I worked on a number of construction projects in Tanzania in 1984 and 1985. Although I visited that delightful country again in 1986 and 1992, I did not go near the projects and I sometimes wonder how they (the projects) are doing now?
A two hour flight at 7am in a five seater plane, travelling south-south west of Dar-es-Salaam (the capital) brought one to an unending cloud line, broken only after 11am to noon. From 8,OOOft the pilot had to find a 'hole' in the clouds; he also had to be careful in case the plane was not where his instruments told him that it was - high mountains and all that. Through the clouds one could see the Sao Hill escarpment. Brooke Bond have a tea estate there and in the 1930s, the renegade son of an English aristocrat used to turn up daily for work, as a clerk, wearing tails and plimsolls! But there is also a huge man-made forest to support the Mufindi Pulp Mill Project and Township and it was in the latter that my interests lay.
Funded by the World Bank, the Kuwaiti Fund for International Development and the Government of Tanzania, among others, the Mill project took more than 5 years to design, build and commission! Our job was to build some 650 staff houses, together with water (the quality produced was reputed to be higher than EC Standards!) and electrical reticulation, roads, sewers and (as a good QS would say) "the like". The whole project was staffed by Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, Zambians, Tanzanians, Portuguese, Brits, Indians, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Pakistanis and Malawians (not quite quorate for a sub-committee of the UN!). A few of the men were on married status contracts. Desmond Morris would have made a veritable study of the preening and spreading of peacocks' plumages on Friday and Saturday nights in time for the club. Saturday and Sunday mornings were good for spotting broken noses!
Designed by a famous consulting group, we discovered nevertheless that the specified invert levels were above the highest finished floor levels and what a mess that would have made. The topographical survey of the 300 or so acres, appeared to have been prepared by someone who was being distracted in a bad way by a swarm of mosquitos. The 'topo' was wrong and the whole site had to be re-designed and setout. By us! A claim surveyor 5 dream became the finance director's nightmare. Luckily, when he woke up, three or four of us were standing beside him, patting him on the forehead, saying, "there, there now!" Clauses 44 etc of FIDIC and the money which flowed from them saw to everything!
My next project had its origins as long ago as the 1920s. A wandering European priest (Bible in one hand, gun in someone else's) came across a salty river inhabited by hippos, at a place called Uvinza in Western Tanzania, very close to lake Tanganyika and the port of Kigoma. A commercial salt project was soon established using by-gone technology. During my time, it was run by the State Mining Corporation (STAMICO). The task was to modernise production. A vacuum evaporation plant was designed and we had to build it in a joint venture with an Italian company.
A three hour five-seater plane ride from Dar-es-Salaam to Kigoma, with a stop at Tabora for refuelling. Radio communications had broken down between head office and site and therefore, no-one was there to meet us on arrival. As the crow flies, Uvinza is 30 miles from Kigoma. However, it took us three hours on a road built as an inverted 'V' and strangely, also mapped as one along its length, with a swamp in between.
With a colleague, we hitched up a CB mast one dark night and managed to raise a taxi driver in Brighton. He was very excited at being contacted by two people somewhere between Burundi, Zaire, Tanzania and Uganda. He tried to phone home (London), to pass on a message to my family but the line was engaged!
Radio communications almost always broke down when we needed a plane back to Dar-es-Salaam. Three of us had to get a train at 10pm on a Thursday at Uvinza and arrived in Dar-es-Salaam on Saturday, at 2pm, 800 miles and 36 hours later. My travelling companions gradually discovered why I was vehement at the start of the journey that scotch, water, bread and corned beef were excellent repast, breakfast, lunch and dinner. By the time we got to our destination, they could neither talk nor laugh. Maybe it was the company.
The site was remote and therefore, staff used to go to Dar-es-Salaam for 'refreshers'. The site manager was a very quietly spoken and strict looking Indian gentleman by the name of Mr Bhang. He came to the Agip Motel where I was resident and one day, I decided to phone and invite him for a drink at the bar. The phone rang; loudly and quickly he said "Bhang!" To which I languidly replied, "To what occasion do I owe this 'explosion'?" He never saw the joke. I know, however, that Mr Bhang saw the job through; to this day, salt is produced at Uvinza and some is exported.
Although I was not responsible for estimating or tendering, I was once asked to be present at the opening of tenders for a housing project; one company out of twenty six. The tenders were due to have been submitted by way of two Bills of Quantities, one wholly in local currency and the second in a mix of currencies. Each of the bills was at least two inches thick, in the usual sealed brown envelope. Twenty five sets were opened but one was missing. Ours. We looked high and low through the mass of envelopes and, at long last, we came across a very thin one, unopened. It was ours. It was on two sheets of paper - it was the lowest bid! But did it conform to the invitation to bid? I was shown the door and I could hear mutterings about the fairness of a game of cricket. Nobody had told me that rather than four inches of paper with words, figures, columns and totals, we had dirt in our pockets! What a set up? I thought of England and Great George Street. The houses were built, but not by us.
The town of Mbeya is close to the border with Zambia and it was here that the Overseas Development Authority of the United Kingdom decided to fund the construction of two magnificently equipped hospitals, one a maternity hospital and the other a referral hospital. Unlike industrial projects there is little chance of under-utilisation of a finished project such as this one. Birth and illness and death are the same the world over, but different!
Everything but everything, except local labour, sand and water was imported for these two projects. As I recall, there was even a point of contention as to who should do the mural on a wall of the entrance; a Tanzanian or a Brit? I think the Brit got it; the cans of paint were imported. Late one day when I was in the Livingstone Hotel, I overhead a protest, in a mix of Swahili and English, that the mural would show a scene from the Shires! Mr Neil Kinnock visited these hospitals in the late 1980s. I wonder what he saw?!