Guest Post - Dan's Tax Away Day Experience

Received this invitation in my email one day earlier this month:

My initial observations: Hotel looks nice! Umm, this is over night? That seems weird.  We spent 8+ hours a day together, why would we spend even more time together?  Given things tend to run on “Africa Time”, I wasn’t surprised to see the emphasis on the departure time. Cocktails at 10AM? Hell yes.  Seems weird though because not many people drink here. Tax Olympics, huh? Turns out these are events requiring physical exertion from tax accountants. Me Time is conveniently during Happy Hour. Dinner is formal and goes till midnight? I sure as s*** hope that this 7AM Aerobics line is a joke or is optional. I take notice that there’s no emphasis on the departure time – my guess is this means departure is at 12:30.

After this invitation goes out, I hear most of the office making fun of a poor guy who lost one of the events to a girl last year. Note to self – do not lose to a girl under any circumstances or risk being taunted for the next 52 weeks.  Time to hit the gym harder.  And maybe take it easy with the Welcome Cocktails beforehand. Although, I’m looking around the office and most people are much closer to sporting a keg belly than six-pack abs. Much of this has to do with the lack of exercise and the preferred local cuisine – Carbs.

Another example of Ghanaians not allowing anyone to live anything down: One girl has the nickname Zebra.  Last year, there was the same emphasis on a prompt and timely departure and, surprisingly, the bus actually did depart on time. In order to depart, the bus must circle around the building. This girl, only minutes late, was standing at the Zebra Crossing (aka, cross walk) right in front of the building.  She called one of her friends on the bus who said the bus would stop to pick her up.  As she stood at the Zebra Crossing waving at the bus, the bus drove right by…

So we’ve finally made it to the event day…

Not wanting to have a nickname or miss the bus, I made sure to wake up early and make my way over to the office.  I showed up at 7:15, and noticed the flaw in the invitation.  The invitation assumed we would be on Africa time.  The invitation didn’t take in account that the bus driver could be on Africa time.  New departure time: 8:30 – not bad.

Not wanting to experience a Forrest Gump moment (“Seat’s taken” “Can’t sit here”) on the bus, I got before most of the crowd and expected to have a seat to myself to hopefully stretch out and nap for the 2 hour bus ride. Since this isn’t Alabama in the 1960s, people are actually quite friendly and someone actually wanted to sit with me.  This didn’t matter because once everyone was seated the master Tote stood up and made everyone switch seats so they weren’t sitting next to their best friend.  The “Tote” is someone who is essentially a stand-up comedian and the entertainment for the day’s trip. The seat swapping process was for  the Tote to shout to the back of the bus “Back of the bus, who do you want? Sheila or Hilda?”  Back of the bus would respond “We want Sheila! We want Sheila”.  Then the front of the bus would have their pick of someone in the back, and so on. So much for napping.  I ended up at the back of the bus.

Not surprisingly, our rooms aren’t ready when we arrive at 10:30.   It also turns out, cocktail doesn’t necessarily mean alcoholic.  Cocktail can also mean, juice, water and coffee.

We were broken into 4 teams for the Tax Olympics.  The Tax Olympics included your typical events: Bag race, carry an egg on a spoon, etc.  For one event, the relay race, my team decided I should be running in it.  I’m not sure if they just really wanted to see a white guy run or if they legitimately thought I would be helpful during this event.  Turns out I’m not the slowest person and I didn’t lose to any girls. Each of these events took twice as long as they probably should. Why? Because everything was argued about.  Rules aren’t clear? Argue about it.  Your team didn’t win? Argue about it.  Think you deserve points for something your team did during the event? Argue about it. 

I’ll point out here that there was no prize for accumulating the most points.

One rather unusual event had me convinced I was going to end up being medevac’d out of there.  The event involved two parts.  Part 1 involved blowing up a balloon, tying it, and holding it over your head – first team to finish wins some points – easy.  Debate ensues.  Debate concludes.  For Part 2, those of us with balloons were encircled by the spectators – it’s now the coliseum.  The goal of part two was for all the gladiators to run around and attempt to pop each other’s balloons.  Your balloon pops, you’re out.  Last man standing wins.  The catch? You have to continue to hold onto your balloon and you’re equipped with any sort of sharp object in the other.  Now I’m trapped in a circle of death with 11 other people running around stabbing at each other with pens, pencils, earrings, sticks, etc.  I now I have 2 goals – don’t lose to a girl, and don’t be impaled.  Those are very conflicting goals because accomplishing the latter would be as easy to dropping my balloon and letting it pop, but then I would fail the former goal.  I decided to take the approach of stay-the-hell-out-of-the-middle.  My approach clearly worked because hanging out by the edges and dodging any attempts to pop my balloon/disembowel me resulted in my being one of the last two alive. My opponent was about a head shorter than me, so he stayed well out of my reach, which meant I was in little danger from being eviscerated.  All of his jumping around resulted in him dropping his balloon and having it pop on the grass.  Game over.  No injuries.  Argument ensues.

After lunch, we had what was, in actuality, the most dangerous event – paddle boating.  The problem? No one can swim.  I knew people were worried (or maybe exhausted at this point) because there was no arguing and everyone was strangely quiet.  Everyone refused to get into the boat without a life vest.  No one drowned, no one argued. 

Someone decides to it’s time to play football (soccer) – Managers vs. Staff.  I’d like to say I was competitive due to my natural athletic ability.  Instead, I was competitive because I exercise regularly and am bigger than most others. There were a couple girls playing, but they were on the Manager’s team, so no risk of getting embarrassed there.  Additionally, expectations were pretty low for me being any good anyway.

My Me Time involved sitting by the pool bar, under a fan, downing water, enjoying cold beer and catching up on emails/work. 

After I get cleaned up and dressed in a 3 piece suit, it’s about 6:30.  30 minutes after the suggested 6PM photo time.  That should be a good enough buffer so I’m not the first person there, right?  Turns out – I’m the first person there.  7:00 rolls around – still waiting on the second person to come.  7:15 – finally people start arriving.  I don’t much care for pictures – it’s not something I enjoy participating in.  Ghanaians love pictures.  Unfortunately, everyone seemed particularly fond of taking pictures with the only white guy.  I started to get bored of taking the standard arm-around-your-neighbor-and-smile, so I started doing other poses like cross-our-arms-back-to-back. Unfortunately, this just makes everyone want additional pictures with the new pose too.  By 8:15 they insist it’s time for dinner so pictures come to an end.

Ghanaians typically don’t drink.  East Africans (Tanzania, Zambia and Kenya) make up for their Western counterparts’ lack of drinking and are renowned for keeping parties going till sunrise. The Kryptonite to the East African’s ability to party the night away on this particular evening is running around in the sun all day participating in the Tax Olympics.  Most people start heading back to their rooms around midnight. 

The next morning, on the 4^th wake-up call, I decide this 7AM aerobic thing wasn’t a joke and isn’t all that optional.  What was supposed to be an hour long session with a professional instructor turned out to be less than 30 minutes.  The instructor gave up on us because everyone was so exhausted/out of shape.  If she asked us to do 25 jumping jacks, by 15 half the group was done and by 20 people were on the ground. 

After breakfast the bus managed to depart at a rather timely 11:15.  I was napping  by 1:30 on our fantastic couch.