Recession & Depression

I have recently discovered that the three years of my life spent in Nigeria (1980 to 1983) were fairly well wasted. First myself and then also my late wife and young daughter were based initially in New Marte and then in Maiduguri (although with regular trips to the Yola Dam). I was in and out of the Chad Basin Development Authority offices as Hawker Siddeley Power constructed the Power Station and power lines out into the surrounding villages. The Station was to provide power for a major irrigation project to the surrounding areas as well as electrifying the villages. Hawker Siddeley had the proud slogan of being "Engineers to the World". So I bought a tee shirt and had it emblazoned with the words "QS to the Wold". I was surprised when told I had a misspelling by a HS engineer and had to explain that since their head office was in the Wold, I was making a joke. But then I have never really been known as jokesmith.

A further spot of surprise came when I realised that I was being shot at while approaching one Nigerian village. It transpired that a village chief was not going to permit the electrification of his village without a bribe. Rather a strange reaction to the provision of modern amenities!

We eventually completed the power station and proudly handed it over. But now it seems that the dramatic way that Lake Chad has receded has made its main purpose useless. According to the BBC the huge power station at New Marte is a silent museum piece of 1970s technology, and now even the electric clocks have stopped. The power station was to provide electricity to pump water from Lake Chad to irrigate 165,000 acres (668 sq km) of farm land however currently only 800 acres - about 0.5% of the original project - is irrigated. Much as I love the Beeb I could have done without this depressing news.

Now the farming there is as hard as ever and even the fishing is vanishing as the water area is so much smaller. Even in my day the lake was never more than a metre or so deep and we occasionally went for a drive into it, splashing from one small island to the next. I remember a colleague asking for a swig from my bottle and having a bit of a shock to find it was in fact a 50-50 mix of gin and tonic and not the water he had expected. Perhaps the closest I get to making a joke?