Wow, long hiatus I know. Things have been hectic and wild here in lovely North Africa and I know that you all are going through massive blog withdrawals over the past few months. I realize that I’m a big deal and I would miss me too. So where to start, well as you can see the someguyinafrica experiment is over because one; you are paranoid and two; I don’t give shit. Sorry Debbie, you can tell me I told you so to my casket; in the meantime you’ll just have to deal with the fact that Bin Laden isn’t surfing the blog boards for African expats to behead. But what happens when you work out here for a while is you get desensitized to just about everything. A few major things are animals and racism. We’ll start with the animals, for those of you who are more traveled you know that the rest of the world does not exactly share our American/UK view of humanitarianism when it comes to cats and dogs. Bob Barker would shit himself he came to Africa. Because you see, spade and neutering are expensive and messy so most people just don’t bother. As a result there are stray dogs and cats everywhere, and when it becomes a problem they have to be taken care of. And I’m not talking about Oprah showing up onshore to adopt a family of kittens. We’re talking good old Russian steel and gun powder baby. So when you hear gun fire in the distance its not Al-Qaeda making a move at the gate, it’s the security performing a little fido and kitten population control. But after a few months without American idol and triple grande lattes you don’t even look twice. You know come to think of it, it probably eventually ends up on my plate, and I think I’m ok with that now too. Why waste the meat right?
Racism, man its thick here on site. The major division comes between the working class and the skilled class. It also happens that most of the educated workers on site are white and the working class is either Arabic or Asian. The Arabs are not a big deal they keep to themselves and they don’t drink so there is little overlap there. However the Asians do consume tasty beverage and some of the white people don’t like it. Someone decreed before I arrived that all the Thais and Malays were banned from drinking in the camp forever. Which was a problem considering that I had a Filipino crew on site for 2 months. When I went go up and visit the boys you’d have Thais coming out of the woodwork “Hey man, can you buy me a beer”. They came out of the shadows like ninjas, ninjas I tell you. Super bizarre it has a very illegal drug purchase type feel to it. Whenever I bought the boys some beer I had to put the whole shifty eyes on like I was buying blackmarket snuff porn (take it easy; its just a metaphor). At one point the camp manager came right out and confronted me about it.
Manager: The Filipinos are drinking too much at the bar.
Me: Well there is only one bar so…
Manager: The bar is for expats only
Me: Well they’re on the same visa that I am so why don’t you just say it. The bar is for white people only
Manager:…
There you have it that’s Algeria for you.
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