Zambia World Wide

The black sheep of C.P.C.

Sometime in 1966 a replacement rigger was employed whom I shall refer to as

Mr. X. From the first day he started he could not accept the fact that he was not considered as the strongest person with C.P.C. A close relative of his could apparently lift a Harley Davidson off the ground. To make matters worse he had to work with Big Ed and he was no doubt the stronger of the two. Big Ed was a fitness fanatic. He would cycle to work exercise on a trampoline and adhered to a strict diet. He mainly concentrated on bodybuilding. Mr. X was so obsessed with his strength that within a month he started inviting Big Ed to a fight to determine who is the strongest. The fact that Big Ed ignored him made matters worse.

It was a Saturday mourning that we were informed that Mr. X was boasting at the Rhokana Club that he was going to sort Big Ed out to day. When I saw him and his mates arrive I climbed on the rafters of the riggers workshop for a ringside seat. The mates of Mr. X were prevented from entering the riggers workshop. As Mr. X got close to Big Ed he grab him where it hurt most and hung on like a leach. I could see Big Ed was in pain but he picked up Mr. X and folded him up like a closing book. Mr. X could barely be heard when he started pleading for help.

Monday mourning he arrived with his arm in a sling requesting time off to go to the hospital. Later that mourning he contacted the general foreman Ronnie Chisholm saying that he had been booked off sick for the rest of the week as he had a broken arm and cracked ribs. He promised to bring in the medical certificate as soon as he felt better.

The following Monday a car salesman came looking for him. He apparently bought a new Jaguar earlier in the previous week and had conned them into accepting a post-dated cheque, which of course bounced. The salesman informed us that someone else was in his house. He actually got someone to rent the house and they had to pay him one months rent in advance plus the months rent. The Jaguar was found in Durban Harbour with a “Thank You” note.

Some close calls during my eight years with C.P.C.

The first incident happened just before lunchtime. I was busy fault finding on one of the Brown Boveri remote control panels and outside in the yard the maintenance team was busy doing routine maintenance on one of the transformers.

Suddenly the building started to vibrate. I jumped up and in the process I burnt my leg with the soldering iron leaving me to this day with the scar. The vibrations suddenly stopped and before I could check the burn the building started to vibrate again. I heard someone shout that the cable floor was going to explode and I saw the switching staff running for the door. As I reached the door the vibrations stopped once more followed by a deadly silence. We waited for a while before re-entering the switching room. Standing at the window we could see a labourer lying on the ground with another standing over him. The maintenance squad was missing except for one who was sitting at the bottom of the transformer. Norman Johnson came in with his knees bleeding after he fell in running away and was to scared to get up and started crawling over the stoned surface.

The labourers had apparently run into each other with enough force to knock one of them out. The maintenance staff thought it was their transformer that was going to explode and one of them injured his ankle when they jumped from the transformer.