When will I have a long tassel?

"Are you a pig? I've taught you this so many times and you still don't remember!"

In a factory on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, Ningmo slapped a black young man on the head with his bear paw and scolded him angrily.

The young black man who was beaten covered the back of his head with a silly smile on his face, and said to Ning Mo in jerky Chinese: "I'm sorry, principal, my brain remembers the operation just now, but my hands forgot."

"Your hands have become more capable, and you can think independently? What do you call it, a robotic hand? An electronic hand? An artificial intelligence hand?" Ning Mo rambled on, making incoherent complaints.

Of course the other party couldn't understand Ning Mo's weird words. The students in this machine tool school are all local black people. A few years ago, they had not even seen a few Chinese people, let alone understood Chinese. In recent years, with the increasing economic and trade exchanges between China and Africa, the number of local Chinese-funded enterprises has continued to increase. Many black people have begun to learn Chinese in order to work in Chinese-funded enterprises.

However, in countries that use alphabetic languages, Chinese has always been considered the most difficult language to learn. Only those black youths who are smarter than others and willing to endure hardship can barely learn some, which is enough to compete with Chinese-funded enterprises. There is only some limited communication with the managers or technical staff inside.

Machine tool school is a place where you need to learn skills. The few sentences of daily Chinese that those black young people have mastered are far from enough here. In order to enable students to understand the techniques taught by Chinese technicians, the machine tool school opened by Ningmo not only offers machine tool courses, but also provides intensive training in Chinese. Of course, this does not include teaching black students to understand Ningmo of trash talk.

Ningmo's establishment of a machine tool school in Ethiopia was purely accidental, and as a result, it became a nationally recognized pioneer in the Belt and Road Initiative, which was truly unintentional.

At first, Ningmo listened to others' encouragement and was unwilling to stay in China and earn a living, so he and his classmate Lai Taotao from the technical school went to Africa to open a machine tool repair center.

In such a country where industrialization has just begun, the business of machine tool maintenance centers is very good. Since there are no competitors, Ningmo and the others have the final say on the fees for repairing machine tools. No one dares to complain that their charges are too high, because if they do not accept Ningmo's services, these companies will have to spend more than 10 times the price to hire European manufacturers to repair their products, and they will have to endure dozens of days of waiting.

While doing maintenance at a customer company, Ningmo discovered a problem, that is, the local machine tool operators' skills were really "rough". Many machine tool failures were caused by improper operation, and the causes of some failures were so low-level that Ningmo Mo couldn't help but get furious. He wanted to grab the operator's neck, push her to the ground and rub her for half an hour.

As the operator of a machine tool repair center, Ning Mo should actually like machine tool workers who make mistakes whenever possible, because they will create a steady stream of business for the repair center. But Ningmo was also a sentimental assembly fitter. He couldn't bear to see a bunch of losers wasting the fruits of his labor.

"This kind of workers have been kicked out in our place a long time ago. I really don't understand why you keep such people!"

Ningmo complained to the boss of the client company more than once.

"But, Mr. Ning, this is already the most skilled machine tool technician we can hire." The boss had a look of helplessness on his face.

"Don't you have technical schools in your country?"

"Yes, but..."

The boss didn't say any more. There were so many connotations behind this that he couldn't even begin to talk about it.

People born in contemporary China have a hard time imagining what it means to be “a hundred wastes waiting to be done”. African countries had no industrial tradition in the past, and it was still a big problem for the people to even be literate, let alone learn skills. In technical schools run by the government, the teachers invited are all white-skinned Europeans. They need good food and drink, and they are also very temperamental when teaching students. If the students don't understand even a little bit, the white teachers will rush right away. People say that this student is too stupid to teach, and so on.

As a result, the government has opened some technical schools, but the number of students who can graduate from technical schools is really very limited, and a considerable number of them are actually only half-skilled and their skills are not up to par. I guess the white teacher was too lazy to care, so he just signed a graduation certificate and let me go.

In this way, some half-baked skilled workers have become treasures in the local area. This corresponds to an old Chinese saying, "There are no generals in Sichuan, so Liao Hua is the vanguard." Company bosses have to pat and coax these skilled workers, fearing that if they are unhappy, they will switch jobs to other companies, and they will be blinded by their job.

"How difficult can it be to open a machine tool? As long as you are not blind or stupid, you can always learn some basic operations, right?" Ning Mo became more determined, "You find those operators from your factory, and I Give them an introductory course on machine tools.”

Ningmo was an assembly fitter when he was working on a machine. Later he specialized in machine tool maintenance and has handled hundreds of types of machine tools. Africa's industrial level is very low, and there is no need for high-precision machine tools. There are really no machine tools in ordinary enterprises that Ningmo doesn't need to run. Although the skills are not up to the level of professional lathes and millers, there is no problem in teaching these half-experienced local workers.

After Ningmo's free machine tool training began, he discovered that teaching local people to operate machine tools was indeed a challenging task. Industry requires some understanding, and understanding often comes from daily life experience. Children in China usually have the opportunity to come into contact with machinery. Even disassembling and assembling their own toy cars can give them some industrial enlightenment.

In contrast, most young people in Africa have not been exposed to industrial technology. They grew up playing with dirt and garbage. When faced with complex machinery such as machine tools, their knowledge reserves are far from sufficient. Ningmo often demonstrated on the machine tool more than a dozen times, but the onlookers still couldn't figure out the reason. They made mistakes as soon as they got started, often making Ningmo jump and curse.

"Ning, don't bother. It's impossible for these Africans to learn to operate machine tools. While God gave them excellent athletic talents, he also took away their industrial skills."

This was the advice given to Ningmo by a white colleague. This person is an after-sales service representative of a European machine tool company. When he goes to a local company to repair machine tools, he always says nothing, collects the money after the work, and leaves. Sometimes the other party asks him how the fault occurred and how to avoid it in the future. He just replies: This problem is beyond your level.

"Taotao, do you think black people can learn to operate machine tools?"

Ning Mo went back to ask his partner Lai Taotao for confirmation.

"You should be able to learn, right?" Lai Taotao replied hesitantly, "The cultural level of these black people is indeed not very good, and they learn things slowly. However, when we were in technical schools in the past, there were a few students in the class. Are you a brother with slow skills? You will learn it after learning a few times. Machine tools are not difficult. I think if there is a good master who teaches patiently, black people should be able to learn it."

"So, what do you think about me opening a machine tool school here?" Ning Mo proposed his plan.

"You're crazy!" Lai Taotao was shocked, "Our business is booming now, can we afford to open another school? Besides, opening a school is really not profitable. With the income level of the local people, you How much tuition do you expect to collect from them?”

"I plan not to accept any money." Ning Mo said seriously.

"If you don't accept a penny, what are you trying to do?" Lai Taotao didn't understand even more.

Ning Mo said bitterly: "I just can't stand the way those white cows behave, saying that black people can't learn machine tools. Do you remember, we also saw this kind of thing when we were working on the machine in the past?" We are so white-skinned, but we Chinese also have our noses turned up to the sky, and they always say that we can’t use their advanced machine tools.”

"They lied to them, didn't we take Botai in the end?" Lai Taotao said with a smile. Although he has left Linji Group for many years, he still regards Linji as his home in his heart, so he always says "we" when he opens his mouth.

Ning Mo said: "Yeah, now they don't dare to turn up their noses in front of us, but I feel uncomfortable when they turn up their noses in front of old black people. Didn't they say that black people can't play machine tools? I will open a machine tool The school specializes in training black technicians and teaches a few eighth-level workers to shock them."

"Eighth-level worker..." Lai Taotao covered his cheek, "Fat man, can we be more realistic? Are your skills enough for a third-level worker? You still want to teach an eighth-level worker."

Ning Mo said: "Level 3 is fine. At least, if you teach me to my level, you won't be fooled by others."

Lai Taotao looked at Ning Mo: "Fat man, make no mistake. We came to Africa to make money, not to help the poor. You open a school and plan to charge no tuition fees. Isn't that what you are doing? Has poverty been alleviated?”

Ning Mo said: "Actually, when I came to Africa, making money was only a minor purpose. I wanted to show Old Tang and others that I, the fat man, was not just a freeloader. Teaching black people to operate machine tools, I think it is quite meaningful, more meaningful than making money repairing machine tools. If I finish this job well, I will have something to brag about when I go back. There is a saying that although we are poor financially, we are spiritually poor. Very wealthy."

Lai Taotao sighed: "Come on, I've known for a long time that you are a person who has escaped from vulgar taste. Your wife owns shares in Dahe UAV, and the dividends in one year alone are more than I have made in half my life. What do you think? This is interesting, just go ahead and do it. At the maintenance center, the worst we can do is recruit a few more workers from China. You don’t care about this little money, but I’m still pointing out that I can make this money for my son to study abroad. "

Ning Mo smiled and patted Lai Taotao on the shoulder and said: "Then it's settled, I'll transfer all my shares to you in the maintenance center without paying a penny. However, in the future, my machine tool school When you start driving, you have to use the maintenance center as a training base, so don't be impatient."