Baby Jocelyn

Baby Jocelyn.  Not something I ever thought I’d say!

A few weeks ago I was back at Canga, attending our daily toolbox meeting.  Since I went back to Guinea in January in the middle of an evacuation from site because of some local unrest over jobs (unfortunately Rio Tinto cannot employ all of the thousands of local youngsters without jobs) I have spent a lot of time in Conakry.  There I have been helping the Economic Development team look at options for improving electricity supply in the capital, where the situation is pretty dire.  Let’s just say that the Rio Tinto head office is in the area deemed the number 1 priority by the local electricity company, and our power goes off at least 10 times a day.

Anyway, as a result I’d only spent a little bit of time on site at Canga.  My team of electricians was pretty happy to see me back as we had developed quite a bond over the time where I had no supervisor working for me.  Normally the supervisors deal with the day to day problems and I just step in over any major problem and to make sure that the projects are on track, etc.   However without supervisors I was having to spend most of the day with the guys, solving all the problems that came up.  Not my forté, but we struggled through

Anyway, back on site again and one of the electricians whispers to one of the senior electricians who whispers to the new (expat – French Canadian) supervisor.  Everyone a bit closer suddenly cheered and clapped, but I hadn’t heard so I said “What was that Kalil, I didn’t hear you?”   Francis responded.... “Nestor would like to tell you that his wife has recently given birth to a baby girl... and he has named her Jocelyn”.

Well, needless to say I was flabbergasted.  This is one of the biggest compliments you can give a person in Guinea, with lots of traditional cultural implications.  I had arranged for Nestor to join Rio Tinto from one of the contracting companies, so I knew he was grateful for that but still.... let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first little Jocelyne in all of Guinea despite Jocelyne being a French name (Jocelyn is actually the masculine version – French people when they meet me are surprised because the feminine version is with an e at the end).

I gave Nestor and his wife Seni a small gift of 300,000 Guinean Francs (about €30) when I left, and will take in some baby clothes or similar when I go back... I suspect that they are delaying the baptism until I get back (Nestor being one of the 30% or so Christians – the rest of my team are Muslims.  They all get on really well, for example if one of the Christians is on call during Christmas, one of the Muslims will work for him and vice versa for Ramadan).

I have now just got back from Valencia, Edinburgh and Whitby/Robin Hood’s Bay (in reverse order), trying for once to make an effort to get out and about on my two weeks R&R.  However my personal computer managed to break down right as I was uploading all of those photos, much to my disgust, and so I'm finishing this on my work one.  Not happy.