by Paul Carter
‘Let’s re-light it bro and we’ll get a new staff house.’
I talked him out of it.
Incidentally, the same guy would go jogging every morning; he was making a brave effort to do something about all the years of smoking and drinking. One morning I was standing at the main gate to the compound when he came jogging by. I was amazed that he was outside alone; he was taking an awful risk. But when I saw the reaction of the locals I understood why he had remained unharmed for so long. They would stop what they were doing and watch him jog by, then immediately look up the road at where he had come from: Who was chasing him? Why else would a man run down the road? He must be crazy, look at his red face, stupid white man.
Local kids would always loiter outside any place the expats went, especially bars. At ten years of age, they were already professional tiny hitmen. They would single out the weakest man, usually the drunkest, and handi-vac the contents of his pockets. In Nigeria, don’t turn your back on anyone, ever, even if your pockets are empty . . . think of the worst crimes, and they’ve done it, enjoyed it and improved on it. The security staff would kick the kids and chase them away. I found the best system was to throw a handful of change in the opposite direction of where you were going.
I was to discover later that adult thieves are dealt with more vigorously. The crew and I were in a minibus, driving across town on our way back from a job, when the driver asked if we’d like to see the public hanging at 2 p.m. It was 1.55 p.m. and we were a block away from the police station, how convenient. Outvoted, I found myself sitting in the bus watching three shirtless, handcuffed men standing behind roughly constructed gallows—I was kind of surprised it wasn’t made of milk crates. Two police officers stood to the side, one wearing pyjama pants and a combat jacket, the other in combat pants and a pyjama top. The first two men died quickly, the rope snapping their heads back, breaking their necks instantly. The third man was at least 300 pounds and built like an ox; his neck did not break. We watched him thrashing about on the end of the rope and started yelling at the two cops to do something. They looked at each other and in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre laid down their guns, grabbed a leg each and pulled down, throttling the man to death.
But for all the public executions and floggings designed to create fear of authority, violent crime is an everyday part of life in Nigeria, the most corrupt country in the world. If there was something nice to say about the place, believe me I would say it.
The most outstanding event during my time there was to give me nightmares for months.
Late one night I woke to the sound of screaming, coming from the TV room. I thought I was alone in the house but when I went to investigate I discovered one of our crew standing butt naked and holding a chair out in front of him rather like a lion tamer does. In front of him stood a Nigerian woman, obviously a prostitute, fully dressed and wearing a platinum-blonde wig. She was waving a knife and trying to rob him, having waited until he was naked before making her move. My appearance only made her more determined; now she wanted my money too.
‘Pauli, help me man, this fuckin’ bitch is mad.’
I turned on my heel and ran out the back, around the house to the front gate, where my highly trained, super-alert security guard was on duty, fast asleep against the wall. I woke him gently, tapping his shoulder and keeping my voice even and soft, not wanting to startle him in case he shot me. He looked up at my smiling face.
‘Hi Daniel, would you like a nice cup of tea?’ He knew I had done that for the other security guys as they were not allowed in the house.
‘Oh yes please sa.’
‘WELL TOUGH FUCKIN’ SHIT . . . BIG WAHALLA IN THE HOUSE, YOU GET HER OUT NOW.’
Up he jumped. I followed him through the front door; blondie had our naked lion tamer cornered now. She was big, much bigger than me—imagine Mike Tyson in drag. As soon as she saw the guard, she dropped the knife and started babbling at him, but he didn’t break his stride. He just stepped up and with his whole upper body swung the butt of his rifle into her jaw.
Both her feet left the ground, she slammed down hard on the tiled floor, her wig flew off followed by a long arc of blood. I knew he had killed her, but my legs were frozen to the floor. We watched him drag her out, feet first, through the front door. A few moments later he drove off with her body in the back of the truck. The room boy casually walked in and started mopping up the blood.
I should have left Africa right then, but I had one more job to do.
Two weeks later everything was going just fine until all the roughnecks and rouseabouts, and everyone who wasn’t white, walked off and came back five minutes later with weapons. Mutiny is the best way to put it.
There were sixteen expats on the rig at the time, the other eighty personnel didn’t want to do any more work until they got more money. All the offshore workers are supplied by a government body called ‘The Labour Mass’ and they had decided to strike, with weapons, in an effort to force more money out of the oil companies. There were five rigs involved in this, the Labour Mass just picked a day and time, gave the men enough notice to smuggle weapons out to the rig and stash them, and on a predetermined day they made their move. They had control of the rig, ballast control, the radio room, well control, everything. They boomed the cranes over the heli-deck so choppers couldn’t land or resupply the rig.
This went on for the next three weeks, one enraged man after another speaking on the radio, occasionally breaking for a barbecue and an impromptu chanting session on the heli-deck. The news networks were saying all kinds of outlandish crap, like herds of rig personnel were being locked into freight containers and dangled over the sea, sometimes even dunked into the sea so everyone inside was waist-deep in water and in total darkness. No-one was hurt, we just watched TV a lot. Eventually we ran out of food . . . that sped up negotiations.
Finally the US navy got involved. As soon as the words ‘SEAL’ and ‘take the rig back by force’ were mentioned, the mutineers dropped their weapons, saying, ‘Okay we give up . . . can we keep our jobs?’
I got back to Port Harcourt and quit, jumping on the first flight home, never to return.
I WAS BACK AT Louise’s agency two weeks later; she had me working on a campaign for hair products for young women.
‘But I’m a thirty-five-year-old bald man . . . I don’t know anything about hair . . . it’s been ten years since I last used shampoo!’
‘That’s why it’s your project Pauli,’ Louise said, and as luck would have it we aced it.
She helped me get organised and I enrolled in some courses in advertising at the University of Technology Sydney and I studied hard for the next five months. For the first time I had a sense of choice: I could do something with my life other than oil. I liked the study, I enjoyed the classes and exercises. I was happy to learn but not to compromise my lifestyle and inevitably I ran out of money. So I soon found myself in China.
The last part of the journey to China was the best. I got on the wrong ferry at Hong Kong International Airport: you’re supposed to arrive at the airport and go straight to a ferry which will take you to any one of twenty ports in mainland China where you get off the boat and finally get processed through immigration. Provided of course you get on the right boat to start with. What can I say, it’s a rabbit warren in Hong Kong, so I ended up in a remote port.
I was already destined for an isolated province, but I arrived at a really isolated province. Even the immigration guy looked surprised. There were no phones, no taxis, or buildings, or other Westerners. And it was getting dark, although that’s never bothered me. Darkness is your friend in dodgy remote Chinese ports where a tall bald white man in a Mambo T-shirt tends to stick out like chairman Mao at the MTV music awards.
So I had to fly via a local domestic carrier to the right town—not good.
China’s answer to the global terrorist threat on airliners is simple. First they search you, then they search you again, then they give you the proper search, the
n in case they missed something during the proper search, they search you again, that’s the search when they squeeze out your toothpaste, saw the heels off your shoes and X-ray your underpants.
Coupled with all the searching, you’re bombarded with a kind of video-movie of what would happen if some terrorists decided to hijack a plane. Like a tribute to ‘the golden years of terrorism’, it features a man in black coveralls and a black ski mask in the middle of an aircraft fuselage who is brandishing an automatic weapon then gets shot a couple of hundred times by a small group of other men in black coveralls and black ski masks . . . which begs the question, did the right guy in black get shot here? Perhaps some sort of name tag is in order, or even a good pair of Kevlar comedy breasts.
So there I was on the plane, waiting for the all-singing, all-dancing black coverall-wearing ski mask appreciation society gala performance. Instead I ended up in an aisle seat next to an elderly Chinese gentleman, who must have been ninety and looked like he had built the whole wall himself. He had no teeth, which proved to be a bit of a problem when the in-flight mini-gruel was served. I did feel sorry for him because he had to deal with the joy of scoring my meal, combined with his meal, but he shook so much he dropped half his food in my lap. I would have been better off just up-ending my tray in my own lap and calling it a day.
After dinner I tried not to think about the boiled-gruel stains on my pants and my new friend decided to spit on the floor every five minutes, then he had to go to the toilet every ten minutes for the rest of the flight. Either the old man hadn’t had a meal in a few days or he had a prostrate the size of a nuclear submarine.
The town is called Shekou and feels palpably weird, like I wouldn’t be altogether surprised to pull into a local bar and find my drink being poured by a Cyclops. And there’s a real problem with counterfeit money, so every time I got change I scrutinised my bills like a diamond merchant.
I soon became quite used to people staring at me. Westerners are rarely seen in this part of China so it’s expected that locals will have a good look. I should have been happy, all things considered: I wasn’t getting shot at, not everyone in this country was carrying a machete, they don’t hate white people and you can eat the food without that niggling feeling that there’s a human hand in the stew.
The only thing I couldn’t get used to in China was the gobbing. Everyone, and I mean everyone, hacks up a big ball of phlegm and spits it out on the street, every five minutes. Women, children, babies, monks, doddery old people who look like the next big gob could kill them—everyone has a good gob, all the time.
Perhaps the answer to China’s economic problems lies not in oil and gas exploration, but in utilising its other natural resource: spit. It’s a lot cheaper to find than hydrocarbons, all you have to do is set up millions of giant spittoons and find a way to convert the spit into some sort of industrial lubricant. They could spend the money on driving lessons for everyone, because when the locals aren’t gobbing all over the place they are driving around like Stevie Wonder. (In China I came frighteningly close to getting flattened by anything from kids on rollerskates to rickshaws and semitrailers, but that’s possibly because I was too busy trying not to step in all the gobs.)
My boss was a big gobber too . . . I think in his youth he gobbed for China. No problem, mid conversation . . . Whap! Right there on the floor, watch your step. Even the Chinese President has a sly gobb in parliament; I saw him do it on local TV one night, God love him.
I try to enjoy local traditions and customs wherever I go in the world, so I decided to perfect my own gobbing technique and really impress the guys at the next drilling meeting.
Food is always another wonderful experience in a new country. China is crowded, all knees and elbows and gobbing, but apart from that the food is pretty good. Compared to Nigeria, it’s the Ritz Carlton.
One morning’s drilling meeting was especially fun. On this particular day, I met the tool pusher and driller who would be working with me off shore. They are with a Houston-based company and were on their first venture in this part of the world, real genuine redneck Gawd-damn American good-ol’-boys, with giant belt buckles and their bottom lips packed with two pounds of chewing tobacco. Coincidentally, these Texan boys enjoy a good gob too.
Watching their first meeting with the Chinese roughnecks was a treat; it could have been a MasterCard ad . . . ‘Price of one round-trip ticket to China, . . . $3000. Price of enough beer and cheeseburgers to keep you fat-n-stupid while in China, $5000. Finding out your entire Chinese drill crew also enjoy a good gob with absolutely no social graces . . . Priceless’.
Really good drilling people are allowed to be surly and indifferent about personal hygiene. But these guys were shocking.
We went out for breakfast after the morning meeting broke up. Redneck 1 says: ‘I wanna eat what you boys eat.’
The Chinese guys exchanged blank looks and then all looked at me. I’ve seen this happen before, in other parts of the world, when expat oil workers try to experience the local culture with the best of intentions. I’ve ended up sitting down to eat in a backstreet dump with rats running along the rafters; I had to step over a goat to get to the toilet which was just a hole in the ground anyway. I shrugged at the Chinese guys and they shrugged back at me, but the rednecks insisted so off we went to a local food stall.
Redneck 2 takes one look at his traditional Chinese breakfast and says,‘Jesus Christ, I’m not eating this shit.’
Redneck 1 meanwhile has pulled off his genuine imitation crocodile Tony Lama cowboy boot and sock to investigate the galloping jungle foot rot that appeared to be eating his right foot off, displaying his exemplary table manners . . . and then the gobbing started.
To the Chinese, the Texans must have looked like something from a National Geographic special: Two huge hairy white men, with chrome hubcaps holding up their pants, and the blackest gobs they’d ever seen. Their street cred went up instantly. If I had a flip-top head and managed to hack up an entire lung, I could not have topped those guys.
For the rest of that day we had a good look around the rig before it got towed out to location. While the rig had been in a dry dock getting painted and fitted out with a new drilling package, a stray dog came on board. I made friends with him and named him Colin; he liked me a lot and followed me everywhere, probably because Colin knew I was not likely to eat him. Besides I was nice to him and gave him lots of human food and for a dog in China that’s a rare treat. I also made sure after seeing a couple of the boys eyeballing him that under no circumstances were they to eat Colin. I had the welder make Colin a little house that we put on the drill floor right next to the control station that the driller stands in, coincidentally called a ‘dog house’. Colin was the only one allowed to shit in his.
Colin was a Chow, an interesting Chinese breed that looks a bit like a Pomeranian on steroids; powerful, but in a short compressed way. He was very dirty at first, covered in oil and all kinds of crap, but after a good wash with the steam cleaner and a proper blow dry with the high pressure air line, he came out clean, with really big reddish-blond hair. He looked like an Asian David Lee Roth, except he really could lick his own balls.
Colin became the rig mascot and soon was embarking (no pun intended) on a cruise out to a quiet part of the South China Sea, hundreds of nautical miles from any major shipping lanes, where he was going to listen to his Van Halen CDs, drink out of the toilet, hump the furniture and not get eaten by the welder.
While I was hanging around Shekou I met Cameron, an aircraft engineer. Cameron was funny, in a slap-happy trigger-finger kind of way. A big heavyset character, ex-US Ranger, he was majorly into motorcycles and having sex with women he hardly knew. Every time I was in town I called Cameron and the games would begin.
Sitting in a downtown bar one night he told me about a mad driller who had been there only a month before. ‘That Kiwi bastard belted the biggest guy in the room, kicked off the worst bar brawl in Shekou’s history.’
/> ‘What started it?’ I asked.
‘Oh man, I think someone called the All Blacks a bunch of pussies and Maurice went bananas.’
‘Did you say Maurice?’
‘Yeah . . . a drilling guy, five ten, grey hair, maniac, from somewhere in the south . . . he’s got these dogs man . . .’
I explained that Maurice and I were good mates and Cameron rocked back laughing. According to Cameron, the incident occurred in a biker bar and all Cameron’s mates got into it with the giant Maurice punched out, who was the boss of a rival bikie chapter. It escalated from there to war. Cameron was thrown through a thin wooden wall into the bar next door. That started another fight, as people from both bars flooded through the hole, over the top of Cameron. The whole block erupted. Local Chinese police, too scared to come near the place, left them alone to murder each other. Maurice somehow got away. ‘Next time you see that bastard, tell him the whole bar was destroyed.’
We had a good laugh, then Cameron suggested we go for a spin around town on his old Ural bike. The Ural is a Russian-made flat-twin thumper with a sidecar. Cameron took off with me in the sidecar, and we tooled around Shekou’s dark streets. After a while we bumped into Dave, a mate of Cameron’s. Dave was also drunk and decided to join us—he was so big he only just fitted into the sidecar—so I rode pillion. We had just taken off when we bumped into another of Cameron’s drunk mates, John, who was in a wheelchair.
‘There’s no room ol’ buddy,’ Cameron said.
But John just grabbed onto the sidecar and we took off again.
Rounding a corner into the main drag through town, we passed a police car going the other way. He hit the siren and U-turned at some traffic lights. Cameron stopped but John was demanding we keep going.
‘The chair can take it man.’
As soon as John let go of the bike, Cameron bolted, leaving an angry John curbside.
