Odds and Ends

I am still working on the monthly report and it's all rather tedious. Unfortunately I expect to spend at least another week on it.

On the upside we have started a regimen of afternoon walks and as it's fairly hilly out here I get some decent exercise. Our route takes us through the village of Sisibia where the locals are starting to get used to us by now, although we still get stopped by plenty of people that want to say hello and shake our hand, then up the hill to our laydown area and then a steady down hill back to the camp. Total round trip time about forty minutes. It gets us out of the office and probably helps our health a little as well.

One of the nicer things to happen while on our walk was children singing to themselves as a form of entertainment. They stand in a circle and sing at the top of their voices. No computer games out here.

We also had our share of labour problems including an attempted murder (prevented by an agreement between the parties on the payment of compensation) and a strike instigated by one of the local land owners. The actual matter in dispute is between his clan and the government and while everyone here believes that landowner is actually correct in his assertions of non performance by the government it hasn't really got anything to do with our project. Anyway after a morning of talks they went back to work again as well. So things are quiet again for the moment.