World Safety Day 2008

I saw it coming about 6 weeks in advance - the client instructed us that we would participate in this cheese bag UN-sponsored harmonic convergence. It was sold as an opportunity to raise world-wide awareness about worker safety to address the 2 million work-related fatalities each year. (Our project is not immune - 2 deaths so far, both Koreans.)

What I saw coming was that the planning was going to languish until the last minute, and then there would be a mad rush to schlep together a program. I also premonitioned that I would draw the short straw to do the slave work as event organizer.

And that is, in fact, what happened.

The math worked out like this: YLNG and Yemgas ponied up a $100K budget for booths, poster competitions, t-shirts, rescue demonstrations, fire drills, interactive educational software, exhibits, awards ceremonies (several of the EOs from Total and from Technip came from Paris to hand out prizes), and - this part actually didn't suck - live music as a capper at the end of the day. We moved about 70% of the 9,000 workers through the training and recreation centers in five waves of 1,500 at a time. There were 6 jillion details including road closures, bottled water, shuttle busses, security, translations of educational material, development of the drill scenarios, hiring and logistics for the live music. We had to build a stage and run a power line to it in order to get around using a noisey generator, and mobilize cranes to redirect the high mast lighting from the soccer fields to the concert area.

Amazingly, it all came off like competitent people were in control. The best part, of course, was the music, which started after the 7 pm prayers and went on until about 11 pm. The dancers were OK; I'm not much on all guy dancers, but the locals got a kick out of it. It was telling to see the grounds the morning after: thousands of pink strings - very recognizable: they are the binders used for packaging Qat. The show came off suprisingly well; the ex-pats enjoyed it (almost) as much as the Yemenis.

Strange Day in Mukulla

I traveled to Mukulla on Thursday to deal with a recalcitrant contractor. The owner, Abdullah, is clueless. The contract that we have with him is to transport mixed waste to his facility, sort it into recyclable and non-recyclable components, and then haul the non-recyclable part to a legit final resting place. (hint: "legit" does not include the nearest hole in the ground in the desert)

Clueless.

Instead of hauling this guk to a landfill, Abdullah has, instead, accumulated 3 months worth of it at his hell-like facility on the east side of Mukulla, and I am in the skittish position of wanting to revoke his contract, but not wanting to do it before he follows through on the sort-and-dispose routine. In fact, I don't want him to get a sniff that that is my intention, otherwise he will abandon many many tonnes of crap in his fenced place in the desert, said crap strobing with identification with a certain largest construction project in Yemen.

So I spent the day visiting landfills with Abdullah, explaining to him that this is the most important part of our contractual relationship, not hiring armed guards to greet me with abundant fanfare whenever I visit his facility.

OK. All that background info was just to set the stage for the strangeness of the place I wandered into during the afternoon.

We drove to the Mukulla municipal landfill, if you can call it that. Otherworldly is my name for it. I'll skip the elaboration: in a word - strange. We extracted the necessary information from the resident (literally) landfill workers (tipping fees, etc) in order for me to map out a solution to the Abdullah issue. Then, as we were leaving the landfill, my assistant pointed out a very crowded market place, which, he explained, we needed to inspect. So we parked and went in.

Turns out, it was a Qat market. On a Thrusday late morning at 11 AM it was a mob scene - hundreds of people milling around in an open air market sprawling with vendor booths selling nothing but Qat.

For the uninitiated (and for the record, I am uninitiated) Qat is a natural narcotic similar to cocaine. It is EXTREMELY popular in northeastern Africa and the Saudi peninsula. It is so pervasively used by Yemenis that the workers at the Balhaf project cannot comprehend the prohibition against using it. Backhoe operators at the Balhaf project, who have been told a million times not to chew it while at work, are dumbfounded when they are ordered to be removed from their jobs by Ex-Pat managers. The president of Yemen chews it while in conference with members of his cabinet.

I think it would be an interesting study to compare Qat with some of the other well-known drugs in terms of effects on motor control, addictiveness, long term health effects, etc. These things I know: it gobbles up a lot of the Balhaf employees income and there is no remorse - on payday, these guys make a beeline to the Qat dealers. I have read reports that its most incidious effect is that much of the arable land in Yemen (hint: there ain't much) has been converted to Qat crops. This, in spite of increasing rioting because of inflating food prices.

Pretty strange. Anyway, here is an insightful article from Yemen Times. The last couple of paragraphs touch on the Qat issue http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1152&p=view&a=1

Also, here are some photos of the Qat market and landfill.



My assistant, Hussein, squeezing the tomatos, so to speak. My guard, not guarding me. My contractor, Abdullah, in black.







Hundreds of people buying and selling Qat. The market area is huge.






Beggar woman working the parking lot outside the Qat market. I haven't seen any men beggars, but there are many women beggars, mostly at places where discretionary spending is occurring, like a Qat market. This is the first woman that I have seen wearing any color. Every other woman I have seen wears uniformly undistinguished black robes







Mukulla Municipal Landfill

Visit to Maifa

Sheik Bahnjah and William of Arabia

Most times when I have work outside the compound, it is in the direction of Al Mukullah, towards Oman to the east. Today I visited a small village named Maifa, about 100 miles to the west in the direction of Aden. The mission: a contract interview with Sheik Abdullah Ahmed Bahnjah, tribal elder and businessman. That’s what his business card says: tribal elder and businessman. Actually it says: auk geek hawlyk. Just kidding. Couldn’t resist.

While I am digressing, I’ll mention that there are no correct spellings of Arab words or names. Al Mukullah is variously spelled Mukalla, Mukulla, or Mukalluh. The Koran can also be spelled Quran or Qoran. The actual spelling is: squiggle with upstroke, two dots, backwards c with curly cue, vertical dash with hat. And you read it from right to left. When you ask a Yemeni to spell his name he looks at you like you’re kidding.

Anyway, I and an entourage of clients (ie, Total, Inc.) and soldiers, visited the village of Maifa to wheel and deal with Sheik Bahnjah. I was the lead negotiator, and I had translators straining to hear my every word, which I can get used to. And soldiers following behind me at all times. I don't think I will ever get used to that.

Abdullah’s qualifications in business lean more to the client relations side; I guess he leaves the technical details to others, who apparently had comittments elsewhere. By tradition, Sheik Bahnjah exrcises absolute control over contracts in his part of Shabwah. There really is no competition. It is not unusual for a tribe to set up a roadblock and stop competitors’ trucks going to and from the YLNG project. So, Abdullah had limited patience with my insistence on visiting his place of business, which was an open patch of desert surrounded by a cinder block wall. I recited a list of prepared questions, which he laughed at. Stuff like, what do you plan to do with 20,000 liters of waste oil per month? He assured me that he would deal with it, and all his sycophants nodded in agreement. I was really looking for something more like it will be accumulated in a bunded storage tank pending transfer to a blended fuels program in Dubai. But I could tell that Abdullah was more interested in showing us his farm, so I relented. Good move.

The best I can figure, Maifa is positioned over a huge sand lens that is underlain by impervious volcanic rock. The rock is an inclined plane and it drains water like an underground river through the sand lens from the mountains many miles to the north, where it actually rains occasionally, to the lower desert elevation, where it doesn’t.

Abdullah owns a vast spread of land in the valley where he runs a profitable farm raising bananas and papayas to sell in the markets in Mukullah and Aden. The village that he lords over, and provides for, is perched on the hillside nearby, but we drove instead to a small hill next to an irrigated crop of banana trees, where a tent had been set up and cushions spread around with ornamented pillows, just like in the movies. It was totally comfortable and inviting, and I took off my shoes and moved in. While the servants attended to grilling the goat and lamb over the open fire, I sipped on sweetened tea and watched the banana leaves do the herky jerk in the light midday breeze, the first green I had seen in 30 days.

We ended up spending most of the afternoon feasting, joking and loafing. Very little business was discussed. Abdullah was gracious and in good humor. He wished us the peace of Allah if he won the contract, and the peace of Allah if he didn’t. Everyone laughed and nodded in agreement.

What I did on my spring vacation

I attended my 21st South by Southwest music festival in Austin. This has become a reflex – I don’t even think about it, I just go. It is one of two favorite weekends of the year. The other being the Harvest Moon Regatta: 250 sports yachts beat themselves up for 2-3 days racing offshore from Galveston to Corpus Christi, and then cap it with a day or two of intensive bragging and (ideally) victory celebrations on sandy Padre Island.

SXSW is as good, but different. The annual music event has grown to superlative proportions; it may be the largest music festival in the world for all I know. Some years ago it expanded to include a 3-day interactive conference and trade show, and there is also a SXSW film festival rolled into the mix. I understand from people who care about such things that the interactive and the film festivals are well regarded in their respective industries, and you hear about this or that movie star who was seen shooting tequila shots at the Driskill Bar, etc. But for me, the music is the draw of SXSW.

Actually, the music is one of the draws. Strategically slotted in the middle of March, the festival waits for 50,000 UT students to leave town on spring break to free up space for the out-of-towners who jam the nightclubs and concert venues in and around downtown Austin. The weekend coincides with the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. So here’s the drill: music and partying at night; catch the games during the day; repeat three times. It’s a heady cocktail: the NCAA players and the SXSW musicians all know that this is their 15 minutes of fame. For someone who enjoys live music (check) and basketball (check) it’s heaven.

St. Patrick’s Day also falls in there, which ratchets the party up still more.

1700 bands played over the four nights of SXSW 2008, up from 1300 the year before, and for the first time, I sensed an emphasis on quantity over quality. There was less of the cohesiveness and inclusiveness that has always been one of the charms of SXSW. It was as if the band count was a metric that the promoters were shooting for in order to earn some kind of a favorable consideration – similar to the way a newspaper’s circulation drives its advertising rates. That part didn’t bother me. The folks at the Austin Chronicle who created SXSW, for whom I have tremendous respect, have made no secret that the festival is intended as an industry event, with a collateral benefit to the casual wristbander who just wants to drink beer and listen to music. The downside of the SXSW super sizing is that the overall quality of the music has taken a hit. Everyone knows that SXSW is a matter of trial and error. Listen and walk on, listen and walk, until you stumble upon a gem that you’ve never heard of – like that reggae band from Monterrey at Sholtz’s, the Swedish pop trio last year, Norah Jones eight years ago. Seems like this year’s gem-to-walk ratio was low. Maybe I’m getting old.

Technology continues to make inroads, with lots of bands using sampling, sequencing and pre-recorded tracks to enhance their sound. There are pros and cons to this: the music is often better for it, but the performance isn’t. I am curious whether the SXSW band selection committee makes any attempt to determine how much of the demo CD they base their decision on will be performed live at the gig in Austin. This year I heard a lot of quartets with only 2 or 3 people on stage. Part of it may be economics. The only compensation for playing SXSW are wristbands for the band members and a $100 stipend. Recorded bass lines and drum parts must be a powerful temptation for an undiscovered techno pop band from Iceland. But for the random listener who has never heard of the Four Thors, there is a fine line between techno art and karaoke.

The other area where technology enters in is real time MIDI performance. This is where one or more performers push previously created sounds through a variety of computer effects, all to the repeating beat of digitally perfect, but un-live drum and bass. A semi-nauseating example of this was the 11 o’clock band on Japanese night: three guys grooving out behind stacks of Sony (of course) equipment, each of them continuously adjusting knobs and slide switches without eliciting any noticeable effect on the sound. All of this was layered over the only listenable component: canned drums and bass.

But there was plenty of good stuff. The gem for me was Brooklyn – a rock band from Paris playing their first show in the US. Their songs were three minute bursts of pop harmonies with interesting, short guitar hooks. It is definitely music you would play in your car. A beautiful girl playing bass doesn’t hurt. They were the midnight show on Friday at Maggie’s Upper Deck, which turned out to be one of the good venues this year. I saw British Sea Power there the following night.

Volcano

Call it a boondoggle if you want. I knew that I needed to get out of the compound for the day to do some.. reconnaissance. We had heard reports that our waste recycler was dumping the non-recyclable part of his waste shipments in various ditches along the paved road to Al Mukullah. I figured I better go investigate before things got out of hand. So armed with my trusty armed guard and a driver, I set off in search of windmills.

OK, it was a bit of a BD.

We didn't find any Yemgas garbage dumps, and I'm pretty sure that my companions still have no idea what we were doing out there. They eventually came to understand that we were looking for something, but even if I knew the Arabic words for "large amount of garbage from the construction project" I don't think they would have understood the purpose of our quest. Garbage goes on the ground in this part of the world. Where else would it go? Spending time and resources trying to track down some discarded trash so that it could be picked up and hauled off somewhere else is more than foreign, it's like moving a pawn sideways. I am reminded of the story about an Arab man who visited California. He had fallen in love with a movie star, I think it was Farrah Faucett or someone like that. Anyway, he saw her one day walking on the beach with her dog. He was awestruck: here was this larger-than-life image of a famous, rich, radiantly beautiful woman. But what was it in the plastic bag she was carrying that appeared to be, yes, he was quite certain of it now, it... was... dog poop?? Knights pawn to Bishops pawn.

Anyway, Abdul, Ahmed and I enjoyed the break in the routine, and we got to do some exploring, which was pretty cool. Among the nifty places we found was a volcanic caldera, which was filled with water. I took some photos, but I couldn't capture the unnatural greenish tint of the water. I later learned that the color was from volcanic sulfuric acid.

Random photos

The winter weather in south coastal Yemen is just about ideal: cool nights and very pleasant daytime temperatures. Only one problem: occasional windstorms in the "empty quarter" up north stir up the desert dust which diffuses its way to us (not blown to us, it has been windless here in Balhaf). The empty quarter is a huge, empty desert occupying about 1/4 of the Saudi peninsula, where the wind has been blowing the sand around for so long that the particle size is like tobacco smoke. It acts like ink if you touch it. And it doesn't settle very fast once it becomes airborne, which is why it eventually diffuses here even in the absence of wind.) We have been shrouded in a haze of this dust for a couple of days (Feb 3, 08). This photo is taken in the still of the morning on an otherwise cloudless day. Dust is a way of life throughout large parts of the Middle East, and it goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of the scarf thing that people wrap around their heads. At the first hint of dust conditions, the Yemeni men cover their face with them like a surgical mask. They don't even think about it; it is a reflex. Of course, the women are perpetually prepared for a dust storm.

I spent one day doing an environmental baseline assessment of this beach to determine whether it can be safely used as a recreational outlet on Friday afternoons for 10,000 recreation-deprived workers. The beach is in the next cove east of the construction site. Nobody owns it, nobody goes there, it is a hundred miles from nowhere. My job was to evaluate the potential vulnerability of the coral and to determine whether there were any nesting turtles who may object to human encroachment. In the background is a volcanic island, one of hundreds along the coast. It is safe to guess that no human has ever been on it. Pretty inhospitable basalt boulders, why would anyone want to go there. Still you don't normally think that there are desolate places like this outside of the Antarctic.

Wild (ferrel?) camels are common sights while driving around the countryside. Nobody really owns them as far as I can tell. Apparently they are easily rounded up when someone needs a pack animal, then they are let loose again.

Photo of Balhaf Harbor. By the end of 2008 there will be a long pier completed which will allow deep draft ocean vessels to dock and load product.

nationalities personalities

I am in Yemen, thousands of miles from the nearest political correctician, so I get to offer some observations about some of the nationalities that are here, with a disclaimer that these generalizations are based on non-representative cross sections. Everyone knows that all generalizations are incorrect.

Still, there may be something to this notion of a national personality; I kinof think there is. Mostly though, these musings hit on my American funny bone.

Americans: There are only 12 of us, engineers for the most part. Fairly predictable demographic: mostly ex-military, most have spent time in Iraq. Mostly white, although there are a couple of black guys - managers like everyone else, well paid. There is a color blindness here in Asia, and I doubt that the 7,000 Arab Muslim laborers notice that these guys are black so much as they notice the Yemgas shirt which identifies them as ex-pats, which means they're about to be told to do something. As far as acceptance by peers, performance expectations, assignment of accomodations, etc. the racial issue is irrelevant. If the Sharia zealots decide to revolt, the black guys will be subject to scimitar death just like everyone else.

Brits: Except for the lowest levels of Yemeni, Turkish and N. Korean labor, the Brits and Americans are the only monolinguists on this project. Everyone else speaks at least two languages. The reason for this is fairly simple: English is the world language. There isn't really as much need to learn an additional language. If you are French and live in France, which is the size of Oregon, you will eventually want to explore new countries. You may want to learn Dutch so you can visit Amsterdam, but your Dutch would be lame, and everyone would respond to you in English anyway. So if you are French, you learn English, and then condescend on Brits and Americans for not being bilingual.

French: Safe to say that most of the career oil industry folks on this project are politically conservative, but even the most conservative Frenchman on this project is well to the left of the moderate American Republican. It would be nice if the French would adopt George Bush like that zany nincompoop Jerry Lewis, but helas, the overwhelming consensus is "E is stupeed, non?" It would be trite to go into the French stereotype; suffice it that there is a kernal of truth to it. I will cite an example of what may be quintessential french, but may be just a simple case of aro/ignorance: The senior managers on this project are French. There is a level of disorganization from the top which affects everyone on this project. For mid-managers, it manifests itself in the way that they plug into ones' projects - supplementing, countermanding, rejecting, whatever - without bothering to tell the task manager. Example: yesterday there was an epileptic seizure in one of the camps, and when the Yemgas doctor showed up and called the ambulance he was informed that the ambulance contract had been cancelled by the Resident Construction Manager as a cost control measure. As a sidenote: the non-euro mid-managers are treated worse in this regard than euros. It is fairly clear that the French managers have retained a residuum of colonial attitude that shows up in their interactions with non-euros. It is not blatant, but in this theater, devoid external distractions, it is hard not to notice. I hasten to add that this foible is only evident in a select few senior managers. In fact, I tend to associate with the French engineers more than others, even Americans - partially so that I can practive speaking French. Every so occasionally, someone will come up with some bourbon and a few of us will hold talks in a private setting away from the milleu. It's fun to flop between English and French during these moments of detente (c'est a dire: relaxation).

Yemenis: Felix Arab is what the Romans called them - friendly arabs. And they are. Somewhat innocent, really. They are only a generation or so removed from the 14th century. It's fun to observe the learning curve. For example, they still coming to grips with cell phones; there is some posturing when they get a call in a public setting. Also, Arabic does not have a "P" sound; they pronounce "p" as "b." One of my employees is forever informing me that the bump went out. It's like he has a permanent cold. I taught him about Peter Piper, and force him to recite it occasionally - for his benefit, really. There's probably some Muslim stricture against the "p" sound and I'm scarring him for life.

Other Arabs: I have access to a spreadhseet that is updated weekly, which breaks down the nationalities represented on the project. Surprisingly, there are very few other Middle Eastern nationalities represented. There are reasons for this. The Saudis don't need work in Yemen; they have plenty going on back home. Plus I think there is a bit of a condensention thing going on with Yemen's big brother. Some of the other Arab nationalities, for example, Iran, are not allowed because they are Shite. One of the larger Subcontractors - PetroJet - is Egyptian, with 400 employees. There is a national pride among the Egyptians that seems to be missing in other Middle Eastern nations. Not hard to imagine why, when you consider most of them were created over cocktails by some Brit with a map and a magic marker. This detail was lost on Mr. Bush, who thought he could coalesce a nation into a single identity with a shared vision. "E plurabis unim" tatoos would appear in the tonier cafes. Olympic dogsled team. National anthem. A flag.

Lebanese: Essentailly a southern European country as far as I can tell. There are a fair number of Lebanese within Yemgas and among the Subcontractors. Most of them are exceptionally cool. Like the Egyptians, all of them speak glowingly of their country, and seem to accept the political strife as a way of life. One of the hipper guys is Palestianian - he may as well be from LA. He hangs out mostly with a Maronite (Christian) guy and they get along well, although they rib each other ruthlessly for the entertainment of the Euros. If you talk to them separately, you find that their opinions on the hot button issues are polar opposites, for examples the influence of Syria, the ethics of Hezbollah, etc. But it doesn't affect their friendship. They enjoy bourbon, and seem to have access to a supply train.

Indians: Face it; they are square by western standards. Mirth is not part of their makeup. Penchant for bad glasses; like the Koreans, but with the Koreans you get the idea that they aren't hip because they don't want to draw attention to themselves as they quietly learn, accumulate, prepare... The Indians just don't care. Most of them speak a hundred languages, including English. But their English can be a challenge to understand, as their consonant projection comes from somewhere around their back molars. They love to end sentences with "only." Like "They will do what their supervisors say only." Generally speaking, they are competent and quiet. There seems to be an inner peace that they are not interested in explaining unless you press them, and even then you can't quite figure out what makes them tick. Anyway, the Indians are worse drivers than the Yemenis. Neither of them understand driving concepts that are second nature in the west. For example, they will drive up close behind a stopped car that obviously is going to need to back up. The Yemenis don't yield right of way to pedestrians, but the Indians apply a caste system approach whereby an Ex Pat pedestrian is yielded right of way, but a laborer knows better than to walk in front of a Hindu driver. It's a toss up when an Ex-pat and Laborer are walking together. The same curious phenomenon occurs with Indians and Pakistanis as with the Maronite and Palestinian. They hang out together. My theory - I have to have a theory - is that living and working in this environment is kindof a mutual adversary, which is more real than the blood struggle that goes on back home. I'm pretty convinced that Patel and Abdula won't be exchanging Christmas cards once the project is over, but at least while they are here, there's an easy familiarity that glues them together.

Balhaf Recreation

what a motley crew, the Yemgas Globe Trotters. At least the name is accurate. From left to right, we have French, Hong Kong, Austin, College Station and Italian. Not pictured are Venezuelan, Lebanese and a couple more French.
The Yemgas Green team is Yemeni.
The TDD Tankers (they are constructing the cryogenic tanks) are Korean.

Other recreational stuff to do in the very limited off-hours is swim at the beach, jog the perimeter road on the inside of the fenceline. Occasionnally the Euro Ex-pats will organize a Friday afternoon drive to Bir Ali, which is an oasis, literally - you've heard the term, this is really one of them - up the coast to the east. There is nothing there by way of amenities, but the security people have deemed it safe, kindof, and it is an excuse to leave the fenced compound. Actually, as of this writing - Jan 18, 2008 - it is not safe. I have heard rumblings about some kindof of weirdness outside, which has suspended Bir Ali visits for the time being. Didn't pay it much attention, but should have, if only to be more informed-sounding in writing about it. Death was involved, so I'll try to remember to ask the security guys, who work down the hall from me about it. Stay tuned.

Return to Balhaf for Rotation #2

The most profound impression from my three-week Christmas vacation was its brevity. I’m reminded of the old-timey Hollywood depiction of the passing of time where the calendar pages curl and drop to the ground like falling leaves.

I learned something about myself during the time off: although I didn’t really have many demands on my time, I still managed to fall back into that familiar lifestyle of being rushed. I am perpetually rushing whether in Austin or in Yemen: here rushed, there rushed, everywhere rushed rushed. I’m the old MacDonald of poor time management.

I got back to Balhaf in the early hours of New Year’s Day and stopped by my cabin to unpack suitcases and take a shower before heading into the office. The transition from vacation mode to work came while in the shower, when I noticed that the soap did not rinse very well and I made a mental note to check the CaCO3 metering pumps at the RO plant.

The project remains a fascination for me. There are new and different things every day. The human interest stories are enough to keep me engaged. This afternoon, at management’s insistence, I accompanied security in an investigation of an illicit still that was in operation at the Hawk (a heavy equipment contractor) bakery. They made a wine by fermenting fruit and sugar with bread yeast, then they distilled the resultant ferment using a crude but ingenious still, involving double boilers and ice. The word I got was that the moonshine was respectable, but, unfortunately, they had dumped it by the time I got there. The human interest was the fall guy. Hodji or something, from Bangalore. He was shaking in his boots. It was pretty clear he had been set up as the sacrificial lamb. He told the security guy – Keitel, a stern Lebanese ex-military police - that nobody else knew about the operation, and that he drank all of the product himself. Keitel wanted to implicate management for duplicity, but I kindof cooled him down. It is tough for me to see someone punished for something I would have done, if I has thought of it. I kept Keitel from dragging down the kitchen management, even though it was clear they were partners in crime. But I couldn't do anything for Hodj, who was on the next flight to Bangalore. The problem was that by late afternoon, all 3 thousand mostly Yemenis at Hawk knew that Yemgas knew about the still. The Shariat has a problem with alcohol, and consequently under the circumstances, Yemgas/Hawk had to sacrifice someone in order to avert another uprising.

Typical Day

I brought a 110 volt alarm clock with me, valueless of course: everything here is 220. Doesn’t matter though. I haven’t needed one. I get to sleep most nights by 9 pm, and I wake up around 5:15. Maybe 2 nights per week I get to sleep by 8, which means I wake up to the 4 AM edition of the muezzin as they call the faithful to prayer in the Pioneer Camp mosques. This ancient tradition was pretty otherworldly the first few times I heard it, especially just coming out of a sound sleep. The Koranic verses are sung all wobbly-voiced like in the movies. This first of five adhans of the day is an alarm clock for about 5 thousand Muslims on this project. The Hawk (Yemeni civil engineering company) camp and the PetroJet (Egyptian pressure vessel firm) are near enough that I can now recognize one from the other. It is actually pretty cool to lie and listen to ululating muezzins in the still of the early morning air before the construction noise begins.

I shower, dress and head to breakfast at the European canteen. The food is fair, a French firm runs the kitchen. Fruit, granola, yogurt, croissants. They try to do hot stuff, but it is awful. Hot dogs in lieu of sausage. Macaroni and ham with béchamel sauce. (the European canteen gets ham and bacon, but it is otherwise pretty much forbidden - and unwanted - in the other canteens). There is a reason the French stick to Continental breakfast.

Typically I meet one of my direct reports after breakfast and we drive to the office about a mile away from the camps. There are two Toyota trucks to use among my four-person team, and it works out pretty well.

I am the ranking environmental engineer on this project. I have two HVEs and two Yemenis that work directly for me, and each of the 14 Subcontractors have environmental staff that more or less report to me.

The major responsibilities assigned to me are: keeping the corals alive; oversight of a marginally performing, extended aeration sewer treatment plant; waste management via a combination of incineration and off-site recycling; oversight of the Reverse Osmosis units (ie, potable water). Other assigned areas of responsibility include camp and work place inspections. This includes hygiene inspections of the Subcontractor dining halls, kitchens, billets, ablutions. No, these are not terms I used much in Austin. Ablutions are places to wash up before going to bang one’s head on the ground in deference to the higher being.

In this connection I have to make a sidebar comment – some of the Muslims wear their religion on their sleeve, so to speak. Actually they wear it on their forehead – these guys favor asphalt for prayer, and they clang their heads on the pavement hard enough that it develops a blackened callous. You can see these guys walking around with blackened circles on their foreheads. Lots of the Egyptians do this, but I’m not sure it is restricted to them.

Anyway, a typical day for me is today – Nov 28, 2007. I started the day resolving an argument between a Subcontractor camp boss and my Yemeni inspector, who had given him a low score on a kitchen inspection. The kitchen inspections are pretty important – the word I get from our Yemgas doctor is that a salmonella outbreak would suspend the project for several weeks. Anyway, a low score on a kitchen inspection is serious business for a HVE camp manager, in this case a Turk, who looks at his relatively high salary as a godsend, not to be trifled with, especially by a Yemeni inspector.

Dispute resolved, I wrote up a couple of incident reports, which require a root cause analysis, and corrective actions to be implemented. One involved a tug boat that drove over a silt curtain which protects one of the very sensitive coral reefs (this was Muhibbah, a Malaysian firm). Another incident was Punj Lloyd, an Indian utilities firm, who bulldozed into a concrete septic tank causing the release of 5000 liters of raw sewage, which flowed downhill and pooled in a laydown yard of utility pipes.

I spent most of the afternoon coordinating over long distance with a French firm that is coming onsite next week to provide Marine Large Spill training. They will train some of the shorefront and barge personnel how to contain a large spill using huge oil booms that are towed into place with a tug boat, and oil skimmers that ride over the surface sucking up the petro. The training will actually simulate a spill using a drum of hydraulic oil that will be dumped into the ocean (under controlled conditions, hopefully).

No question this is the most responsible, and most accountable position I have held in my professional career. It has pros and cons, of course. There is absolutely zero QA/QC of the decisions I make, no one has time or expertise to do it. When things go right, it is an exhilarating feeling to see my projects come to fruition. On the other hand, I imagine that bad decisions will result in spectacular flame outs, with little compassion from management. I haven’t seen this yet, and don’t plan to.

Blue Lagoon

I have never seen clearer, bluer water. This is the backside of the facility, which, unfortunately, is about to go under construction of a cooling water outfall structure. Corals are on the far side of the silt curtain, the floats of which can be seen at the interface of the two blue colors. I have made it a matter of personal comittment to protect this area; it really is much prettier than what you can see in the photo. The two shades of blue are awesome. The sand is like sugar.

Arabian Sea Overlook

Me and Khalid. Everyone should have a bodyguard.

The road to Al Mukulla

My protector. None of the expats can travel outside of the compound without an armed guard. This photo was taken during a day trip to Al Mukulla to audit a waste recycler's operations.

Yemeni Grrrirls

This is typical. You don't see many women out and around, but the few that you do see look exactly like this.

This is downtown Mukulla.

Seashore between Balhaf and Al Mukulla

This is a very typical view of the south coast of Yemen (except for the white guy in the foreground). Mostly sandy beaches with turquoise water. The air quality here is quite good - certainly there is no manmade air pollution. But all of the features in the distance - mountains, islands, etc - all have a mirageish appearance. The island in the background looks in real life just like it appears in this photo, as if looking through a filter.

Eid al Fitr (End of Ramadan)

I arrived at Balhaf on October 13, just after Ramadan. The Muslim population, about 75% of the labor force, was in recovery mode following a month of fasting and white-knuckled spirituality. As a consequence, nothing much was accomplished by way of my in-processing, setting up a place to work or computer access during the 3 days of feast and festivity of the Eid al Fitr. The Yemgas management goes out of its way to accommodate the religious needs of the Muslims, in part because the Yemeni government, a 20% owner, requires it. But also because the uneducated Muslims - which is to say most of them - are already a bit freaked out about working for the infidels.

There are makeshift mosques that Yemgas has set up all over the plant, consisting of simple concrete block rooms, facing Mecca of course, which is about 400 miles to the north. The mosques all have an associated ablution hut, equipped with toilets and sinks for washing up in preparation for prayer. They heed the muezzins’ calls to prayer five times daily, two or three of which are during work hours. It takes a block of time out of the day, but they are fully compensated. The subcontractors do their best to downplay these work absences to the Chinese, Korean and Indian laborers, who don’t get these breaks, but of course it is impossible for them not to notice.

Yemen is among the most regressive of all the Muslim countries: they rank high in the usual categories – tribal mentality, xenophobia, repression of education and women, melding of church and state. The Yemenis have earned a reputation as reactionary, true believers. The USS Cole was bombed at Aden, about 300 km down the beach. The 9-11 hijackers were well represented by Yemeni zealots. The bin Laden clan has their ancestral roots here, and the family construction business has its way with government contracts for infrastructure, at least in areas where the concept of infrastructure has meaning.

The Governorate of Sabwa, where Balhaf is located, is populated very sparsely by tribal groups. There have been several strikes in these parts against western targets in the recent past, although, in some cases it is less an aggression against the west than it is against the local and national government. Yesterday there was a pipeline explosion in Marib, north of here, brought about by tribesmen who are known to be discontented with the level of spending the provincial government dedicates to infrastructure improvements. This is fairly common in the backwater areas, where tribal government competes with conventional government as the dominant political presence. In order to force spending on public works, they blow something up, or, more successfully, they kidnap a westerner and the government pays a ransom for their release (the Yemen government is keen to minimize bad press in order to encourage foreign investment in projects like YLNG.) The tribes have found that this approach can work: in several cases the ransom money has been used to pay for roads and schools.

On March 26, 2007, there was a riot at YLNG. The word got out to the labor force that one of the managers had desecrated a Koran, by touching it, or throwing on the floor – we will never know the true story. With each retelling of the story in the workplace, the description of the desecration got worse. Thus incensed, an angry mob formed. They moved to the fire station and disabled the fire truck, then moved on to the heli pad and doused the helicopter with diesel and set it on fire. YLNG ordered the charter plane to take off rather than risk the torch. The prevailing belief is that the protest was orchestrated and the story about the Koran desecration was contrived. 50 or so Yemenis were arrested and they ultimately disappeared from the project. The mob, apparently satisfied that their message had been heard, cooled off and went back to work.
My opinion about the security conditions has evolved during the four weeks that I have been here. Initially, the only information available to me was the intimidatingly heavy fences and concertina wire strung everywhere inside and outside the facility, and the omnipresent Yemini military, with checkpoints at gate entrances and even at cafeterias. There are jeeps with turret-mounted machine guns constantly circling the perimeter of the fence. But over time, I have grown to realize that the Yemini laborers are mostly just interested in job security; there is an incentive for individuals to keep the management happy because there will be a significant manpower requirement to operate the plant once the construction is finished. I have never seen anything remotely resembling resentment, quite the contrary, I am treated with deference and respect anywhere I go. I have no trepidations whatsoever wandering among the so-called pioneer camps, even after dark. I have two Yemenis on my staff: they are career-minded and eager to learn so that they will have skills to offer once the hiring of long-term employees begins. It is difficult for me to imagine that either Ghamal or Hussein would participate in a riot targeting western personnel or materials. Still, it is a bit disconcerting that the March riot sought out the weak link in the YLNG security system: our means of escape.

Balhaf

Imagine a place so remote and uninviting that land ownership or property boundaries are irrelevant, the terrain so unnuturing that there are no ants, weeds, cactus or indigenous life of any kind. To the north, as far as the eye can see there is nothing but the tan and brown of sand dunes and volcanic ruble; to the south, the unbroken blue horizon of the Arabian Sea.

The project site – Yemen Liquified Natural Gas - shares a peninsula with an extinct volcanic outcrop, which is readily seen in a Google Maps search of Balhaf, Yemen. The other key feature evident in the satellite image is the crystal clarity of the water: the coral reef which surrounds the peninsula is clearly visible from space. The fenced portion of the facility extends several kilometers from the coast into climbing terrain of endless nothingness.
In contrast with the emptiness of the landscape beyond the fence, YLNG is a thriving city. As of this writing, there are 7,700 residents – all men - working 10 – 12 hours/day, 7 days/week. By the end of 2007 the number will grow to 10,000. There are 30 subcontractors from 20 different countries. The senior management of Yemgas, the prime contractor, consists of about 50 Europeans, mostly French and Brit, along with about 12 Americans, including me. Several of the specialty subcontractor firms – catering, utility management, commercial diving - are European and the managers of these firms, maybe 30 all told, are Euros. There are about 30 owner reps from the French firm, Total, verifying payment draws and monitoring the work progress. And that’s it. The balance of the population is Asian and African: mostly Arab laborers, but there are also large numbers of Chinese, Bangaldeshies, Indians and Koreans. In addition to being all men, there is another common denominator: every one of the inhabitants of this strange community – management and labor alike - are earning more money than they ever have. Another trait in common: not one of us would be here if we weren’t.