The last few weeks have been a been a bit stressful for us here in Malongo due to the Elections in Angola (Actually its always stressful here but this was at a whole new level!).
The 2012 Elections were only the second time in the last 10 years that there has been a national vote. Allegedly last time around there was a significant amount of disruption, especially to the transport systems and roads resulting in a limited amount of people being available to come into work. Today 98% of the Express workforce in Malongo is Angolan, so this was a great cause of concern for us as we still had around 1100 people in camp to feed! With only myself, Murthy and Eric (the project manager!) being able to cook, feeding 1100 hungry workers for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner was going to be a bit challenging!
A great deal of planning went into ensuring that whatever the situation was with our staff, either coming into work or not, the residents here would still be fed.....somehow!
It was a huge relief to see almost all of the teams that were released to vote return to work and and we managed to get all our meals out on time! Most of the Day Shift and Night shift guys volunteered to stay inside the camp during the Election process (being released to vote on completion of their shifts) so we threw a small celebration party for them! We don't have the opportunity to socialise with our teams often so it was great chance to spend some time outside of work with them. This was always going to be an interesting evening and you can see what the guys got up to from these pictures.
The 2012 Elections were only the second time in the last 10 years that there has been a national vote. Allegedly last time around there was a significant amount of disruption, especially to the transport systems and roads resulting in a limited amount of people being available to come into work. Today 98% of the Express workforce in Malongo is Angolan, so this was a great cause of concern for us as we still had around 1100 people in camp to feed! With only myself, Murthy and Eric (the project manager!) being able to cook, feeding 1100 hungry workers for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner was going to be a bit challenging!
A great deal of planning went into ensuring that whatever the situation was with our staff, either coming into work or not, the residents here would still be fed.....somehow!
It was a huge relief to see almost all of the teams that were released to vote return to work and and we managed to get all our meals out on time! Most of the Day Shift and Night shift guys volunteered to stay inside the camp during the Election process (being released to vote on completion of their shifts) so we threw a small celebration party for them! We don't have the opportunity to socialise with our teams often so it was great chance to spend some time outside of work with them. This was always going to be an interesting evening and you can see what the guys got up to from these pictures.
Finally, although this is poor quality, I have uploaded a video which has me in stitches every time I watch it. Please feel free to comment!
[More videos from H88P5]
No comments:
Post a Comment