246 CHAPTER 15 Breakfast typically ranged from an egg, toast and tea to just plain bread and water. I tried to show the cook how to make French toast – to change the routine up a bit. Sometimes there wasn’t anything to eat since our food supplies came from Addis Ababa. Lunches were not much better; typically, consisting of rice, curry sauce and a lettuce salad. My treat? A banana or some fresh mango. If I was lucky, dinner might have consisted of goat meat, a tomato lettuce salad, curry and rice. Sometimes we even got cold French fries, a veggie patty, potatoes, cabbage or coke – Yum! That’s it, period – no other choices. Never thought I’d say this, “But I'm ready for the ‘Golden M’ (McDonald's).” As far as living conditions, power outages were a regular occurrence. Cell phone service was minimal and intermittent along with access to the Internet. They only had dial-up. I woke up between 3:30 and 5:30 AM each morning – to religious chanting and/or swatting swarms of mosquitoes. After about a month, my appetite was enhanced by the appearance of a cat-sized, black rat running across the dining room (ha ha)! I had an interesting menagerie of lunch companions, “An army of ants on the table, moths and flies in the air, cockroaches on the kitchen wall, and rats scurrying across the floor.” One morning, I woke up early and went into the bathroom to get ready, spotted a big spider about the size of a jam jar lid; caught it, took a photo and put it outside. Sometimes I had water to take a shower and other times not. Working conditions were just a wee bit better but most of the time my Indian crew lacked the necessary tools to install centrifugals. One day when I got to the factory, they were lifting the basket up to the station. It’s a good thing OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a government agency of the United States charged with keeping work environments safe) wasn’t there. They had oneguyhanginglikeamonkeyfromthecranebeam, about thirty feet up, trying to move the loaded, two- thousand-pound capacity crane, over the station, pushing it in position with his feet. They didn’t have a machinist’s level (critical to the installation) to get the centrifugals level to one five thousandth of an inch. Other predicaments: no ladders, you had to act like a monkey to get up to the motor base. Hardly any tools to work with to level equipment. One time it took three hours for the factory to tell me they didn't have a necessary part. The overhead, crappy crane broke. They took it down for service; didn’t see it again. The mechanics were finally able to drop the basket but not before ruining four bolts and the spacer. It should be noted that prior to this problem, I had trained the mechanics on how to mate the spindle and basket surfaces. We had successfully done it earlier. I could only assume that they didn't understand the importance of correct alignment and finesse of starting all of the bolts prior to completely bringing the mating surfaces together. I know a lack of proper lifting equipment did impact the operation’s difficulty. A bright spot during my trip, a co-worker invited me to his house and I met his family, nice people; their house was about 13 feet by 13 feet in size. The house was made of bamboo weaved sticks sealed with mud, cloth and corrugated sheets