Dateline: Egypt, part 1

Alexandria, Egypt.  November, 1983.  I'm half way through a 30-month assignment with WWCG (Wastewater Consulting Group).  It's a consortium of 2 US and 2 Egyptian companies, doing the engineering/design for an expansion/upgrade of the City's wastewater system.  

My job is finance/admin manager, in charge of support services: facilities, housing, purchasing, shipping, customs clearance, transportation, accounting, word processing, communications and so on.  In the military, I'd be called the DLJO - Dirty Little Jobs Officer.  My staff is all Egyptian, about 200 in total.

We occupy the first 4 floors of a 12-story office building.  The top 8 floors are vacant, due to a building permit issue that's been brewing in court for 7 years.  Things move slowly in the Mideast.  Although I've been aware of the permit problem for some time, it doesn't impact our operation so I'm not concerned about the outcome.  

The issue: the builder got an initial permit for 5 floors.  Later, a permit was issued for the top 6 floors.  5 + 6 = 11.  But, the building has 12 floors.

I'm both flabbergasted and amused when the court decision comes down.  What was the court's decision?  Remove the 6th floor!  

For the next 4 months, a bunch of Egyptian laborers, armed with sledge hammers and wicker baskets, methodically demolish and remove everything on the 6th floor.  Everything but the columns supporting the upper floors, that is.  Day in, day out, these guys pound away on the concrete block walls. Chunks of concrete rain down on all sides of the building, bounce off the A/C units, threaten anyone standing near the building. 

All the debris was hand-carried in wicker baskets.  They'd load up the baskets, bring them down in the elevator, tromp through our first floor offices, out the front door, dump the baskets, tromp back to elevator.  For 4 months! 

Gotta love the Egyptian legal system - and the thoroughness of the permitting system as well.