Nicholas for Environmentalist of the Year

I am nominating Nicolas Gueyovo for the Environmentalist of the Year Award. Nicholas is our cook/steward (a steward is a maid). I feel inspired to do this after reading my latest issue of Backpacker magazine, and having them remind me (again) that the only two problems in the world are carbon dioxide and anything man-made that can be seen from any hiking trail anywhere in the world. (Apparently, they don't consider the gear that you are carrying to be man-made, because they never complain about that.)

I nominate Nicholas for this award for the following reasons: 1.) Nicholas walks to work today. He lives in our staff house, which is located inside our compound, so his commute is actually shorter than mine. 2.) Nicholas does not own a car. (I've never actually asked him if he has a car, but I think it's a pretty safe guess.) 3.) Nicholas does not have air conditioning (you know how much electricity it takes to run a compressor. When he moved from his old staff house into our staff house, his daughter was very excited that the ceiling fan worked. The fan is a small sin, and may ultimately impact him winning this award, but I think that you can still be nominated even if you run a tiny motor. 4.) Nicolas doesn't make anything manmade that pollutes the visual surroundings, unless you count the fact that he supports Amber in her job, and she supports me in my job, and I support the project control engineers that track the costs of the project that buildings things that can be seen from some hiking trails somewhere in the world.

As a short bio, Nicholas is from Benin, which is a small country to the west of Nigeria. There are lots of Beninese or Benins (I don't know what they're called) in Lagos. Our driver smuggles rice between Nigeria and Benin, but more on that later. In Benin, they speak French, so Nicolas' English isn't that great, but he smiles really big. He's a pretty good cook. Everyone says that if you want a decent cook, you have to get one from Togo or Benin, which were both French colonies. Nicolas' wife is from Nigeria. She interviewed with Amber for a stewardess position, but Amber didn't like her. They have three children. One is a teen-ager and the other two elementary school age.

We just returned from checking on the staff house because they just moved in, and I wanted to make sure that they installed the mosquito netting and painted it. They installed two small sets of shelves that hang on the wall, and we have requested another larger set of shelves. Everything that the maintenance staff does on their house has to be originated by us, so I need to check to see that the work is done well. I could just ask Nicolas, but I'm not sure I would really find out. There were other reasons that I needed to go, but that's a whole different story.

Now that I'm back from Nicolas' house, I'm seriously considering revoking my nomination of Nicolas now that I've been to his house. He has a tiny AC wall unit that he owns personally (and you know how much electricity those compressors suck), a microwave, a stereo, a DVD player, and a TV. Not to mention a full bed (I think), a large dresser, and a small lounge chair. Everything was full of stuff. It looked like a fully packed storage unit. The amount of floor space that was not occupied by furniture was about 4x4. Finally, they had a picture of the Eiffel Tower, which I thought really just brought the whole room/house together.