Refresher

'Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.'
Romans: 12:2...Courtsey of my Nana :)

Something AWESOME happened yesterday morning during our morning safety meeting in one of the construction areas. First, let me give some background information. We have 4 different construction areas and each has a morning Toolbox Talk (TBT) to discuss each activity for the day and the associated hazards with each task, which is normal practice with any construction site. We are having some serious challenges here around overall communication because now we have Angolans workers, Thai welders and scaffolders, Indian welders, and Italian/Portuguese work team leaders. Very few of which speak much English beyond conversational greetings. So the TBTs are held in Portuguese with side conversations for any translators.

The problem is that as an observer of the morning meetings it looks to me like we have 2 or 3 people, usually the HES lead and work team leader, talking and the actual workforce appears to be daydreaming of what they are going to eat for lunch. So we’ve challenged all our folks to try to engage the workforce to speak up during the meetings – in whatever their native tongue may be. The Angolans that I have working directly with me have explained that it’s hard because the people are nervous to talk because they can’t speak English, so I continuously re-iterate that speaking in Portuguese/Italian/Thai is fine, just as long as we are having the conversation.

This morning I was at one of our meetings with our civil sub-contractor and they asked the workforce if there were any questions or concerns. One Angolan man, our excavator operator, stepped into the middle of the circle and started asking, in Portuguese, for his peers to be sure and wear dust masks around any excavation activities because the condition of the soil was very dry and hazardous to their health. This in itself was huge. BUT the even more awesome thing is that this man has a speech impediment, he stutters, and he’s the last person I would have ever expected to voluntarily step up to say anything at all. It seems small, but it made me feel like we’ve created an environment (FINALLY) where our people feel comfortable enough to step forward and voice their concerns. I was beaming like a proud momma :)

I've really been missing everyone back home since I've been gone, as a result, have been super anti-social after work. One of my South African friends was giving me a hard time for never hanging out with our usual bunch and I told him I've just been missing my people. He assured me that everyone goes through the Malongo slump around the 4-6th rotation where the newness wears off and the slump sets in. Then he made me go to the Satruday night BBQ with him, and after a glass of wine I was back normal self. See ya later slump!

12 days down, 23 to go! xoxo…

oh, hey cutie!