We organized a meeting in Cinzana today to finalize plans with the owner of the brick press. We'd already agreed on a price to rent the machine per day and just wanted to iron out the details. That's when Blacky changed his mind. Now, I've never even met this Blacky character, so for him to hold up the entire project was not a great introduction. Thus far, we'd been working with Yaya, who's Adama's wife's sister's husband and who we thought was in charge of this machine. Turns out, he's just the messenger. And an expensive messenger to boot. Each time he's come for a meeting we've had to pay his transport and of course he can't take public transportation like everyone else, he's gotta drive his gas guzzling car 100K. So Yaya shows up and says 1) the price has changed and now includes a fee per brick, a transportation fee, fees for skilled and unskilled labor per day, and oh yeah, the price we'd agreed on to rent the machine has also gone up. and 2) all of this is non-negotiable because Yaya doesn't actually own the machine, can't bargain on behalf of the machine's owner, and has mysteriously lost this guy's number. So, enraged at wasting our time, we scrap the meeting and eat lunch. That's when Yaya suddenly relocates the number for the machine owner and voila: our first encounter with Blacky.
us: "what happened to the price we agreed on?"
blacky: "I increased it."
us: "why?"
blacky: "because I don't need your money to be able to eat and I can charge whatever I want. take it or leave it."
us: "fine. we'll just find another brick press. jerk."
So that's where we're at now. While we should be making bricks, instead we're looking for another brick press in Mali that's willing to charge a reasonable rate. Maybe Blacky will come to his senses but he doesn't seem like some I'd like to work with for the next 6 months!
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