A business trip to El Aiun, Spanish Morocco

Klaus Wangnick recalls his first substantial business trip and the non-technical hazards of pre-globalisation desal.

The trip to El Aiun is worth special mention because several events occurred there that proved to be formative for my entire career. A leading German construction firm was building a port for the loading of phosphates, and my company had been contracted to deliver a desalination plant for the supply of water to the construction site and to the people employed there. This was a very small MSF plant, with the heat to be obtained from the cooling water of diesel engines. The seawater was provided by a well. My mission involved verifying the rated output of the plant for a certain load case of the engine.

Event 1: The trip began in Bremen with a dapper Klaus Wangnick all dressed up for business. The flight with the Vickers Viscount to Frankfurt carried only one passenger, namely me. Of course, with several stewardesses in attendance, I really felt like a king. Unfortunately, the saying 'too many cooks spoil the broth' certainly came true when hot coffee was spilled all over my elegant suit.

Event 2: After Frankfurt, the journey continued via Las Palmas. There I was met at the airport by our local representative, who proposed that we have dinner together. When he asked me to name a time, I suggested a perfectly reasonable '7:00 pm'. 'Oh no,' he pointed out, 'that is a time for children', insisting that 9 pm was much more suitable. I simply had to agree.

Event 3: After eating some of the salad, I contracted an upset stomach – a problem which pursued me throughout the trip. Later I decided to observe the following rules for eating on all of my trips abroad: (a) no ice cream, (b) no raw vegetables or salad, and (c) only well-cooked meat. By keeping to this simple formula, I managed to prevent gastric problems for ever after, despite 'air miles' totalling more than a million km.

Event 4: The plane from Las Palmas to El Aiun was a DC3 – an unusual type with a small wheel at the tail, which gave it quite a slope when standing on the ground. There was no air-conditioning unit; flies were kept at bay with the aid of a spray can.

Event 5: At the 'airport' of El Aiun (really an airfield with a shanty as the building), I was fetched by a construction driver and brought to the site in style – in an open jeep. The sun burned down mercilessly and I sweated profusely in my dark suit with tie (which I believed to be absolutely necessary; after all, I was representing an important German company). To make matters worse, there was a strong wind which blew the dunes along the route onto the connecting road to the construction site, scouring the fronts of the cars. Women shrouded in black clothing worked hard to prevent sand dunes from forming on the road itself, by using shovels to throw the sand up into the air; the wind then carried the sand right over the road. Upon arriving at the construction site, I reported to the site manager. He welcomed me, poured us each a water tumbler full of whiskey, and then emptied his glass in one gulp. In an attempt to be polite, I did the same. And promptly keeled over. The sun and the whiskey had conspired with the stomach bugs to knock me out.

Event 6: Construction work had come to an end, and the verification of performance could begin. Unfortunately, the diesel engines did not produce the output guaranteed by the customer and needed to ensure adequate heating of the MSF plant with the engine cooling water. I therefore suggested that the acceptance certificate could be signed without generation of the required output, because the MSF plant met all the parameters associated with partial load. However, the customer rejected this option. He therefore asked the site electrician to design a resistance for a well located close to the sea. The resistance had to be large enough to make the diesel engines run at full load. No sooner said than done; the corresponding switch was activated. The result was an enormous explosion of steam. As luck would have it, nobody was injured, because everyone had been suspicious of the idea and had therefore maintained a safe distance to the action. This convinced the customer to give me the signature for the acceptance certificate.