Following a thread that I saw here earlier on, I would like to highlight a few lessons that I learnt while working with the Chinese some few months ago. I was lucky enough to have gotten an opportunity to work as a consultant for the Chinese SGR construction of Phase 2, that is from Nairobi National Park all the way to Duka Moja in Narok. Our work lasted about 2 months, and in the process, I go to understand why the Chinese are miles ahead. I will highlight several lessons that I learnt.
Chinese are extremely hardworking people. Those guys work in crazy shifts, some work from 6AM in the morning till 10 PM usiku. Above that, those guys don’t have weekends or holidays off, except for a month leave to China. Kenyans working for them often found it very hard to cope up with the stringent working times as they are used to working for 6 hours a day, with a 2 hour lunch break.
Chinese aren’t bothered so much about paper qualifications unlike Kenyans. The Chinese are more concerned about your ability to do stuff. For instance, when they were interviewing for heavy machine operators, unlike Kenyans who will want to know which companies you have worked for, the shit about tell us more about yourself and the usual crap, the Chinese will give you a caterpillar and ask you to maneuver it. Whoever does it best gets the job, the Chinese wont bother to know whether you are a graduate, masters degree holder or anything, as long as you can efficiently and perfectly do the work, you get it.
The Chinese are so strict with timelines. Their project managers often have formulated timelines that must be strictly adhered to by every department of the team.
They have experts in every aspect of the construction. Unlike Kenya where the site engineer is the head of everything within the site, every department of the construction has a super gifted specialist. For instance, there was a guy whose sole responsibility is to ensure that all the pillars stand 90 degrees upright. His work was to ensure that all the pillars do not have a deviation of even 0.1 degrees. Those guys are perfect when it comes to adhering to measurements and specifications. I was told of an incident during the construction of phase 1 in Voi where one pillar wasn’t exactly 90 degrees, the type of marginal error that Kenyan engineers often overlook. The whole pillar had to be destroyed and redone. In places where the soil is lose, the pillar could go as deep as 30-45 meters.
Our Kenyan contractors need to pull up their socks!! Having experienced the two, I realized that we are just a bunch of jokers as a country. Kenyan contractors hardly do soil testing and profiling before they embark of projects. At some stage, they had to export the soil to China for further soil tests and analyses.
Kenyans are experts at whining. Na kila mtu ni “mjanja”, everyone is out to steal. We should export whining to other countries, it will earn us billions of $$$ in forex. China was just another shithole less than 40 years ago, they were dying of famine like we still do here. The fact that they’re now undertaking some of the most technologically advanced projects all over the world should make us feel shame. I mean, I don’t like the fact that Chinese are being imported to do jobs that Kenyans can do, but for someone to expect to be allowed to operate those SGR trains after just a year, that smacks of arrogance. There are train drivers in China and Japan with decades of experience who still crash them, how are you going to hand over to someone who’s had just one year of experience?
If we want to move forward, we must first do away with this deeply ingrained culture of ujuaji, the cutting of corners at every stage of every job we do. Bila hiyo mchinku atakuwa huku mpaka hata year twedi eite fae.
I am a firm believer that overworking is bad not good. giving it your all from 8-5 is more than enough. and the recent denigration of kenyans as lazy, first floated by kiraithe to support his chinese masters racist misconduct is untrue. find out what time kenyan farmers wake up. what about women who go for goods at marikiti, gikomba , matatu drivers and touts etc. Most of those people start work even earlier than 4.00 am. just stop. nothing is going to make the racist chinese look good.
A friend of mine was called for interview when the SGR was kicking of. Nigga set off armed with all his achievements in terms of paper certificates only to be asked to set out an angle(triangulation) with a Theodolite.
I think you just described the rest of the developed world not just the Chinese.
Ndiyo maana mtu huishi majuu ukirudi Kenya you feel like slapping everyone and telling them to work faster !!!
So frustrating!
There is no two ways about Africans overcoming Poverty, we have to style up,be more efficient and basically WORK HARDER!
skia maneno @ranny?
A personal friend is constructing a house in utawala. He is a busy man and rarely has time to stay at site everyday . He entrusted his sight engineer to oversee the purchase ya mawe which was sold at 50 a piece . This mawe was non water absorbent and good for foundation.
This “engineer” went to quarry and took a pic and sent him kwa whatsapp. Eft effected immediately.Ile mawe ililetwa …wacha tu…opposite of what was whatsapped. He bought mawe at 38 a piece making 12 shillings a stone x 4000 = 48,000 is what he made by buying crappy stone . His brother who wanted to hire him dropped the thought after this incident. Thats kenyans for you .
