Monday, February 19, 2007

Walmart Comes to Us



On Saturday Walmart came to the Galmi compound. The truck arrived with a forty foot container from Ireland. The container was shipped in March 2006 and after about 30 days at sea arrived in Benin. The problem was it sat in the port for the next 9- 10 months. Finally the paper work problems were sorted out and it arrived here on a semi from Benin. The truck driver was a real interesting guy as he would have to be driving in Africa. He knew at least 4 languages and really understood how things work loading and unloading.( No. his truck was not in an accident).You really have to as we had a full container and no power equipment larger than a small Toyota pickup and a 3 ton jack (the container empty was probably about 4ton).But as the day worn on and with much help from the Nigerian guys from the shop and the two foreman from the construction project(Dave from USA and Wayne from New Zealand) as well as alot of the missionaries from the compound,it was unloaded.
Then the fun began as we tried numerous things to coax the container off the truck. It began with cutting the end gate of the truck off and then attempting to slide rollers under it and pull, jerk and pry it off. We got it off and on to the platform finally , and no one was injured ! Now how do we move it out of the way? That will be a next week problem.

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