Oilfield Hospitality-worldwide

Abstract

Introduction In mid-1973, my wife and I made our first venture overseas-an assignment in Africa. During the next eight years, we worked and lived in Zaire, Angola, Iran, Dubai and as a sort of anticlimax, in Scotland. Being in the oilfield service business meant fairly extensive travel throughout southern and western Africa, the Middle East and Northern Europe. The experience was pleasurable, startling, frustrating, exciting, but never dull. Wherever we went, we found that "oilfield types" made us welcome and helped us get started-this was especially important at the outset. On given days during the first few months, if we"d both said out loud what we felt, we"d have come home in a hurry. Africa For a couple of Prairie types, it was quite a shock to be plunged into equatorial Africa with its masses of people (well below the poverty line), the heat and the humidity and the "crawlies"; and above all, the smell-a strong pungent odour unique to Africa that took a lot of getting used to. The mostly "dictatorial" regimes were abrupt departures from the Canadian way of life. We stopped in Lagos, Nigeria (our company's West African regional headquarters) for the first ten days, where we received many good tips on overseas living that were to help us considerably in our subsequent postings. It was very enlightening to see how our expatriates and those of others in the oil business were coping and had coped through tough (even war) times. My first posting was in Kinshasa, Zaire (formerly Leopoldville, Belgian Congo), where I was to set up an office from which I could manage and sell our company's land and offshore services in Zaire, Cabinda, Angola, South Africa, etc. It was also necessary to the company's other West African operations in Gabon, Congo-Braza, Cameroons, Nigeria, etc. As a Canadian working for an American-French company, I was able to caU on several embassies, as the occasion required. In this instance, I received the most help from the French Embassy's commercial attache-a lady who has spent several years in Africa. We also were helped greatly by a major oil company's employees and their wives, who opened their homes to us and made adjusting so much easier-especially as I travelled a lot. Being made welcome at the U.S. Embassy's Social Club also made life much more enjoyable. We will always remember Louie, our local driver in Kinshasa, an excellent chauffeur who knew the city like the back of his hand and was just a little bit larcenous. He was mostly happy, but when I was away, he had to take orders from my wife, which didn"t please him because women in Africa usually take orders from men. Communications with Louie were in so-called French (his badly fractured and ours little better than the "corn flakes box" level), plus a lot of arm waving. It's interesting as to how well this kind of communication can work when both sides really try.