The AIO conference comes around again (we missed last year’s one in Algiers after we discovered that more civilians were killed in terrorist bombs in the Capital city of Algeria than the UK forces lost on the front line in Iraq!). This time it is in Dar es Salaam, a coastal city on the East coast of Africa, just below Mombassa in Kenya.

Our trip took us on Swiss Air via Zurich, which afforded us the delights of Swiss efficiency and good aircraft Cuisine - well the trip out of Zurich anyway. We stopped over night in Zurich on the way down and the flight touched down Nairobi en route.

When we landed we observed the gerneral things we judge our comparisons on African cities. Being my 11th African Country I was beginning to look for the same traits: the speed and behaviour of the traffic, the amount of after dark lighting, the level of litter or state of the public areas. Obviously the Capital City is able to demonstrate both the best and worst the country has to offer, much like comparing London with Dorchester, London has some of the best buildings in the country, the cleanest public areas, the grandest statues, but also has a homeless issue and piles of rubbish in no man’s areas.  Where as Dorchester is smaller, less grand but has a stable uneventful display of povety to wealth comparison.

Dar es Salaam too showed these traits, but looking at in in the same category as Nairobi, a previously British Colony until 1964 only a year after Kenya gained its independence. Before that, its two component parts, the much larger mainland territory of Tanganyika and the coastal archipelago of Zanzibar, had quite different histories. The former was a colony and part of German East Africa from the 1880s to 1919, when, under the League of Nations, it became a British Mandate until independence in 1961. It served as a military outpost during World War II, providing financial help, munitions, and soldiers. Zanzibar, however, was always a trading hub and never became a German colony, although from the end of the nineteenth century it was a British protectorate.

But the two countries are quite different. Tanzania uses Swahili as its main language, where as almost all educated Kenya’s speak good English. Nairobi is a comemrcial City of some prowess, whereas Dar es Salaam appears to be a relatively lowrise but pleasant city, relatively afluent with good quality and newish vehicles on the roads, which themselves are in good order. The courtesy on the road is good, with a distinct lack of agressive hooting which some African Cities are stigmitised by.

However where as Kenyan’s are very friendly: the porters and lift staff in hotels all say good morning with confidence and often start complete conversations, in Tanzania we felt there was a reluctance to converse and indeed the laisse faire attitide to, well infact almost everything. Asking for Tea for four seamed to need atleast one person per cup to organise it, and as with anything that is organised or designed by committee it takes an inordinately long time to complete.

Our trip started in the Blue Pearl, a 2 star hotel, which was part of a  larger shopping complex. There was a vodafone shop a few banks and a shop for white bathroom goods and tiles. It seams banks are not really designed to give money - unles syou have an acocunt with them, mind you at 12% interest rate it was sorely tempting if we could transact in Shillings.

The climate was hot but apparantly we were lucky it was nearly winter as the summer is unbareable. the accommodation was adequate and quiet and the roof top had a nice pool that allowed a panoramic view from the 12th floor over the City.

The Gala evening of the conference let us “enjoy” the drugged defanged 15 ft python handling by a troup of chalked faced clowns. I found the fire down the pants more entertaining. Phil and Mark Edmonds both experienced the Python, and as is the norm the dancing got underway at every event. I would like to thank my various dance partners, Mohammed from Morrocco, Zeru from Eritrea, Ian and Mark (his first AIO conference) from the UK. And ofcourse the other ladies who were equally prepared to enjoy the marvelous music from Reggae, Calipso and Indian style to Freddie Mercury, Simply Red and The Beatles! Hope from Kenya, Irene from Zambia and Prisca from Nigeria - well done girls!

After the end of the conference we moved to the Sea cliff hotel on the coast. this was a leap of standard and we enjoyed a couple of days in a better level of luxuary. A lovely pool and good quality food. However service was slow and you do need patience.

A week after our arrival our departure was due and we flew out on the over night flight leaving at 9:30pm arriving in the UK after the two stops in Nairobi and Zurich at 8am. However the connection was too tight in Zurich and our luggae remained on the Tarmac in Switzerland - being sent on a day later.

All in all a busy, commecially productive trip with new friends and relationships forged and our presence in the African Insurance Software market further cemented. However I suspect it will be a uphill incline to push the level of efficency we nee dto install new systems in to companies in Tanzania, but here’s hoping.

Please visit www.flickr.com/photos/treemad for my pictures… I hope Mark Edmonds has got over his close encounter with that Python!

Wednesday early I was up, less than 7 days after I have returned from Eritrea, the case is packed once again, and the checklist of Passports, Money and Tickets is becoming second nature – and decidedly lacking novelty! This time, a new country  - Madagascar - but same old routine.

So this time some variety – Southampton rather than Heathrow but after than it becomes all so familiar, Baggage examination, checks, scans, questions lots of waiting, bus rides on to runways and uncomfortable airline seats.

First a small Regional Jet, with coffee, Tea or hot chocolate and two strange cake bars, as soon as we are settled we are descending again and landing at Charles De Gaulle. With ground staff strikes we were doubtful our luggage would manage to get itself onto the next leg with only one and a half hours transit. If our problems of finding the right gate through the maze of maintenance work and scaffolding was reflected by the luggage’s journey I was worried!

The next leg was a 10 hour mammoth journey with Air France. I wish I could travel somewhere like Dubai or somewhere glam because the airlines that serve my destinations need to learn some serious lessons starting with food preparation.

I watched Licensed to Wed with Robin Williams which was excellent. Then I watched The Waitress, a film of dubious morals, and finally I watched the latest Harry potter movie – the Order of the Phoenix.

As we started our descent we were warned there may be some turbulence. Ummm – “some turbulence” how about “warning” warning! Warning! please return to your seats immediately, this plane is going to fall 50 metres and be hit by several shots of fork lightning!”  It was what movies are made of, three passengers were hurled to the floor, drinks spilt and gasps and screams were heard. Fortunately it was short lived and we continued down and landed safely, by which time the storm had quelled.

On arrival we were met by a hotel driver and perhaps purely due to the fact we were staying at the only 5* hotel we attracted an entourage of porters, who when we pointed out we had no local currency yet were decidedly P*****d! A 10 km ride, at typically French style of mad rush, got us to our hotel and thankfully a fast check in enabled me to get to bed quickly.

 

We own a property in Briantspuddle, called the Old Engine Shed. We bought it in 2005 and then spent, on and off, 18 months doing it up. There was a new central heating system, new electrics and the installation of a network. But no major building works as such. As this drew to an end we engaged a groundworks firm to dig out the yard and resurface it. Total approximate cost of all this - about £45k yikes!

The property is a difficult one because three of the neighbours have rights of access over the land. Two of the neighbours have their back gates, leading to off street parking so they drive on our land and off again to park their cars on their own land. The third is the property that one might classify as the other half of us and make us semi detached. It is called the Workshop. Now when we bought the property we asked each of the neighbours to outline their undertstanding of the rights of way so we would be able to work within these. Obviously the previous owner of The Old Engine Shed (TOES) was not easy and immediately we discovered the topic was a sensitive one. But over a few months and several letters we were able to get to an understanding and we were progressing well. We even agreed with the owners of the Workshop that they could park on our land for a modest monthly fee.

However as we progressed with the planning application to convert the upper floor to commercial use there were rumblings from the Workshop all was not good. There were repeated events where the lady of the house entered our property without permission or invitation and launched into a tyraid of abuse to all and any that were within. It appears that there was an issue of noise transfer. So in the interests of neighbourly harmony we dismantled a thin partitian wall and errected soundproofing on the Party wall. This bought that wall up to 2 layers of plasterboard, one void, a panel of soundproofing and atleast one skin of high density concrete block, certainly more than modern houses are blessed with in terms of a barrier between neighbours.

When the ground works people arrived we argreed that it would be difficult for any vehicle to access the land so we waived the parking fees. However during the constriction we found ourselevs approached by Health and Safety over an issue of not marking teh large pile of shingle adequately, something we were concerned about as son as it was bought to our attention and immediately rectified, then we had the building control officer onsite for public access issues, then we had the enforment officer writing to us… it just didn’t stop.

Well enough of the tales and wows, surfice it to say I am intimately acquainted with the Purbeck Planning department, and we do have the permission we need to operate, but I do think the voting strength of the councellors can cloud the sence of logic!

SO what has happened in the last month? Well one major non-event was the summer, but I guess that is old news. So moving on the main events in my life have been mostly work related except for Alex starting his new middle school- although I am not sure who was more excited him or us!

So work, well we ave had a number of guests with us, Mr Adeyemo Adejumo of Continental Re with two colleagues for a demonstration of our software and then 4 members of Ark Insurance Group, Michael, George, Patricia and Sunday.

Between these two events we held out annual User Group meeting. The weather was ok but frankley I am not sure I would have noticed if it ewas 30 deg C or snowing, the pressure was on and there was a huge amount of preparation involved. The morining kicked off with the serious bit, the meeting. We presented the updates to our software and we discussed several market initiatives. Mark Barwick of the London Reform Group was our guest speaker and he enegaged the room on the topics of ECF, A&S and electronic placing.

When all the discussions were over we had lunch, a simple affair but it hit the spot. Then the real fun started: a series of tasks for the 7 teams of two, we had three quizes one of African Country name origins, one a journey through the streets of London, and one a called who and when. We had a Geo-Caching treck around teh garden and a session of clock Croquet. Then the real amuzement - the Xbox 360, well two of them actuall, one with PGR3 and the other with guitar Hero 2 - oh what fun. Portly middle aged London Insurance Brokers diggin’ on down to basic level surrender. We did have two teams actually get all the way through the song, but only after several attempts.

The view from my room at the Mena House Hotel,
originally uploaded by treemad.

Well what can one say? this was the night time view from my hotel room on a recent stop over in Cairo. I stayed at the Mena House hotel for one night on my way back from Asmara.

The trip had been very successful, with a new installation for the National Insurance Company of Southern Sudan, but as travel to Sudan is not high on our lists of places to go just at the moment and as the company had been set up by Zeru Woldemichael of the National Insuarance Corporation of Eritrea we installed the system in the library of the NICE building. The system will be shipped when it is ready to Juba.

On arrival in Cairo at 9am time was short - 25 hours in total! the temperature rose steadily to 40 deg C. First the hotel - well I could have just kicked back by the pool all day staring at the pyramids which were literally in the back garden. But no, work had to be done, I was on a mission.

So first a quick exit sliding past the century guards on the door, cleverly disguised as tradtionally dressed doormen but actually undercover sales team for the local taxi firms! probably related to most of the drivers queued up over the road. Once successfully past them we were free - No! we got faced out by a brave driver able to encrouch on the gate and who “suggested” that a taxi ride would get the whole pyramid plateau acomplished within a more timely manner. With no shelter promised if we walked and the time constraints I decided infact this time I would relent.

Driving up gave the full scale of these monsters. The statutory Camel ride was prevailed upon, and Moses was the gentle beast chosen to fulfil the burden of being sat on and truding the well trodden path to Choeps and Kahfres.No time for the boat museum - have to save something for next time. but the heat was getting too much to handle. So persuading the driver that I was not going to make a run for it if he let me go back to the hotel for a quick dunk.Refreshed and revived - but no time to eat it was the Museum next - however the driver felt a detour to the “Papyrus museum” was in our best interests - probably owned by his second cousin, I was looking for a resemblence!

Then finally the Cairo Museum. I now understand why so many other countries are unwilling to return their acquisions of egyptian antiquities and to entrust them back to the cairo museum. The displays are cramed in and hickdy pickledy, and only a very few cabinets are temperature controlled. It was the UK British museum that hematically sealed the Face mask of King Tut whilst it was on tour.

Either way it did not detract from the enormaty of the scale of the finds, thousands of conopic jars, amulets, statues, sarcophogii, items of jewellery, boxes, ornaments and more. I am now convinced the Egyptians are soley to blame for the global shortage of Lapis Lazuli. It was probably as common as flint before Tutmoses the III took a liking to it!

Back to the hotel and a forceful no to the driver’s suggestion that a perfume “museum” should be our next call. No, dinner and a booking at the late show (because that was the English version) of the internationally hailed Lights and Sound show.

It was as good as everyone says, only I was severly struggling swith staying awake, having risen at 2am in Asmara and clocking up nearly 20 hours of awakeness.

Finally back to The Mena House and sleep.

Alas leaving it all behind although having achieved so much in such as short space of time. 10:30 departure for the hotel the next morning.

Cairo will have to wait for my return visit.