David Fell Speaker 12th August 2009 D T
avid explained that his Early career started as an engineer in railway manufacture. Soon after
he got married and realised that he needed more money so he embarked on management training courses. Then an opportunity occurred to go to London to apply for a job to go overseas in an aid programme and he was accepted as one of the youngest applicants, if not the youngest.
hat‟s when the adventure began, on a ship with the posh on one side and the poor on the other.
Bearing in mind the youthful age of David being on a big ship was a big adventure in itself especially, in war-torn areas of the Suez. Therefore, when Shots were heard from Aden it came as a unwelcome surprise. The ship had no air-conditioning and had the sun beating down on it most of the way which became unbearable. A welcome trip ashore in Port Said with a Scotsman brought much fun and relief! Very strange though because it is understood that Port Said was the only port in the World that Ships would not fill up with drinking water! Perhaps David and the Scotsman didn‟t drink water ha-ha.
A
fter many strange experiences aboard ship it was a pleasure to arrive in Mombassa. Although
still in temperatures of over 40 Celsius the next stop was Nairobi on a train that would only travel at 10mph with a wood burner that had to be re-fuelled many times over the 200 mile journey. David‟s job with the University of Nairobi was to train locals to replace the many ex-pats
who were leaving Kenya due to the Mau -Mau prob- lems. This also gave him the opportunity, at an early age, to take on big projects with huge responsibilities. A wonderful experience that David relished!
F
unding was a problem for the Aid programme as the contributing companies insisted that their
money had to be spent on their own countries goods, engineering, etc. This policy caused many problems such as ordering in imperial when metric meas- urements were being used ( or the other way round).Not surprisingly, the UK was the only country that gave funds and said spend it on what it is best suited for! Thereafter, it was David‟s job to try and convince them to buy British.
D
uring David‟s stay in Africa visits were made to Uganda and many other notorious
problem areas and he eventually ended up in Mauritius for 5 years. He only left Mauritius when an offer was made by the MD of British Oxygen to take charge of a factory in Lancaster. The offer was too good to refuse so that‟s where David spent the next 25 years of his working life.
Page No. 19
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