colloquium

I’ve been reminded today by a supervisor that I see Nigeria through the eyes of someone living in a 5-star hotel. Fair enough. I’ll grant him that, but then that is similar to how I’ve seen most countries I’ve ever visited. I would like to think though that I’m not that oblivious. If I were, I probably would not have had the conversation with him in the first place. We spoke about his admirations to work and live in South Africa as opposed to Nigeria. What he thinks South African can offer him that Nigeria can’t. More about that later.

It has been an interesting week. Yesterday we made a lot of progress in terms of our stay here in Nigeria. The apartments have now been cleaned, the appliances can be delivered anytime we want; it is just the furniture that is the current stumble block.

DTS’ plan of paying the hotel and have the hotel transfer the money to the furniture shop backfired. At least the hotel could allocate some of that money against our bill. Some of it was transferred back to Lourens’s^* card. DTS arranged a transfer of the money to their bank account from South Africa, but it can take several business days for the money to be cleared by the Reserve Bank. Hopefully this is the week.

Yesterday, we went to The Palms Mall to buy all the other stuff for the apartments – brooms, mops, buckets, towels, cutlery and everything else one needs for housekeeping. Lourens and I went to Game first (same Game as in South Africa) and we bought all the ‘hardware’ we called it. Only at checkout did we realise they don’t take Visa. And let me emphasise this. The Game store at the premiere shopping destination in Nigeria, does not take Visa or Master Card. Lourens does not take no for an answer, especially when it comes to money.  Money is not a concern to him and I think he is used to throwing it around to get what he wants and in a way, buy contentness. But not for the first time now, he was stuck.

The solution is that we all go raid the ATMs at the Mall and withdraw as much cash as we could. Lourens will then later refund us. So between the 4 of us, we could raise N200,000 (R10,000) in a couple of minutes. And lo and behold the shopping spree at Game came to about N197,000. Jason^*, Ryan^* and Smart then took it to the apartments while Lourens and I went to Shoprite (same is in SA) to get the ‘software’ – soap, Handy Andy, toilet paper etc.

At least we knew they take Visa cards, so no problem there. Yeah, right. When they swipe Lourens’s card the machine says to use the chip on his card, which is normal for chip cards. Problem is, Lourens does not have a chip card. Stuck. Lourens cannot pay. I can’t either as none of my cards work at points of sale. Off we go to get some hard cash. Bought the stuff and locked it up in the apartments. At the hotel we celebrated a rather successful day.

We were supposed to leave at 10:00 yesterday morning. Jason and Ryan had some work to do and Lourens and I were to go start the shopping. Lourens was late so in proper Charles fashion I got quite upset. I have just wasted enough of my life waiting on other people and I refuse to do it here. I always ensure I’m on time and I expect that from others. So I decided that I will go to the Mall and get things going until Lourens can join me. Phoned Lourens from the Mall, no answer. Highly annoyed, I decided to frack that and enjoy myself. So I went to watch Salt at the cinema.

Spoiler Alert. I quite enjoyed it. It was not a bad movie, although those neural scans and stuff seems a bit improbable. The Nigerians do get involved in their movies. They relish every moment. When it turned out the Russian President was alive, they gasped and clapped hands and rejoiced. When Angeline Jolie killed the Liev Schreiber character, she basically got a standing ovation from the audience. By the time the movie finished there was a loud cheer and we all clapped hands.

At work, things for me have progressed slowly. Too slowly. I expected it to be a challenge – not the work though, getting the proper information and documentation. Red tape in huge cooperations like MTN is taken to the next level. To get approval to have the required software installed on my PC requires me to have a username on the MTN domain. To get a username and be registered on the domain I must be on the procurement system. To get on the procurement system I must have a work permit. Getting a work permit involved going back to South Africa and face the Nigerian consulate all over. It’s really a vicious circle. In proper business fashion, even though we all know that it impacts our timelines; it will never be uttered as an excuse or even an explanation as to why we haven’t quite progressed as far as we would like to have been. I mean, I’ve lost a month of work while waiting for my visa back in South Africa.

So to get going requires a lot of patience, and explanation, and back doors and rule bending. I’m not where I wanted to be, but I don’t think I could have done any better under the circumstances. We had a team meeting on Friday, with Roger^* – the boss you can say. He seems to understand the dynamics of the organisation, the country, the people, the systems and everything in between. Roger is saying that we should understand that we are not in South Africa anymore and that things work differently over here and that he is not surprised that we are frustrated. From our point of view, we have committed to delivering a solution in a given timeframe, expecting certain things to be in place, but they’re not and there is not much we can do about it. Again, blaming the lack of documentation or proper information will just not fly as an excuse, even if both parties are aware of it.

Roger wants us to accept the situation and work on improving it from there. Lourens hears ‘accept’ and is up and is up in arms. He doesn’t take kindly to ‘accepting’ things if it is not to his liking. Me neither, but I will at some point give up and consider an alternative (which can and is being interpreted as the pessimistic or negative way. ‘Never say die’ is considered the positive response I guess. I would like to believe though that I understand both points of views but agree more with Roger’s. I think Lourens is like the wolf trying to blow the brick house down and he is getting worked up. Me too, don’t get me wrong! I’m certainly not Mary’s little lamb being led to the slaughterhouse, but I think the best approach here is to rather be the wolf in sheep’s clothing and first get into the house. Then only we can try and rearrange the furniture. A Trojan Horse of sorts.

On the way to The Palms Mall they sell everything along the street. There are people holding these cute puppies up for sale. I’m not sure what they eat or drink during the day or how well they are treated and I cringe every time I see that. Smart says that people do buy these puppies, even at the price N55,000 (R2250). I can only trust they get good homes and are well cared for.

Nigeria is having their 50^th anniversary of independence from the UK in October. Next year it’s election time again. Needless to say that there is a lot of debates going on currently. Current president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan took over from his predecessor when he died. Everyone I’ve been talking to likes Dr. Jonathan, but according to the papers, he is not assured of a victory in the elections.

Nigeria’s biggest issue in terms of economic growth and establishing themselves as a power house in Africa is their energy crisis. Many parts of the country are still without electricity and most of the country has their share of load shedding – where they only have power during the day and has to rely on generators at night. Even though the Nigerian economy thrives on their oil reserves, they don’t refine it themselves. Despite the fact that all their oil are exported and reimported as petrol or diesel, they only pay around R3 per litre.

Few cities are guaranteed 24-hour electricity, probably only Lagos and Abuja and within those cities not all buildings and businesses are ensured 24-hour power. Even those building that are, like this Southern Sun hotel and MTN head offices, suffer constant power failures, albeit only for a few seconds at a time. It is not strange for the power to go out on average 5 times per day I would say. Most lifts have a warning to say that should the lift stop, one should just wait a few minutes and it will be merrily on its way again – something that happened to me here at the hotel.

Dr. Jonathan has vowed to slowly but steadily address this issue and has shown remarkable progress.

When I had the discussion with the supervisor about why he wants to settle in South Africa, electricity, traffic and money was his main concern.

I must admit, it takes one to be in a country like this to appreciate things we have back home. Our roads are in a really good condition compared to the roads here. I traffic flows much better even in rush hour traffic. And we do get more money.

It’s just unusual for South Africa to be considered as the land of milk of honey.

^*Not real name

Would anyone be interested in perhaps joining me in Tunisia around the 6th of November 2010? I’m trying to plan a trip to Tozeur (33°56’8.15″N   8° 6’43.00″E), Matmata (33°32’33.50″N   9°58’0.50″E) and Tataouine (32°55’10.33″N  10°27’28.84″E) (most of the desert scenes in Star Wars were filmed on these locations).

South Africans can get a visum on arrival in Tunis.

Last night I went to The Palms Mall, to go see Inception (http://www.genesisdeluxecinemas.com/). It seems like a very popular hangout. The theatre was good, the movie was good, and the popcorn was awesome. That sweet caramel popcorn.

Went to Shoprite to get some stuff to clean our whiteboard with at the office. It’s a very decent copy of what we have in South Africa. Some prices are shocking and some prices are cheap. The most bizarre though is that they sell the Huisgenoot and most of the Afrikaans magazines at the counter exits. I saw that the divorce between Joost and Amore is getting uglier by die day.

I really had my mind set on that monitor and I decided to see if I can withdraw money again, on the same day. And lo and behold I can. So I went round to a few ATMs and withdraw money for the monitor and for emergencies. The Hub, the electronics and music store only had the display unit left so I got back to the hotel empty handed.

For the first time in years I felt the need to go to church. So this morning I got up bright and early, had breakfast and ventured over to the Golden Gate – a building next to the hotel with all sort of Chinese stuff in them. A local church has their gathering there on floor 2 on a Sunday. It says it started at eight but when I got there at around 07:45 they were already busy. The sermon was on the passage in the Bible about time. How there is a time for everything. A time to live and a time to die. How there is our time and then how there is God’s time.

Saltwater wells in my eyes.

Afterwards, they gathered for Sunday School. I assumed it was for the children, but the pastor grabbed me by the hand and let me to a chair in the second row. They discussed Watchfulness and the Rapture. Now I’m not one to believe in the Rapture, but I decided that doesn’t matter what you believe, I guess if you believe you will meet your Maker one day, how and when it will happen is irrelevant. Whether we die first or whether the pilot, air hostess and half of the passengers get abducted in mid-flight as she so dramatically described, we’ll get there.

I just felt a bit stupid when I had to read a passage (everyone gets to read something) and couldn’t find the book in the Bible. Not because I don’t know my Bible, but because I wasn’t familiar with its English name.

How odd it is to see these youngsters walking back from church with Bibles in their hands…

Afterwards I came back, had a nap and now I’m indulging in the buffet. I just need a rest before tackling the desert table.

I’m not sure what I just did qualify as a shopping spree, but it sure wasn’t for a lack of trying. It boils down to my Nedbank Voyager Visa Credit Card being out of action. I haven’t figured out the entire story yet, but it seems as if Visa themselves blocks the chip card. I cannot withdraw any money or make any purchase. My ABSA credit card at least enables me to withdraw money, although my daily limit is now impractically low.

When we move into our apartments I’m going to have a little desk in my room. Like stories were Sarel Seemonster’s life, PCs are my life, so I need a second monitor. They have these awesome LG 22” Full HD TV monitors here for around R2,500, which is a very good price, really. I can use it then as a TV in my room as well as a monitor. Going bigger would defeat the purpose of using it as a monitor.

Our apartments. What a mission. The managing agents were supposed to sort it out a long long time ago. Now that we are ready to move in, the apartments are filthy and already need a lot of maintenance. We are really prepared to do all the alterations and put up blinds and really improve them, but then there are issues with the owner, the managing company not doing what they were supposed to do, the ridiculous expensive furniture and the biggest problem of all – paying for it. If I cannot buy a screen of R2,500 just imagine the logistical nightmare we are facing paying hundreds of thousands of rands (millions in Nairas). We’ve paid for all the electronics but the store won’t deliver. They’re waiting for their money from Visa before releasing the stuff. We arranged to pay the hotel and have the hotel transfer the money, but we are all so limited by our daily allowances on our credit cards and the blocks whoever imposes on using our cards, that the only option seem to be withdrawing the money daily until we can buy a wheelbarrow to deliver the hard cash to the store.

On top of that, Diners Club and American Express are as foreign to them as Eskimos living in igloos.

Back to the point, I got two white board markers and a white board eraser at least. The shear exhilaration of that will keep me going until at least after tonight’s movie I’m planning on watching at Silverbird Cinemas here on Victoria Island.

This week we some progress workwise. I’m analysing the requirements for testing Singl.eView, their provisioning, billing and rating platform. What makes it that much easier than in South Africa is that they don’t deal with the concept of a Trade Customer – like our Nashua Mobile or AutoPage for example – third party providers selling equipment and services. Here you deal with the actual tariff plans the guy on the street is using. They are primarily cash based. For any service, any post-paid contracts, you can go buy a voucher, scratch and enter it and add the prepaid money to your phone. SMSing whatever you want will deduct the money from your balance. If you are on a monthly contract, you just make sure you load that money on your phone every month.

That’s perhaps why we find food so ridiculously expensive – you fork out hard cash for it. No paying with credit cards. Normal shops will have those cash counting machines they use in banks. 1 South African Rand is around 20 Nigerian Naira, so the monitor I wanted to buy will be 50,000 Nigerian Naira. The highest denomination I’ve seen is 1,000 Naira bills and that’s what you get at a teller machine. Their bills are not all that new so when withdrawing R2,000 cash it’s quite a stack of money that will stretch the biggest of wallet to its limit.

Since I got here I’ve had toothache. Bad bad toothache. That’s why I go to the dentist before going on a trip, to avoid this exact scenario. At one point I would have gone back this week to get my temporary work permit in order to be back in two weeks’ time when Raymond and Craig are both going on annual leave. So I thought I could keep my tooth under control with painkillers. But plans changed and I decided that I had to go see a dentist.

Our colleagues at MTN are really looking out for us, so within 10 minutes of asking Fela if he can recommend a dentist, I had my appointment with Aquagem Dental Care on Victoria Island. Now I’ve got Hell Africa going round and round in my head. Dr Alban was a Nigerian dentist if memory serves me well.

Anyway, the dentist was a black Nigerian woman, very kind and very friendly. Again, since it’s cashed based they warn you before doing anything. She wanted to take X-rays and discussed the price to make sure I’m OK when it comes to payment. After 4 separate sets of X-rays from every possible angle, some puzzling looks and consulting the main dude dentist, they concluded that they don’t see anything physically wrong that warrants the kind of pain I’m describing. They suggested that the next logical explanation is sinusitis. They said the roots of my teeth are penetrating my sinus canal and that having sinus may be the cause of my toothache. And that then was the prescription.

In South African terms one would describe the pharmacy as dodgy, but I’ve come to realise that our South African instincts should stay in South Africa. Dodgy buildings and shops cannot harm us, we obviously associate it with dodgy people and so far any paranoia we may have had in Lagos was for the best part unnecessary. After a marriage proposal to sort out any future recurrence of my recent visa woes, I got my medication.

Just to be safe I googled the medication Two of the three seems pretty harmless but the last one had several warnings popping up about fatal diarrhea. I decided to give it a skip. That is the last thing I want right now.

And almost a week later, my tooth seems to have quieted down. Raymond offered his mouthwash and gave up his Sinutab and I think I can make it through the next 2 weeks until I can see my own dentist and doctor.

The best part though is that the clinic has phoned me every single day to follow up on how I’m doing. I can rest assured that I can give them a call at any point and they will be happy to accommodate me.

For most part we are eating here at the hotel. We are not supposed to use Smart as our driver, but we have convinced him to leave MTN and come work for us. By driving us around on weekends, he gets to make some extra money.

Raymond and I have eaten at Bangkok last Sunday, which was very nice. I did however to decide that when in Rome, at least try pizza. So I have been indulging some traditional Nigerian dishes with mixed results.

Eba is quite popular, probably more like staple food. It is a variation on pap/bread/dough. It’s like a very dense yet spongy, slightly sweet and round dough thingy, that like most African food, should be eaten with the hands. One is suppose to dip some eba in some traditional egusi, oha, edikanikong, eforiro, afang, ogbono or ofensala (I’m quoting from the menu here). All of these sounds like either some kind of fruit or vegetable stew/soup that comes with either goat meat, beef or fish as meat.

I’ve had the eba with egusi and beef. It wasn’t bad as it does seem as if I’m writing home about it. Egusi is like African melon they tell me.

The other thing they like is plantain. Plantain is in the banana-family. I see on Wikipedia that it looks like banana, but unlike banana it is not eaten raw, but always cooked or fried or something. I had the fried version, much like fried banana you get at oriental restaurants. Plantain however is not sweet and it tasted like nothing. They also fry it like potato chips, but that too seems to lack taste.

Today at News Cafe I went for a traditional Nigerian dish with beef and chicken cubes. Probably the hottest food I’ve ever had. My mouth was on fire. Not even the glass of milk I gulped down could save my grace.

I certainly won’t do that again.

At the canteen at MTN they seem to serve one Nigerian dish a day. There is not much choice. They do however have fruit salad at a reasonable price.

Naija is the local term for Nigeria. President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled a timer thingy in Abuja that is counting the days to Nigeria’s 50^th anniversary.

Yesterday we got the keys to our apartments (6°27’26.79″N 3°26’13.64″E). DTS is renting two apartments in the Admiralty Towers in Gerrard Street, Ikoyi. The apartments are on the 2^nd floor, #5 and #6 opposite each other. Each apartment has a dining room area, a living room area, a kitchen and 3 bedrooms, each with its on-suite bathroom.

They were supposed to be clean, but the attorneys in charge of handling the apartments obviously neglected to see that it gets done. They are about 2 kilometres from MTN and the apartment block has a swimming pool and gym. Check out the photos in my gallery.

Raymond and I asked Smart, our driver, to take us around this morning to run a few errands. First we stopped at Try ‘n’ Carry (6°26’4.46″N   3°25’54.41″E), an electronics store by Saipan, a popular club/restaurant. We need to buy extension cords and plugs for the office. Tomorrow evening Craig and Clayton is arriving and on Monday Michiel and Alexi. So next week will be an awesome week. The whole team for now will be here.

We then went to check out the Mega Plaza Mall (6°25’60.00″N   3°25’12.00″E) and the Palms Mall (6°26’8.00″N   3°26’58.96″E). We had to buy a measuring tape to go measure the windows in our apartments as Michiel’s wife, Riana, is arranging curtains for us. We had lunch at the News Cafe in Palms Mall. There is a Game, Shoprite and MTN there, cinemas and quite a big Media Store – CD’s, DVD’s, electronics etc.

I chose apartment 5. Since Craig and I will be the two senior dudes here, we get to have the biggest bedrooms. Eventually we will be 6 living in both with 2 guestrooms when Raymond or the other bosses visit us once a month.

Electronics are quite a bit cheaper than in South Africa. TV’s, computer screens etc. According to Raymond we got a proper Samsung 42” HD TV for around ZAR 6,000.

On the other hand furniture is hideously expensive.  In the same store selling a 52” TV for under ZAR 20,000, one can find a plain, common white table with 6 chairs, really nothing fancy, for around ZAR 22,000. All the appliances and electronics are sorted; it’s the furniture that is keeping us from moving in.

I won’t complain staying in the Southern Sun hotel, but it is costing the company a fortune to have us here.

Nigeria is not at all what I expected. Not at all what any of us expected. The impression we have of Nigerians in South Africa is based on what we hear and experience about illegal Nigerian immigrants staying in South Africa. We associate them with crime, corruption, money laundering, fraud, scams and drug lords.

What you actually find over here, is that practically every Nigerian we’ve met is friendly and polite, well mannered, religious and attends church on Sundays. I really did not expect our Nigerian driver, Smart, to have Michael W Smith playing in the car, or listening to a gospel station on the way back from work. Yesterday this man on the radio was praying for a woman in hospital and in no unclear terms has he banished cancer from her body in the name of the Lord. And it wasn’t pretend or an emotional affair. It’s the first time ever I felt that this man believed in every single word he was saying and that with his entire being believed that this woman can be cure and will be cured as she was made in God’s image.  I was bawling my eyes out by the time we got to the hotel as it hit a nerve.

Security is a big thing in Lagos. We have security follow us to the hotel when we arrived at the airport. There is security posted on every floor of the hotel. There are buses picking up MTN staff and taking them home – that are guarded. We go through 3 check-in points to reach our desks in the morning. Most guests here at the hotel have dedicated drivers. There is visible police presence almost everywhere.

For them it paid off. Crime is at an all-time low in Lagos and kidnappings are unheard of. People are safe to go around as they please.

I stumbled upon this list the other day. What grabbed my attention was that I already own quite a few movies on it on either DVD or blu-ray, so I decided to watch them whenever I can.

Read the introduction to understand what it is about.

http://www.rowthree.com/2010/05/10/brave-new-worldview-30-science-fiction-films-of-the-21st-century/

In time I will give feedback.

The third day in Lagos was frustrating. Yesterday my laptop’s HDD crashed. This a brand new PC the work bought about 2 weeks ago. Last week the keyboard didn’t work and they ended up replacing the motherboard. Still, Dell is not prepared to swap the laptop for a new one. That’s pretty pathetic. They’re also not prepared to help us here in Lagos, but we must send the PC back to South Africa for repairs.

On Sunday Bernard, the Avis dude here at the Southern Sun hotel took as around a little bit, just to show me the lay of the land. Lagos has two islands, Ikoyi and Victoria Island, surrounded by river and ocean. Most of our business here is located on Ikoyi – the hotel (6°27’15.26″N 3°25’48.96″E), our apartments and MTN (6°26’39.00″N 3°25’38.00″E) is located on Ikoyi (6°27’0.00″N 3°25’60.00″E). Banana Island is where the rich stay (6°27’44.00″N 3°27’4.00″E). Lekki Beach is the place to be (6°25’20.00″N 3°30’27.00″E). We went for lunch at Bangkok restaurant – a Thai restaurant. Pretty decent food for at a decent price.

Lagos is unexpectedly expensive. Food does not come cheap, and since we’re staying at the Southern Sun hotel, I do not expect to see much profit this first month until we move into our apartments. Our apartments are ready, it just lacks furniture. I haven’t seen them yet though.

I’ll write some more in the days and weeks to come. All I can say is that it will take some getting used to. There is a distinct island feel to Lagos and it reminds me of Maputo. Everyone we come in contact with is friendly, polite and well-mannered. Everyone is proud of how crime in Lagos was reduced to a point where it is safe for anyone. I haven’t felt the slightest bit of racial tension or negativity towards us. The driver the other night was genuinely proud of the unity there is between people striving to make Nigeria a better country. He was utterly sincere when he told me how proud Nigeria as a nation was in what South Africa achieved in the World Cup and how we made Africa proud.

It is still early days, but I can see myself working in an African country where my skills and hard work are cherished and where I am not marginalised, dismissed, hated, tortured, taxed or murdered because of my skin colour and honest hard work that got me where I am.

And finally, when Neil Diamond said:

What a beautiful noise
Comin’ up from the street
Got a beautiful sound
It’s got a beautiful beat

and

It’s the song of the cars
On their furious flights
But there’s even romance
In the way that they dance
To the beat of the lights

he most certainly did not refer to Lagos.

So yesterday was the beginning of a brand new adventure.

At 12:00 the airport shuttle came to pick me up at my place and took me to the airport. Raymond, the driver, is not happy with the current political climate in South Africa at all.

Checked in and declared all my electronics which seem to grow in abundance every time I travel.

Spent some time in the Premier Lounge before boarding the only Boeing 747-400 left in the South African fleet. I’m not negative, but why is it that someone always sit in my seat and refuse to give it up? And why is that I end up in a seat where the inflight entertainment is not working? And why am I sitting next to the 2 screaming babies?

The advantage of online check-in is that you pick a seat in the upper deck and get out of the plane quickly and get in front of the queue at passport control, which at best is a painstakingly slow affair.

MTN’s Stephen found me in the crowd. One arranges what they call ‘protocol’ before you leave. That means that they arrange transport for you with a security detail to transfer you to your accommodation. In this case, the brand new Southern Sun hotel.

The infamous traffic is exactly that. Infamous. But I’ve been promised that I ain’t see nothing yet. The lack of traffic lanes is obvious. I cannot believe it only struck me last night, but now I know that yellow lines are yellow because if you have your yellow blinking lights on, you seem to have free access to the yellow lanes.

Raymond found me at reception and after dropping my stuff in my room we had dinner outside in the warm and humid climate next to the swimming pool.

Malaria was the topic of conversation. Craig, my colleague, came back with the serious strain of malaria and was hospitalised for treatment. He’s still man down after a week or so. Everybody seems to have their own opinion on how to deal with malaria. The consensus seems to be that one cannot take malaria tablets forever, doesn’t matter which ones, as they themselves have some adverse effects. Especially the mefloquine ones. I’ve been advised that I cannot take those, but that I should take doxycycline instead. Well, one of their side effects is headaches of note! I don’t know if my current toothache is linked to that though

Apart from that and the air conditioner on full blast, I had a good night’s rest.

So after months and months of preparing and waiting and disappointment, the day has arrived.

This afternoon I’m off to Lagos to work there at MTN Nigeria for a while, or longer.

Let’s see how it works out.

Pictures will be posted here.

Here is a response from ACSA on my mail questioning the events from Wednesday evening. I’m quite impressed that they addressed my mail personally, as they sure got a lot of complaints. Here is my mail and their response:

Dear ACSA

On the matter of the Wednesday night flights being turned back to Johannesburg, surely all flights to Durban must have filed flight plans. Surely with modern technology ACSA should have known that there would be air traffic congestion? Could you not have prevented some private planes from taking off or divert them to the old airport or even Pietermaritzburg?

South Africa has been preparing for the World Cup for yours, how on earth  can you be caught off guard in a situation like this? The problem is that even when you impose penalties, the type of people arriving on private planes can afford to pay the penalties too.

You should ban them from South African airspace as they are also security risks if they don’t follow rules.

Please keep me up to date on what measurements you are putting in place to prevent this from happening again.

Thank you.

Charles Joubert

Good day,

If we can clarify. All flights do file flight plans, however on Wednesday night several factors attributed towards the problems encountered.

Firstly there was bad weather which resulted in flights being delayed for approx. 20 minutes. The ATNS(air traffic and Navigation control tower) systems crashed leading to all pilots having to refile their flight plans manually. When this situation occurs flights are cleared on a first come first served basis as flight plans can not be accessed as they  normally would. Even technology fails companies when there is a problem unfortunately. After that the private charters refused to budge and only after we threatened with legal action moved the aircrafts. Unfortunately when they started moving the aircrafts it was too late.

We can not move an aircraft if the pilot has locked the aircraft as the wheel mechanisms lock and we would have encountered damages to the aircrafts.

However Bongani Maseko have indicated should this matter occur again we will forcibly move the aircrafts and if there are damages that the pilots will be held accountable. Yes penalties will be enforced upon the operators and even though they are able to pay it-we have to punish them in the way that is available to us.

We as ACSA can not ban aircraft from entering the airspace and the only company able to do so is the CAA.

At OR Tambo we have much more parking space and traffic capabilities which will ensure that the flights on Sunday should run without any problems. Unfortunately we have no control over weather but it would seem the skies will be clear Sunday.

We urge you to please follow the statements which will be released later today to the media as everyone in South Africa wants us to keep them updated and we will do so through the media release.

We can not at this time respond to everyone asking to keep being updated as we are trying to ensure that contingency plans are updated and ensure operations are run efficiently.

I hope this does assist.

best regards

Customer Care

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Got up, had breakfast, caught the shuttle, checked-in, flew to Istanbul, killed time, boarded a jet plane and arrived in Johannesburg.

Just a short summary.

I got up, had to wait two hours for the airport shuttle, went to the airport, locked up my baggage, took a train to Den Haag, took a train to Delft, took a train to Rotterdam and the High Speed train back to Schiphol, jumped on a jetplane and flew to Oslo, climbed in the shuttle and went to bed at 00:15 at the Gardemoen Airport Hotel, Oslo.

This morning I got up too late for breakfast and Burger King was quite a nice alternative to McDonalds.

Desert was the compulsory canal tour of Amsterdam.

After watching the soccer I walked back to the hotel and I am watching some tennis while I write this.

So that’s it for South Africa. Unfortunately we’re out of the World Cup. I watched that match from a Sports Bar close to Oudekerksplein. I didn’t intend to, but I walked in as they  were playing the national anthem. I guess that was a sign.

If it wasn’t for BZN there are some places in the world I wouldn’t have seen. And so Volendam was a priority. Yesterday I figured out Amsterdam Centraal and dodged some bicycles, pedestrians, trams, trains and buses to get to the bus stop. I spent some time there, took a couple of pictures to prove it. Didn’t take a boat ride though. I am not BZN.

I came back to a CD shop in Utrechtse Straat. They have a lot of CDs of Dutch artists – Herman van Veen, Stef Bos etc. But the entire shop that prides itself of having 1000 m2 of space had 1 CD of BZN. One I didn’t have. Now they have none.

I then made my way to the Van Gogh Museum and again some disappointment. They don’t have fridge magnets of Starry Night. How ridiculous is that!

The museum was not too bad – I got to see the Sunflowers painting. Very sad that he was submitted for some psychiatric disorder and shot himself eventually.

The Hard Rock Cafe was up next. Had my burger and bought my fridge magnet. I still wanted to pop into Vondelpark across the road, but rather decided to come back to the hotel. I have to save some things for tomorrow when I check out of the hotel but only need to be at the airport late tomorrow evening.

And it’s Wimbledon!

Yesterday I headed south to warmer weather. I flew SAS from Tromsø to Oslo and KLM from Oslo to Amsterdam and then made my way to the Ibis Amsterdam Stopera Hotel.

Last night I just quickly ventured out to familiarise myself with my immediate surroundings.

The rest is history.

Saturday evening saw the annual Midnight Sun Marathon in Tromsø. Unfortunately I didn’t pack my tekkies and it was freezing and raining.

How many times do we wish that we can stay in bed in weather like this? And that is exactly what I did. After I woke up I walked down the movie theatre and got myself a ticket for Iron Man 2. Quite an expensive exercise in Norway, especially when buying popcorn and Coke too. But well worth it.

As Dolly Dimple’s was closed I had to try Peppes Pizza. That was an awesome pizza.

The town was in a festive mood, so I just strolled around until I headed back to the hotel to pack.

Today was spent conserving energy and money as Norway has a way of taking them both out of you in large quantities.

I got up rather late after this morning’s early escapades. I’ve been looking through the 2010 brochure for Tromsø and marked everything I wanted to do or see. Yesterday I killed a lot of birds with one stone and all that was left that I really didn’t want to miss was the Polaria. An arctic aquarium also dedicated to environmental research in this region including Svalbard.

But before that I had to eat first. And Dolly Dimples was closed – our favourite pizza restaurant in town. So Burger King had to do. It’s really cool how these places have free Wi-Fi. South Africa can really do with that. I’ll support a restaurant that offers me free internet. A win-win situation.

The Polaria was worth visiting as we didn’t visit it two years ago. There were some cool seals there.

The weather towards the evening got more and more miserable and it doesn’t seem as I will actually see the sun while I’m here. The weather prediction is cloudy and rainy until sometime next week.

So, I’m spending the time indoors and resting before all the adventures that await me in Amsterdam.

I haven’t filtered my photos yet. This is everything so far. It’s a link to my Google Album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/108637807026316241495/2010TRIP?feat=directlink