Greetings All,

And a big hello  from Downtown Sfax in the heart of Sunny Tunisia.  Its been a funny old week where I sampled the delights of internal travel within Tunisia, including several near death experiences!! Had a trip to Tunis, was attacked by a local cat and have finally figured out the code for ordering sandwiches.

Last Monday saw me putting the finishing touches to a presentation I had to deliver to the British Gas Senior management Team for Africa and Middle East Region in Tunis.

The problem with presentations is that, no matter how much you tart it up, no matter how many pretty pictures you put in and no matter how flowery the language you use may be; when you’re telling them they have screwed up and are in it up to their necks, they aint gonna like it!

The message was going to be that, based on a risk assessment I’ve done on the remaining critical path activities, considering various parameters like bed space, weather, third party availability, scope growth, rework  – all the usual suspects – I cant see the project being completed before May next year assuming I can find a suitable accommodation rig to expedite the construction phase. That means the figures come out with a huge overspend on approved budget and best part of a year late!! In the meantime the reservoir is in decline and after January next year, it’s going to be difficult to meet nominations, so the accountants are going to be very unhappy.

So, on Monday evening I set off for Tunis with a very thick telephone book stuffed down the back of my trousers! I travelled to Tunis by Train. I have to say I am very impressed by the trains out here. They leave on time and they arrive on time, almost to the second. Admittently, I was a bit suprised when we sat outside the station at Tunis for nearly 15 minutes just to make sure we arrived on time and not early, but hey. Given the problems in the UK , on time is great. The trains themselves are ok. They have three classes.. 1st , 2nd and the top of the range Comfort class. I havent seen 2nd class but can confirm that 1st is ok and comfort is like 1st class but with coffee. Its fun watching the locals trying to shove a 3ft thick stack of bundled matresses into a luggage rack which is 2 ft deep. Its amazing how ingenious people can be, especially when they have an audience making sniggering noises. The seats aren’t hugely comfortable, so it figures a pile of mattresses must have helped, although the guys head was almost touching the roof most of the journey. At one point he must have dozed of, as next minute he disappeared and re-appeared on the floor in the isle with the pile of mattresses on top of him. So, we have comfortable trains which run on time and offer cabaret!

The hotel I was booked into was very hotelly and the next days meeting was suprisingly painless. Lots of dark muttering and heated glaring at the former Project Manager, who was made to sit there and suffer! End of the day I think the guys were resigned to hearing bad news and were actually relieved it wasn’t worse. In reality it may well be worse, but I have reserved the right to change my forecast date once we have the new accomodation rig along side and working.

That night I was invited out to dinner with the team, but politely declined on the basis that I wanted to get back to Sfax asap as there were some critical activities in the morning I wanted to be available for. Hence I was chaufer driven to the airport and provided with a ticket for Sfax.   Easy. The hard part was working out where in the hell you checked in!

Tunis airport has a single doorway upstairs that bears the legend Departures. Its guarded by a policeman that looks like a refugee from the Village People, all leather jacket, peaked cap and huge bushy moustach. When I tried to get through, I showed my ticket and was refused entry. He wouldn’t say why, just that I couldn’t go through. Not entirely sure what the problem was I wandered aimlessly for a while looking for a customer sevice desk. No chance!! Eventually I spotted a European looking chap clutching a ticket for Djerba – another internal destination. Turns out he was Italian, but had enough English to explain that he hadn’t a clue where to go either!  Eventually we spotted an official looking lady in an Air Tunis uniform and asked for help. She pointed vaguely to a corner of the terminal downstairs. We had a wander down, but where she pointed seemed to be nothing but the toilets. Confused, we wandered about a bit before I asked another official looking chap. Same answer. A vague point in the direction of the toilets. Now thoroughly confused, I left my Italian chum having a much needed beer and decided to check out these toilets. Sure enough, once inside the loo, there was another door leading to “Lignes Interierre”. Well blow me down. Cunning chaps these Tunisians, I came to the conclusion that its an anti terrorism thing, disguising the domestic departures as a public bog!

The flight itself was different. A Small, cramped plane that took nearly as long as the train did by dint of the fact that it made more stops than the train. We landed at Gaffsa and another armpit of a place before finally making it to Sfax. I’m sure the pilot needs to have his altitmeter retuned as he seemed determined to fly us into the ground every time he landed. I’ve experienced hard landings before but this was rediculous. You got the distinct impression that the ground came as a bit of  a shock to him each time we touched down, almost as though it was some 20 feet higher than he expected. Still I made it back in one piece and finally got back to Guebiba Village, couresy of a 25yr old yellow taxi which had sheep poo in the rear footwell!

My preferred way of travelling around Sfax is to is drive  myself. I like my new Audi. Its actually an excellent car in very good nick for a Tunisian Hire car. Its responsive , fast and apart from a warning about the brakes that keeps coming up every five minutes, its exceptionally reliable. The problem, as always, is the other road users.  You soon realise in Tunisia, the one rule on the roads is that there are no rules. Its possible, or so I thought, to break down the other road users into a number of categorees. Firstly and most prolifically, there are the mobilette drivers. These are nasty little bike things where the driver peddles like mad until the engine kicks in and off he goes. Now these things can cary anything from a single person to a full family of mum, dad , kids and the family sheep, to a hundredweight bag of charcoal. There are no rules that apply to mobilettes. They drive on whatever side of the road suits them, and will often change their mind and direction without any warning whatsoever, swerving in a sweeping U turn with the driver, the passengers and copious cargo lurching madly as gravity takes hold. Best advice is to give them a wide berth whenever you see one which is often.

Car drivers vary enormously. I can’t believe there is an MOT in Tunisia, as you’ll find top of the range Mercedes on the road alongside 1960 Toyota pickups. Lights, horns, even doors seem to be optional accessories and the only rule I can work out is that on the very rare dual carriagway sections of road, the white lane lines act like a tram way and so eveyone straddles them. Overtaking is a national passtime, but only when there is a car coming in the opposite direction and preferably quite close to you. Driving along, you will see an oncoming car edge out as they approach you, usually from behind a lorry, bus, pick up etc. after checking the road, they pull in, then they edge out again , then they pull in. Then they pull right out in front of you, flash their lights a few times, supposing the lights work that is,  and go for it. I spend a lot of time on the hard shoulder avoiding cars that seem to be aiming at me!!

My two near death experiences occured last week. I finish work around 7.00pm and it is pitch black this time of year. There are no street lights to talk about and as I mentioned, lights seem to be an optional extra for cars, especially in the country. I have gone a bit native in my driving and tend to drive too fast with one hand on the gear stick to facilitate quick change downs to overtake folk straddeling the middle white line. Whilst driving along a particularliy dark road, I noticed a black shadow in front of me, wasn’t sure if it was just a shadow or what so I slowed down and put on my full beam to discover a donkey and cart, loaded up to the gills wth some kind of vegetation in the middle of the road, on the wrong side, walking towards me with absolutely no lights, or reflectors or anything to give me a clue. By the time I spotted it I was doing around 80kms/hr and must have been about 20ft away. So I screamed on the breaks and flew onto the hard shoulder – there was a central reservation on this road. I enjoyed an entertaining few seconds where the car bounced over old tree stumps, abandoned car tyres and assorted rubbish, before I careered wildly back onto the road, more or less pointing in the right direction. All exciting stuff. I was still looking in the rearview mirror to make sure that the cart was ok when I looked forward to see a car had stopped  – right in the middle of the main road  – same deal  central reservation of palm trees and concrete with a rough , sand/mud hard shoulder.  The guy had a puncture and was changing his tyre but had opted to stop in the carriageway and had turned all his lights off. Another lively journey onto the hard shoulder at around 60 km/s hr only to discover a bloody great concrete block had been abandoned there. So, off road into the olive groves,  breaking the whole time, until I finally stopped in a cloud of dirt and sand with an olive tree on either side of the car and a third two or three feet in front of me. Suitably cross, I got out and exchanged words with the driver who was very old and very arab and just smiled a toothless smile and nodded a lot. He had to help pull me out of the olive grove and I made it home – at around 10 miles per hour, in one piece – older and hopefully wiser.

Actually I like the driving here –  its seldom boring. What else was I on about. Oh yes. There are hundreds of feral cats here. They all look pretty and cute but I reckon they are all decended from sabre tooth tigers. There was a very cute kitten outside my bungalow the other evening , purring and meowwing and generally being insufferably cute. Being an animal lover, I found some cold chicken scraps in the fridge and tossed them to the cat. Nothing was going to make me put my fingers close to it. It scoffed the chicken and was doing that rolling on its back and being all playfull and coy cat thing. so I went to get some more chicken. A little more confident, I kneeled down in front of it, perhaps 4 to 5 ft away from it, and put some chicken on the ground  in front of me. Well no kidding, the flaming thing did a standing jump and pounced at me, landing on my chest and knocking me over onto my back, so I had this mad bundle of fur, hissing and spitting inches from my nose whilst I lay prostrate on the ground. I confess to screaming like a girl, flinging the chicken in the air and thumping the damn cat as hard as I could, leaping up and dashing for the bungalow, slamming the door behind me and assessing the damage. Fortunately, I had a t shirt, shirt and jumper on, so its claws never got me, but the jumper was buggered. So no more feeding cats.

Finally some good news as I have finally figured out the sandwich code. We have a firm delivers pre ordered sandwiches for lunch. They are huge, filling and very tasty, but something of a lucky dip.  First week here, I requested a chicken sandwich and got cheese. last week I requested Cheese and got tuna. Yesterday I asked for roast beef and got chicken. That only leaves the turkey ham to try when I should have all the options covered.  I have produced a spread sheet working out the various permutations and reckon I have it sussed. I’ll test my theory tomorrow and then start on the next challenge which is getting harrissa instead of mayonaise .