I am a recent graduate of the University of Florida. I am a small town girl who got a job working in the oil industry in West Africa. This blog is about my transition for college student to working adult plus my adventures.
Everyone has a wish list of place and things they would like to do. I have always had a couple places in Africa that I wanted to visit. Parts of Africa have always been on my list of places to visit. Now I am going to get the chance to do more than just take a two week vacation to Africa. I am going to be a short flight from some of the most amazing places, animals, and locations.
Egypt is perhaps the one place in the world I want to visit the most. I have been fascinated by Egyptian history. From the engineering marvels of the Great Pyramids to the fascinating treasures found in the Valley of the kings, all of parts of the Egyptian civilization are fascinating to me. I want to ride a camel out to the pyramids, visit the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, tour the Valley of the Kings, and go SCUBA diving in the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
Victoria Falls is on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is believed that the famed explorer Dr. David Livingston was the first European to view the falls. The falls are said to be "the smoke that thunders" which is what Mosi-oa-Tunya means. Victoria Falls is the world largest water despite not being the tallest or widest, but it has the largest area of falling water.
Every year, a massive migration of over million zebra, wildebeest and other Serengeti species occurs in Kenya and Tanzania. This is the largest animal migration in the world. I want to see the wonder of this phenomenon and see this amazing site.
The only way to see gorilla in there natural habitat is to take a trek though the Africa forest to find a family group. I want to see both the Mountain and Lowland Gorillas. There are several places where Mountain Gorrilas can be found Democratic Republic of Congo (currently in the middle of a civil war), Rwanda, Ugnada. Lowland's can be found in Angola, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Republic of Congo. A trip to mainland EG is in my future.
The Zambezi river is one of the best rivers in the world for whitewater rafting. Its a 15 mile section of river below Victoria Falls with 23 rapids. It is know for the technically difficult rapids, big drops, and massive holes.
Every year from May to July, million of sardines form shoals (that nasty little fish that comes in a can and you wonder who actually eats) that move north along the coast of South Africa. The sardine run is so large that it can be seen on satellites. This concentration of sardines attack large quantities of predators including sharks, dolphins, seals, and birds.
Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania is the tallest mountain in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world. Kilimanjaro is 19,341 feet tall and is part of the Seven Summits and Volcanic Seven Summit climbing challenges.
8. Cage Dive with a Great White Shark
Yes, I want to dive with the most feared predator of the sea, abet inside a cage. I might be crazy but I have seen Jaws and Shark Week. I can't wait to see this amazing creature.
I am not exactly sure why I want to this, but I do know I want to. Since air travel became common few people cross the equator via ship, so I think it would be fun to get to.
I have to say job hunting is one of the hardest and most
discouraging things I have ever done. It always seemed like someone else was
always getting the positions I had applied for. Every semester, UF has a
huge career fair. Basically several hundred employers show up and you
wait 30 mins in line to talk to a recruiter for 30 seconds, and more than half
the time get told to apply online. This is really annoying because at the end
of the day talking to the recruiter does nothing. Thankfully,
Schlumberger did both online pre-selects and collected resumes for on-campus
interviews. During career fair, a lot of companies do information session and
basically they are a hour long show and tell about the company with free food.
No non-class related event happens without free food. Unfortunately, I
had class at the same time as Schlumberger's information session but I didn't
really need to learn about the company and what they did since I had done my
research well before career fair.
The on-campus interview was not nearly as
nerve racking as I thought it was going to be. It was some basic
interview questions on myself and my leadership in team situations. As
much as every engineering student hates those group projects, those same group
projects are a great way to show leadership and teamwork. The most memorable
question was about the most difficult team situation I had ever been in. I
After about a month of waiting, I got a
call for a second interview. The second interview was a week long camp
Schlumberger calls Focus in Engineering, Leadership, and Development Camp or
FIELD Camp for short. This was a week long interview/info session on
Schlumberger and the different divisions of Schlumberger.
As mentioned previously, FIELD camp is a week long program about
Schlumberger combined with a interview. For this program, I was flown out
to Houston, Texas along with 25 other college students from around the United
States and Canada. I was flowing from Gainesville, Florida to Houston Texas.
There was a slight mishap at the airport and we had to wait an hour for
pick-up. This was caused by a hour flight delay in Atlanta. I was
lucky that I wasn't they only UF person going to this camp flying out of
Gainesville. There was one other a third UF student attending but he was
flying out of south Florida.
Once at the hotel in Sugar Land, Texas, we
meet the other participants from many different colleges. The first night of
FIELD camp was the traditional get to know people games. I was lucky to
get my own room. Everyday was a 6:00 am wake-up and at the earliest 12:00
am end. Every day was a tour of one or two different division
of Schlumberger.
All the FIELD camp participants and the three recruiters with us on a boat ride though San Antonio.
It seemed like the entire week was
designed to try and scare us away from working for Schlumberger. They
didn't sugar coat the aspects of what a Field Engineer does for Schlumberger.
They stressed the hard work and long hours. They made it clear the
while Schlumberger pays well they make you earn every penny and working for
them isn't something one should take lightly.
We got to tour Schlumberger's
companies of Smith Bits and M-I SWACO. We also got to meet field engineers who
worked in wireline logging, drilling and measuring (D&M) and Pathfinder,
cementing, fracking, and several other Schlumberger divisions. We got to
then visit two actual working drill rigs. One site was doing D&M
while the other was fracking and wireline logging. I was really interested in
wireline logging and D&M.
Overall, the long hours, working hard, and
remote locations didn't scare me. This was my ideal job, not stuck in a office
and the chance to live in remote location far from huge cities.
After my week in Houston was over, I knew I wanted to work for
Schlumberger in either D&M and wireline logging when I graduated. My preferred
location from highest to lowest was Alaska, International (you don't get to
choose, just get to say international), or Southwest United States.
Where is Equatorial Guinea one might ask? I know my first thought was I was going to the south Pacific. Alas, I was thinking of Papua New Guinea. In fact there are five (or six if you count Guyana which is derived from Guinea) counties in the world with "Guinea" as part of their name, of which three are found in West Africa. So my confusion over where I was being sent was understandable. I am still excited about the job opportunity even if I was a little disappointed it wasn't Papua New Guinea.
Equatorial Guinea is the small country in red.
Truthfully, I had never heard of Equatorial Guinea (EG) before this job offer and realistically it would have never made my must visit list either. This small Africa nation is off the off beaten path. So my first visit after finding out that EG is in Africa is Wikipedia.
Flag of Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea's official name is the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. It is about 111,000 square miles which is about the size of Massachusetts and has population of 730k which is slightly larger than the city of Boston. EG gained its independence from Spain in 1968. So the national language is Spanish (just my luck, spent years avoiding learning Spanish and now being semi-fluent would be useful). Officially EG is a unitary semi-presidential republic. Basically this is a fancy way of saying that EG is controlled by a single entity who is "elected" by the people.
EG is made of a mainland
territory, Rio Muni, and five small islands located in the Gulf of Guinea.
Despite its name EG is not located on the equator, it lies almost
entirely above the equator. The exception
of this is a small island of Annobon which is located in the southern
hemisphere. I will be living and working on the largest of these islands,
Bioko. The capital of EG, Malabo, is
located on this island as well as most of the oil industry. EG has several ecoregions such a Atlantic
Equatorial costal forests, Central African mangroves, Cross-Sanaga-Bioko coastal
forests, Mount Cameroon and Bioko
montane forests, and Sao Tome, Principe, and Annobon moist lowland forests (I
will talk more about these regions in another post). Given EG’s tropical location it’s no surprise
that it has a tropical climate and only has two seasons, wet and dry. From June to August, Bioko is wet and Rio
Muni is dry and from December to February it is reversed. From September to November and from March to
May there is a gradual transition from on season to the next.
