Offshore Africa stories

So they were sat together, Moussa offered Dave the window seat as he just knew the Oil Guys always liked to watch the world go by and could, in fact, recognise points of interest from all their travels and sneaky tricks like powering up the satellite maps on their new phones… just coming into mainstream use.

The steward arrives.

“A whisky, a nice malt?”, Dave smiles.

“Yes Sir, you have a choice. There is a bottle of Tormore, specially for 1st class, but they don’t look like whiskey drinkers and, probably, wouldn’t know a nice Speyside malt if they fell over it…”

“That will do nicely, my man…”, Dave carried on the upper class charade between them, even though he and Moussa had been brought up in less salubrious backgrounds as probably had the steward… but it was all fun, and Moussa was always fun, sod it, let what will be happen and let’s face it 6 weeks offshore will be nothing like this, so get on with it…

“Just get the “attache” case secured, and let’s relax…”

“So, what is the trip this time?”

“Do you know anything about a small operation offshore, with facilities in Kwa Ibo?

“Oh those guys”, his eyes widened…

Dave didn’t like the sign of this, either they had somehow screwed Moussa over or had otherwise displeased him, or?

“Yes, I know them, a small UK outfit, who landed a lucrative contract based on underwater repairs to the offshore platforms… mmm yes, I reached out to them, but they didn’t respond, I guess they felt, they didn’t need my assistance, well at least till now?”

Dave wasn’t stupid, it would only have been a matter of time before Moussa investigated what he was doing, and using Dave as leverage would have gotten on to the deal somewhere somehow, so just be up front… Moussa was many things, but he was good to whom he liked, and you sure as hell didn’t want to be on his bad side… So, what the hell, we are all in with Moussa for better or for worse.

“Yes that’s them, so what do you know?”

“Not much for now, but I will be finding out, I am sure we can work together on something?”

“Aye, Moussa, nothing’s surer, it is Nigeria after all…”

The flight took off, about 20 mins late, but nothing unusual about that, in fact BA did an amazing job, when you saw the queues of passengers with small fridges, microwaves and any combination of white goods, all wrapped up in plastic, completely against any sane comprehension of the basics rules of airline baggage rules, buy somehow, they managed to reroute these white goods to the special baggage area and got them scanned and parcelled up to go in the hold, instead of crushed into overhead lockers and filling the aisles as happened on the domestic routes in country. Practice makes perfect, and the BA staff had a lot of Nigerian experience, which is why it was the only airline Dave and Moussa would use…