An Exercise In Diplomacy
Dec 1, 1998 12:00 PM, Lynn Mader and R. David Read
After we had almost finished a voter registration and sound-system installation for the Nicaraguan legislative assembly, I found myself engaged in a conversation with a government official interested in purchasing a similar system for Al Jumhuriyah al Yamaniyah (the Republic of Yemen). From our discussion, I learned that the 300-member assembly was likewise in need of a voter registration and sound system. The opportunity seemed intriguing.
Their existing system was basically a conference-type system in which each house member controlled the on/off and volume control of his individual mic. During the sometimes lively legislative debates, each member could join the discussions at his leisure and yell louder than his opponents. The members learned that if they spoke softly into the mic, they would not be heard above the hubbub in the chamber, but their remarks would be broadcast surreptitiously to the TV audience. When all else failed, a member would simply couple his mic to an adjacent member's loudspeaker and induce enough feedback to bring the proceedings to a grinding halt.
Moreover, the existing system had a single 3/4 inch (19 mm) conduit looped from desk to desk in 100-member increments that terminated at the dais by means of three home-run 3/4 inch (19 mm) conduits. Voter registration and audio wiring had to be run in common in these undersized conduits.
Daktronics, supplier of the voter-registration system, and Dakota Audio, responsible for the sound portion of the installation, had been developing technology to reduce the number of conductors needed for voter registration and sound system communications. Seemingly a perfect opportunity to deploy the new technology (except for the fact it was halfway around the world), there were, however, severe conduit restrictions. The sound and data would have to share the same conduits, and there were hefty penalties if the system was not completed on time or did not work. Despite our reservations, we accepted the assignment.
During the next couple of months, we finalized our equipment designs, tried to foresee any possible difficulties and began manufacturing. Finally, the system was assembled, burned in and tested one more time. Barring a few minor glitches, the system worked. It was with somewhat mixed feelings that I watched the truck, piled high with tons of equipment, pull away from our loading dock and head eventually for Yemen.
The government in Yemen was notified, and arrangements were made for the equipment to clear customs. We were assured that all of our equipment would be waiting for us on the parliament grounds when we would arrive in a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I brought my stockpile of contingency equipment.
Upon arriving at the San'a airport after a lengthy flight, our baggage was carefully examined; each item was removed, studied, discussed and replaced. Because the inspectors were unfamiliar with most of our equipment, it was replaced in the box without question. All was well and good until they came across our miscellaneous assortment of screws, nuts, wall anchors and hardware. They did recognize hardware, and they were definitely going to collect the duties on this category. Although our first taste of Yemen bureaucracy, the natives were used to it. Their solution was to collect all of our personal belongings, load it into the cars and lead us away while an animated discussion continued behind us. Our equipment purportedly continued onto the parliament while we were delivered to the Taj Sheba hotel in downtown San'a.
The next morning, we discovered that the equipment that we had shipped ahead was not at the parliament. In fact, processing of the equipment through customs would not begin without our presence. We piled into a car and rode to the air cargo terminal. One more time we were exposed to the idiosyncrasies of the Yemen bureaucracy. The Ministry of Roads had constructed a two-lane road from the main highway to the airport terminal. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Dams had constructed a dam across a nearby gully, which effectively flooded the road. The natives compensated by throwing enough junk into the waterway to form a foot path. From there it was only a quarter of a mile (400 m) hike to the terminal. We became very familiar with this route; we traversed it twice a day for the next three days as we awaited the release of our equipment. Although the customs officials had gone out of their way to be amenable, they were caught up in the bureaucracy as well. Meanwhile, we waited. We relied on our parliamentary emissary to secure the release of the equipment while we sat in the waiting room shooing flies.
After two days-a record time we were told-our equipment was finally cleared for entry. The clerks apologized for the delay, but this had constituted a special condition because our equipment entered the country without any duties or fees. The next morning, we accompanied the officials to a metal 2 acre (0.8 hectare) shed where boxes and crates were piled at random. Fortunately, our equipment was buried only a couple of layers deep, and most of it was not badly crushed. We spent the next hour retrieving our equipment.
The following morning, we proceeded to the parliament building to see whether our equipment had arrived and start planning our installation. The military guards assigned to the parliament security had not been informed of our arrival. We spent what seemed like several hours in a small, hot room under the eye of several poker-faced uniformed guards with automatic rifles at the ready. Eventually, the proper officials arrived, and we were identified as legitimate visitors.
Our equipment was on hand, but most of the boxes were crushed, and even the heavier wooden crates had sustained considerable damage. We spent several anxious hours prying the crates open with the only tool available-a Toyota tire iron. Unbelievably, the equipment was not seriously damaged, and only one amp had disappeared during the process.
System installation The parliamentary chamber itself was fairly standard-a raised dais to the front with member desks arranged in a semicircle facing the dais. The system we were to install consisted of a combination sound-and-voting console on each of the desks and a large, wall-mounted, visual display to be hung behind the dais. The first order of business would be to mount the wall display. After carefully measuring the room, we discovered that nothing was centered. The desks were not centered on the dais nor was the dais centered on the front wall. Consequently, no matter where the display was mounted, it would be noticeably off center. Finally, it was decided that the display's appearance on television was most important, and so it was centered on the dais.
Our preliminary information had indicated that the front wall was a wood facing over a masonry wall. We had no information as to how thick the wooden facing was, how it was mounted, what the masonry wall consisted of, or how much space existed between the wooden facing and the masonry. We knew that for safety, we had to anchor the display to the masonry. We elected to use 18 inch (457 mm) long, 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) diameter, stainless-steel, threaded rod adhered into the masonry. We were relieved when the first hole was drilled into the surface and we realized that the chosen anchoring system was going to work.
Using this method of adherence, we found that we could mount an anchor at the rate of about 15 minutes apiece. Of course, nothing proceeds smoothly, and we discovered that the 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) American standard nuts that we intended to thread onto the rods were missing. As they did many times over during the course of the installation, our local assistants got us out of trouble. They located a source of the necessary hardware at a local Toyota dealer who had an ample supply of American standard nuts.
One of the factors we had not considered was the altitude. When we landed at the airport, our on-board video display indicated we were at 8,500 feet (2.6 km) above sea level. The thin air was hot, dry and carried a constant haze of fine dust particles. We quickly found that we had to pace ourselves. It did not take too much exertion to leave us worn out and breathless.
Our days settled into a blur of drilling holes, setting anchors and hoisting the display sections into position. We had planned to use some of the demurrage from the shipping crates to form the scaffolding. In the rush to get the equipment packaged, however, the crates had been nailed together with cement-coated nails instead of the intended screws. That, coupled with the damage that had been incurred in transit, made use of the crate lumber totally unfeasible. An appeal to our parliamentary emissary produced some scaffolding. Although the scaffolding was in fairly good condition, it lacked a few essential parts for assembly. Using a combination of force, a large hammer, some makeshift pieces of lumber and some ingenuity, the local laborers soon had the structure in place.
Once the wall anchors had been set into the masonry, we lifted each section into place and for further safety, bolted each section top, bottom and sides to the adjacent member. We saved some time by not removing the front door as we mounted each section. Our procedure was to arrange the scaffolding so that I could slip inside the display section and close the door behind me. The crew would then rearrange the scaffolding, and I would push the bolts into the adjacent display section so that someone on the outside could tighten them. As an indication of the display's size, I am more than 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, and I could stand upright inside each of the boxes. After the section was secured, the scaffolding would be repositioned so I could crawl out, and we would repeat the procedure.
After spending several weeks mounting the display, it occurred to someone that a portion of the display would be visible on television above the head of the president. It simply would not do to have someone's name floating above the president's head on every television in the city. The entire display had to be moved up, which did not fit too well with our plans or our time frame. The wall fairly bristled with the anchors we had set into the masonry; we lacked the tools to cut the 1/2 inch (12.7 mm) stainless-steel anchors off flush with the wall. Neither did we have enough spare anchor stock and adhesives to start over. Even with the necessary materials, it would have taken weeks to redo the mounting. Because I was approximately the same height as the president, our assistants took glee in dressing me in native clothing and seating me in the president's place while the broadcasters studied the situation. They concluded that they could raise the cameras and avoid the problem through careful use of their shooting angles.
The parliamentary chamber was constructed with a corrugated metal roof with a suspended ceiling and thick masonry walls. There was neither insulation nor air conditioning. Usually, a light breeze moved the hot, dry air, and one of our first steps when entering the chamber was to open the windows. I never understood why the windows were supposed to remain closed. There was even a sign in my hotel room that requested that the windows not be opened, a condition that I also ignored. We would open the windows and go to work. Within an hour, the windows had mysteriously closed again. Whenever I tried to get an explanation, I was met with a shrug. I reasoned that the custom must have been a holdover from a period when disease was spread by insects, or maybe it was simply to keep the fine dust from infiltrating the room.
Alphabetizing At long last, the display board was mounted and in place. We handed signs with the member names to our local technicians for mounting on the display. Following our western culture and because of the way computers work, we had directed that the names be shown in alphabetical order on the display.
During testing, we discovered that the voting consoles did not register with the proper names on the display. The computer printouts registered the names in correct order, and the display was lighting in the proper test sequence. We did not read Arabic, so we had to rely on an interpreter to sort this out. The only explanation was that the names had not been placed on the display in correct order. After a great deal of discussion, it became obvious that alphabetizing names was not a concept that they had considered. Names were arranged in the order of importance, family, rank and political party. The fact that something as insignificant as the first letter of a name could make a difference had never occurred to them. Once we and our local technicians were on the same wavelength, the rearranging of the names went fairly rapidly, and we had the display operating properly within a matter of a few hours.
Wire pulling Many of our problems were a result of the language barrier. The member consoles were daisy-chained in groups of 25 with a signal cable and power conductors running from console to console and then to the rack. The signal cable was custom manufactured to be as small as possible, but the power conductors were another matter. Each station was rated at 0.5 A at 24 VDC (most of the power was drawn by the 5 W audio power amp in each console). For 25 stations this amounts to 12.5 amps, or 50 amps per section of 100 stations. Although there was not a lot of wire, pulling it would be a little complicated.
We first attempted to pull all the wire in one step. We looped the cables on the floor, tied the cable to a pull string and stationed a helper at each junction box to feed the cable into the respective junction boxes. Because of our inability to communicate with the helpers, we were powerless to correct matters as problems developed. A tangled mass of wire fell to the floor. I was ready to attack the problem with a pair of wire cutters and start over, but a couple of the local helpers patiently sat down in the middle of the mess. Within a few hours, they had it untangled. The second try was more successful, and we finally had the first conduit pulled.
We had foreseen potential problems due to the small conduit and had brought a good supply of wire lube. Using liberal doses of lube, we avoided confusion by pulling the remainder of the conduits one or two cables at a time. Pulling the wire meant my reaching down into floor boxes through an opening barely large enough for my hand. Below the openings, the boxes expanded into a larger chamber. I never did find out what was scurrying back and forth over my hands.
Grounding San'a is located in the mountains and is subject to severe thunderstorms during part of the year. As I was preparing to hook up the 220 V power regulator and surge protector, I could not find an earth ground. I was assured by the building electrician that the system was grounded-just tie to the breaker box, and everything would be all right. I was still apprehensive and asked to see the actual physical ground. We followed a bare, AWG #10 wire leading from the breaker box, which wandered about the inside of the building, along the outside of the building for 100 feet (30.5 m) and ended in a ground rod driven into dry sand. I suspected that the chosen ground spot was located in the only place where the dry sand was deep enough over the underlying rock to drive the ground rod. Having no other choice, we took the line of least resistance and connected our ground. One can always hope that the sand will be wet from the rain before the lightning strikes.
Touchscreens As our work proceeded, we reached the testing stage. Soon, one of the touchscreen monitors failed. We did not give that too much thought because we did have some spares. The labels on the back of the monitors indicated they were capable of operating from 100 V to 265 V. Because the local voltage ran around 190 V to 205 V, we figured that was well within the design parameters of the equipment. We had been running them off the local power while we waited for the electricians to install the voltage regulators. Concerned that the voltage could be a problem, I obtained the necessary items to install the voltage regulators myself, and soon, everything was purring along on 230 V. Within hours, another screen failed, and by noon the next day, they had all failed. It was time to take them apart and determine what was going on. In each case, the 5 V power supply for the screen was fried into a blackened glob. On one of them, the label was still legible enough to read that the input voltage was rated at 120 V, and 230 V was apparently more than they were able to endure. A frantic call to the touchscreen manufacturer was not too satisfactory to say the least. Although the label indicated that the monitors would work over a wide voltage range, the manufacturer had apparently reached the conclusion that they would never be operated at anything other than 120 VAC. I bought up a supply of D-cell batteries, which, when hooked up in series, provided stable 4.5 V power to the touchscreens. We continued our testing as we awaited the arrival of new power supplies.
Considering that we were installing a newly designed system, we were halfway around the world from any semblance of technical support, and we were faced with very severe deadlines, the work went remarkably well. Other than the monitor screen problem and the meltdown of one computer power supply, the equipment worked out of the box. The rest of the start-up problems were related to field wiring errors generally associated with our not being able to communicate properly with the technicians performing the installation work.
The opening session After approximately six weeks of steady work we wound up our installation and testing and awaited the opening session of the parliament. From past experience, we anticipated that the opening session would probably be a disaster because politicians the world over are not necessarily technically oriented. We also knew that several of the political parties were openly anti-American-Yemen was one of the few Arabian countries that supported Iraq during the Gulf war. Other members would likely be upset over the fact that they no longer had exclusive control over their mics and that the president could now control the dialogue in the assembly. We spent several days briefing the local technicians so that they could assist us in explaining to the members how the new system operated.
The opening of the new session arrived on a bright, sunny day. Many members of the assembly appeared with their own personal army. The courtyard was packed with men carrying assault rifles and some even more potentially devastating weapons. I felt more than a little conspicuous and out of place, but the first session was memorable, and the equipment worked as expected.
Leaving Finally, the sound system was completed, technicians had been trained, and I was ready to leave after a bout with pneumonia. Because I knew that excess baggage would be expensive, I donated most of my tools and equipment to the technicians at the parliament. Airplanes to and from Yemen are usually booked weeks in advance. A couple of weeks before completion, I had made a best guess as to when I would be leaving, and the hotel travel clerk reserved a seat for me. As is usually the case, it took a couple of days longer than I had anticipated to finished the job, and I had to cancel the reservation.
The lady in charge of the hotel travel desk left the hotel twice a day to walk to the various airline offices to arrange air travel for the hotel guests. It was becoming apparent that if I remained much longer, I would be too sick to withstand an airplane flight. It took a couple of days, but she finally found a seat for me on an Air France plane to Paris. I carefully sorted through my baggage, and by leaving many of my personal possessions behind, I managed to get my souvenirs packed into a suitcase and a couple of plastic carrying cases. The parliamentary officials had provided a letter written in Arabic, which they assured me would take care of any problems that I might encounter at the airport.
I arrived at the airport around 9 p.m. to leave myself plenty of time to make the scheduled 11:30 p.m. departure. I was immediately informed that I was not on the passenger list and that the plane was full, but I was welcome to wait around in case someone did not show up.
My baggage was X-rayed, and I was quickly surrounded by soldiers who kept pointing at my baggage. They seemed to be indicating that they wanted everything opened. I produced my letter from the parliament and showed it to them. They reacted as any good soldiers would and several officers were called into the discussion. I could not understand a word that was being said, but they seemed to be divided up into two groups-one that wanted to open the baggage and another group that kept pointing at the letter. I decided that I was not adding anything to the discussion, and wandered over to the waiting area in case a seat became available.
There were a couple of no-shows and at the very last minute, and after paying an excess baggage charge of almost $1,000 per bag, I was provided with a boarding pass. Of course, this solved the baggage problem because there was not time to examine it. As the crew waited to remove the stairway from the plane, I approached the final checkpoint before walking out onto the tarmac.
The soldier at the desk carefully examined my passport and entry visa. He handed my passport back to me and pointed to a rubber stamp impression that had been made on one of the pages when I arrived in the country. The impression had been stamped too close to the edge of the page, and part of it was missing. It was an oval stamp, and approximately 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) of it was missing over the edge of the page. I again produced my letter from the parliament, the officers were called, and the discussion began again.
At this point, I was very ill, and I just wanted to get out of there. I picked up my passport and started walking to the plane. There was considerable yelling and what sounded like a couple of rounds being chambered into weapons, but I did not care. I just kept walking. Looking back on it, I do not think I was being brave. I just figured that there would be a tremendous amount of paperwork involved if they did shoot, and as sick as I was, I probably was not thinking too clearly.
I boarded the plane, and then we sat on the ground for a couple of hours before taking off. I do not know for sure, but I suspect the delay had something to do with me. The trip back is somewhat of a blur. Somehow, I made the connections and arrived back home. After 10 days in the hospital being treated for parasites, I was good as new. Despite the problems and difficulties encountered, I would have to admit that I would visit Yemen again.
We had tried to second guess all the contingencies and packed everything that might conceivably be required to complete the project. On one occasion, we needed to set an AC electrical service box. After waiting several days for an electrician, I decided to buy the necessary equipment to complete the project myself.
Shops in San'a are for some reason highly specialized. I found one shop that had a circuit breaker. That shop owner sent me across the street to another shop that had the outlet, where, in turn, I was directed to another shop that sold the necessary wire to connect everything. Even though I did not speak the language, the store owners were always cooperative, and with a lot of pointing and gesturing, I was able to find and purchase most necessary items.
The people of Yemen were part of a worldwide trade network while my ancestors in northern Europe still thought that the world ended over the next hill. Over the centuries, bargaining was developed into an art form. As a rank beginner, I was hopelessly outclassed. I quickly learned that just a few words in their language was good for at least a 50% discount. When bargaining, they would write the price in western style characters, and I would counter the offer by writing in Arabic characters. That simple maneuver usually cut the price by another half. Finally, it got down to the last few cents, and I was ready to concede the difference. That was not how the game was played, and I was expected to make at least a token effort to bargain to the bitter end.
In the newer part of the city that we traveled on our way back and forth between the hotel and the parliament, the streets were lined with shops selling traditional wares. On the curb side of the sidewalk, another set of vendors sold items from carts and rugs spread out on the sidewalk. What could not be found in the traditional suqs was generally available from the street vendors. One of the more unusual was the little stand where a craftsman disassembled disposable lighters, refilled them and repaired them. Other tradesmen sat with slabs of sandstone on their laps to sharpen knives. One vendor, camped outside our hotel, sold only men's socks. Because the hotel charged roughly twice as much to launder items as it cost to buy them new on the street, one of my evening duties was to take a trip to the sidewalk vendors to purchase the necessary undergarments for the following day.
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