Making Entrepreneurs as well as Petroleum Products.
When the contractors had completed their work building our plants in LITTLE ADEN and were clearing everything up after them before departing, it occurred to me, a brand new arrival, that there might be some essentials going cheap. I didn't have much money at the time and I was particularly keen to get a radio set. The contractor's camp, later to be known as the Conversions, consisted of several pre-fabricated huts, each having a central corridor with eight rooms on either side. Each room housed two men. I wandered into the passageway of one and spoke to the first man I saw -- a South African who ran the camp post office..Yes, he knew where I could get a radio set. I was welcome to take his, in fact. It's not working at the moment as it has a busted valve. It only packed up a day or two ago and I've been too busy to fix it what with us moving out and everything. But don't worry about that. There's a box full of valves in the corner. Sure to be a replacement amongst them. You can usually tell which one is duff when you switch on the set. It will probably be the one without any light in it. For goodness sake don't forget to pull the plug out before you change it though, and don't damage the pins. It's easily done you know!" Accepting the lesson, I thanked him profusely and this seemed to stimulate his generosity. Look. You can take the cabinet it's sitting on as well, if you like it. Do you think you can borrow a truck to take them away?" Oh! Couldn't I just! I hurried off to get some transport, and when I got back, he asked me if I could ride a motor bike as he had one he didn't want. He was leaving for Capetown next day and couldn't take it with him. t looked like "Bonanza Time" to me, especially as his mate turned up when I was carrying the stuff out to the truck and offered me a record player, a selection of records and -- yet another motor bike! The fact that the both machines were in stripped down condition in crates in an Indian Go-down at the back end of Maalla, 25 miles away, appeared at the time to be only a minor problem. The South Africans both scribbled notes for me signifying change of ownership and I returned to my place with all the loot. If Father Xmas's reindeer had gone lame and he'd been obliged to dump the contents of his sleigh on my doorstep, I couldn't have been luckier! For several weeks after my benefactors had departed, I found it hard to believe that there could possibly be two bikes in the same place and that I was the proud owner, so one rest day, I ventured into the back streets of Maalla where I had never been before, in search of confirmation. Sure enough, there they were, and would I please take them away as they were occupying valuable room. There was also a six month storage charge of 1,000 East African Shillings which I couldn't hope to pay the Indian at the time. I therefore had no alternative but to let them languish a little longer! Just about this time too, I acquired a Head Plant Attendant on the Autofiner called Abdulla who was Sudanese and spoke quite good English, having worked in the civil service in Khartoum prior to joining our contractors at double the money. With the contractors finishing, he looked for a job with our company, and being educated, he had no difficulty in securing a HPA job where his ability to speak Arabic would be invaluable. I was casually mentioning the two motor bikes to Chris Copus and Hugh Jones our shift controller in the plant control room one afternoon when there was a wail of anguish from Abdulla who was listening to the conversation. Apparently, he had worked for the two South Africans as their post driver and said that they had promised him the two bikes sometime before they left. He had been a bit upset when they had cleared off without any further word to him, but now that he knew that they had given them to me, he was quite understandably shattered. (All this, off course, assumed that his story was true. I only had his word for it!) Shortly afterwards, I learned that I could have a company grant that would enable me to look around for a car, and I lost all interest in the bikes until, one day, the subject came up again. I told Abdulla that if he really wanted them, he could have them but he'd have to pay the storage charge. Delighted, he took them off my hands and soon had them assembled and running. I must confess to pangs of jealousy as they turned out to be absolutely identical Ariel 500 Twin Cylinder jobs in almost mint condition. "Oh, Sir!" said Abdulla sincerely. (Coming from one of the empire countries that had recently gained independence, there was no way that he was going to call me "Sahib" like everyone else on the plant.) "You have made me so happy. Believe me, I will never part with these wonderful gifts you have given me." A month later, however, the promise was forgotten and he had sold the both machines for more than they had cost new in South Africa, replacing them with a rather tattered Ford car of uncertain age.! This Ford was used continually outside working hours as a pirate taxi running people back and fore to places like Sheikh Othman which catered for all the urgent needs of virile young workers when the sun went down, and Crater, the Mecca of Arabian trading, a business that proved to be so lucrative for him that he was soon able to supplement the car with two others, a rather better Opel Kadett and a very good Opel Rekard which he paid some of his cronies to drive. Six months after receiving my gifts, he left us to go into the taxi business full time, and thereafter, I only caught infrequent glimpses of him on the road, horn blowing and headlights glaring as he recognised me.Two years later, the "Mem" and I were in a petrol station in Sheikh Othman when there was a toot from the large Mercedes Limousine alongside us in It was Abdulla. "Hello Sir and lovely lady. How nice to see you both again. How are you please?" "Hi, Abdulla! Where did you get that beautiful motor car from? " Is it yours?" "Yes indeed, kind Sir, thanks to you! And do you see those 6 big trucks over there? They are mine also. I expanded from the taxi trade to carrying bulk goods to Northern Yemen and I also have several Land Rovers which take pilgrims to Mecca and Medina." Waving good-bye to us, he instructed his chauffeur to drive him to the Crescent Hotel in Steamer Point for lunch and closed the window so as not to lose too much of his air conditioned environment!
Abdulla wasn't the only chap I inadvertently converted to a successful entrepreneur. On one of my U.K. leaves, I had gone into Halfords' shop in Swansea and seen a gadget that I thought would be very useful to me in the hot Aden climate. It was a pump to inflate tyres, but this one was different in that the car did all the work! All one had to do was remove one of the engine plugs and screw in it's place a metal tube which was a simple but extremely effective air pump. Attached to it's outlet was the conventional rubber pipe which one fitted to the schrader valve on the tyre in the usual way. Once fitted, it was only necessary to start the engine to actuate it and the tyre was inflated in next to no time without the need to raise a sweat. I hadn't been back in Aden long before I got a "flat" as there were nails everywhere particularly in our car park below the flare compliments of the NLF or it might have been FLOSY. The situation was so bad that the company finally bought a truck which towed a trailer that had large magnets strapped between the axles to pick up the offending nails.. The remould company in Crater City was hit particularly hard by the arrival of this vehicle. Having located a rusty, 4 inch sample in my rear off-side wheel in our car park one day, I pulled it out with a pliers and rammed a rubber plug into the hole. My new toy, as the "Mem" would refer to it, was now put to the test, and up went the tyre without the slightest trouble. This bit of wizardry was witnessed by half a dozen fascinated locals and I was bombarded with questions. Amongst the onlookers was an Arab operator I had trained a year earlier on our Cat. Reformer and he wanted to know if I could get him one of these wonderful pumps. I said I supposed I could, if my supplier still had some in stock. If he brought me Six Pounds Sterling or 120 East African Shillings, I'd send off for one. In the event, he turned up at our house with Thirty Six Pounds, having revised his order to six pumps -- if I didn't mind! I sent the money off, and eventually, the stuff arrived and I showed him how they worked. It wasn't long before he too was gone, having found a strategic spot on the border of the two Yemen's where he established a useful business repairing and selling new and second hand tyres, an occupation in which, the Halfords gadgets played a major part. This proved so lucrative that he soon expanded into selling petrol, kerosene, diesel, chilled drinks and chewing gum, the profits from which, later enabled him to open a garage servicing trucks.
Oh that I had only had the vision to be a Mr 10% !!
I. Simms