wrote before: Calabar still is safe. Although we had a policeman escorting us, there was never need for him. Next time I will try to take more pictures.

It's been quite a while since I last posted something from Abuja. In fact, it was just the day before I left for a short holiday with the family back at home.

But now I am back again. During the time I was away the contract for the house I am moving to was finalized. So when I came back I immediately could move in. Of course still most of the furniture is missing, as I did not find the time for shopping around, but basic living is possible. The major things are there which is: a bed, a fridge and one roll of toilet tissue. What else do you need?

Well, the topic of this posting is about something else. So let's start now.
When you're in Africa, you will discover that there's a big hype regarding gadgets. The latest mobile phones, the newest electronic devices - you will find them here. Everybody needs nowadays those little handhelds with full alphanumeric keyboard to show off. Together with that the need of power (for charging these toys) is rising. Therefore those countries invest a lot of money to get their power networks refurbished and extended. But sometimes I ask myself if this is correct, if it was right to bring electricity to Africa? It may sound like racism, but I will explain why.

I moved into this house within a nice compound as first tennant. The house was empty for quite a while and so I was checking through what had to be re-done or fixed. Besides some AC units that lost gas over the time and therefore did not work well, there was no bigger issue. That's what I thought.

After my first night I got up in the morning and went into the bathroom. Waking up in a seating position is part of the ritual. During that time you got enough time to make plans for the day or just check the environment. Inside the bath tub outlet there was some piece of metal which caught my interest. I finished what I was doing and went to the bath tub to check if something broke off and was flushed there. But when I came near I could see it was a piece of support metal keeping the screw for the sieve into position. Most probably an adjustment after someone spoiled the hole of the sieve. Anyway, touching it was not really a good idea, as I received an electric shock. Ok, may have been static electricity. And as well I am a bit stupid. Second touch ended up with electric shock as well. So the conclusion was that static electricity was out of the possibilities. Next careful tries were touching the taps. Nothing on the tub, nothing on the sink. Good. Next floor, next bathroom. Touching the sieve: nothing. Touching the tap: bingo! I already started thinking about selling the principle to PHCN: power from the tap, just open it and you'll get a combination of water and light! Only the master bedroom on the top floor seemed to be without electricity on the taps.

So the decision grew to move everything to the top floor and use the bathroom of the master bedroom. But first it had to be cleaned. So I went upstairs and opened the tap for hot water. Felt a bt strange and not hot, when I put my finger inside. So I touched the tube coming from the water heater. Needless to say that it is made of metal. Double shock: hot and charged with electricity.

The next thing was going and complaining to he management. Before I started not to have any bath at all and smelling all around. The management organised an electrician to come around, check and fix the problem. A real specialist. He came to the house, touched the metal tube of one of the water heaters with his electrician screwdriver and told me "There is light!" If I did not knew before. Then he unscrewed the first switch for the water heater, without switching it off before. Well, he found out that there was still light on the water system. When trying to screw back the switch he caused a nice little spark which blew the fuse. No more light on the water pipes.

So we went up to the distribution box on the top floor and put two fuses in again which had tripped. Wonder what? Electricity on the water system existing again. Wow. Slowly I was impressed by this guy. He found out what I knew long before and what I already told him. But nevertheless, I am just a stupid consulting engineer anyway. So he took out the next heater switch. And found out that one fixing screw had caused a connecton in between the switched power cable and the earthing connection. So the earthing connection put full electricity to the outside of the water heater and, water is a very good conductor, the water system inside the house. he then fixed the problem and went again.

Hours later it came to my mind that if the earthing connection was carrying full 220Volts, why did the fuse not blow? Was it possible that all the earthing connections are useless inside the house? But now it is too late to tell. And touching a running system: never do so!

It has been a while since I posted the last one about this topic. I was of the opinion that only in countries where English is a kind of second language mistakes like those could happen.

But no, also over here there is the phenomenon of interpreting the English language in a special way. The small restaurant where I occasionally go to changed its menu. In fact not the content, only the presentation. But still some corrections could have been carried out. But no.



Still there is the wish for dry soil, garnished with toppings of your choice. Well, whoever likes something like that, will be pleased to find on the next page:



Pure deserts, sweet and without oasis. And if you brought enough time with you, you can still have a coffee. It will be delivered late then.