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from the Fletcher archives
Basil Chapman - the intrepid traveler
Basil Chapman lives on the Gulf island of Bahrain, an independent Arab state and principal airport refueling point in the Europe to South-East Asian - Australiasia air routes.
Basil moved to Bahrain 15 months ago to set up our regional office there. He and his wife live in a house, which along with its neighbours forms a compound just outside the town centre. Basil has been particularly involved in liaising with the project managers in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and ensuring the many formalities associated with entry visas and work permits are dealt with - an onerous task when one becomes familiar with the many regulations and conventions which have to be complied with to the letter.
Basil has been to Baghdad twice since the outbreak of the Iraqi-Iranian war last September. The former two hour plane journey became a nightmare bus trip of 21 hours across the desert from Amman in Jordan. Recently this has improved to a 12 hour journey from Kuwait via the Iraqi port of Basra with a variety of taxis, bus and train trips, all somewhat uncertain to availability, comparatively expensive and showing their age. Basil recently returned from a long journey to further an enquiry we are presently developing for panel houses in Nigeria. To gain entry visa it was necessary to go to London which in the event proved abortive so Basil flew to Lagos and obtained his visa on the spot. From there he flew to the northern provincial centres of Sokoto, the location for recent religious riots and Kano which Basil found unexpectedly to be not in tropical rain forest, but amidst flat savannah lands. Much of his travels in Nigeria were made in a privately owned light plane giving a much closer look than the high flying jets. The return trip to Bahrain was via Addis Ababa and Beirut completing an interesting round trip to introduce ourselves into a new market of immense potential.