Driver Troubles

Right now we own two tipper trucks (1 Scania P93 1995 & 1 Scania P94c 2000 - for those who are interested) this is our business, we hire the trucks out to people doing construction work.  For convenience the trucks are named Benedict-George and Benedict-John i.e we need a tyre for Ben-John.....  Both tippers are currently hired by a South African company,  they are growing sugar to make bio-ethanol in Makeni, a town four hours north of where we live (controversial I know, but a country's got to create revenue where it can!)

I want to tell you about our drivers, this might seem benign but I can tell you straight off we have gone through six drivers in the last three months!  Now I debated over this but have decided to change their names - despite their criminality and the fact that there is very little likelyhood that they would use the internet / know I had written about them, fair's fair and you never know I might get sued.

I am told that Sierra Leone's first president said (my written Krio is not good) "which si u dae ti cow, na dae u de eat" this translates as "where you tie your cow is where you eat."  This means that you must get what you can by any means from the place where you work because that is where you make your living.  This makes legitimate sense if you have a farm in the bush, you must try to get what you can through your own hard work.  However, this small saying seems to have legitimised workplace pilfering and is the driver behind our big driver problem.

We started out with one truck and one driver 'James,' and before we had the tipper we had a box van which he had been driving and seemed to do a good job, also we felt we had an understanding that we would pay him well and as we expanded he would benefit i.e we would pay him more.  All was well until we found out about more and more incidents in which he had lied to get extra money from us.  Further, as we spoke about the new truck coming he began to shout the odds: "I want to drive the new truck, I want a louder horn on my truck, I will be the boss of all the drivers, you should fire who I say you should fire...it became clear that power was very important to James and after the straw broke the camel's back we fired him.  The next couple of days there was a tirade of people begging for us to give James his job back which was horrible but unfortunately we had decided and we didn't fire him lightly.  It is a strange part of the culture but people do things wrong and once it is done other people come and beg for them and they 'arrange' until the person is forgiven, rehired or reinstated.  Where I come from if you do wrong and you're fired unless you go to a tribunal that's it!

In the mean time we had got our second truck and found a driver for that (Ben) who still works for us and whilst he is a bit slow he has been more honest than any of the others - well at least we haven't caught him yet!  Anyway, we also found another driver for the P93 (or Ben-George), a Mr Smith, who was recommended to us by a cousin of Winston, whom we trust.  Mr Smith was a good driver, honest and hard working but he only lasted three days....James, thwarted at having lost his job went back to Makeni where the trucks were working and began to intimate that he had 'done something' to the truck (here this means that he has done some witch craft on the vehicle.)  Mr Smith was petrified, he called us as he was leaving to  return to his home in Freetown (about 4 hours away again) to tell us he couldn't work on that truck, that we might not be 'ordinary' (by this he means that we may have protected ourselves using witchcraft) but he was a soldier in the government forces during the war and he had seen what witch craft could do, and beseides he is 'ordinary'.  He said he was afraid for his life.  So, that was that!

James continued to threaten us indirectly and directly but neither of us have suffered any ill fate yet!

After much searching and many interviews we found another driver, Spencer, Winston found him to be very eager and he was keen to start straight away.  So off he went....after about two weeks the truck had had some shaft problems (for those who are alien to trucks this is a pole that attaches the axel to the gearbox on the undercarrier - or underneath the truck) which had been remedied with the purchase of a new one..grrr very expensive!  It was Spencer and his apprentices' job to make sure that the thing was on securely, something which they failed miserably to do because it fell off in the middle of a busy town called Masiaka. This not only damaged our new shaft but caused another car to have an accident and burst it's tyre!  Following this Spencer was seen in the town by someone to whom he owed some money, he was subsequently arrested and gave the keys of our truck to the police telling them that if they called his boss (us) we would pay the money to get our truck back!!!  Well the police then held our tipper to ransom..we managed to negotiate it back by give the guys wages for the month he had worked (this was about half of the owed money.)  I know, I know, it is absolutely outrageous that the police would hold our truck for someone elses debt!  I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to tear out my hair at the injustice of situations like this but believe me there is no point....that is the way it is here and there is no point having a heart attack about it, the longer our tipper was off the road the more money we were losing.  So anyway, we got the keys back and the truck was back on the road afer some repairs.  Needless to say Spencer no longer had a job and it further transpired that he owed money to several people in the town where he was working.  He had also been plotting to steal fuel from the vehicle (the company using the tippers fuel them) someone that worked at the local petrol station came looking for him because he promised them 450 000 Leones worth of fuel, he took the money from them and obviously did not deliver!

Next was 'Henry' he only lasted a day, he was caught by one of the employees of the SA comapny with a hose and a funnel by the truck (a clear sign he was stealing fuel) and he was promptly arrested.

Now we have another driver who has not proven troublesome ...yet

 Thea, Benedict John and Me.