Note to Self

Never swat at a mosquito that is buzzing in your ear while mincing garlic.

Choosing Sides

I learned to drive on the right hand side of the road while sitting at the wheel on the left side of the car. 

I think most American teenagers learned that way.

Last year I lived in Hong Kong and learned to drive on the left hand side of the road,

steering wheel on the left side of the car, stick shift to my right.

Living in Ango, DR Congo, I technically drive on the right hand side of the road. 

However, one of our two base Land Rovers are from Uganda. 

One has the driver’s side on the right, the other on the left. 

Seeing as there are only 7 cars in all of Ango,

 it is not particularly difficult to switch between them, 

sometimes multiple times a day.

I went on my R&R last week in Uganda 

and spent my time on the road driving on the left side of the road.

So, yesterday I arrived back in Bunia and offered to drive to dinner at the MONUSCO House. Took a Land Cruiser with the wheel on the right and came to a round-about… totally and fully confused. 

No, not even confused. I stopped and had no idea which way to enter it. 

No clue.

I could not remember where I was, what was normal and to top it all off, there was a motorbike who was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Everyone in the car was simultaneously laughing and shouting directions at me in a slur of French or English. 

Eventually we got home, in one piece and with me just shaking my head at myself. 

It is impressive how quickly our brains can adjust to altering circumstance, but I often wonder if there is a limit... 

...like how often I can change the DVD zones on my computer. 

Hospitalized Ideals

I walked in the hospital with a hot little hand in mine. We ran into the second of the two doctors on our way to the reception window, he saw us, shook our hands and took us directly into his office. We walked past women holding lethargic babies, people laying on the ground, sitting on benches in the halls.

After the doctor examined her, we went into the room where the pharmacist was serving a line of people waiting outside of her window. She turned from them and placed the needed pills in small folded paper envelopes. We were guided down the hall to the urgent care room, where a drip of quinine was waiting for her. Each of the beds in the ward had at least three people on each, and several mats were occupied on the floor, however, we got our own bed.

Few things here…

We got preferential treatment over the rest of the people who had been waiting for who knows how long. I am not exactly sure why. It could be because we partner with the hospital, it could be because we work with the doctors there regularly, because it is clear we will be able to pay the hospital bills, it could be because I am white. I honestly do not know.

Why didn’t I insist we get treated like everyone else? Because this little girl was sick and I knew she needed help, quickly. Did everyone else there? Probably. Do they deserve quick and quality treatment? Yes.

Is the world perfect? No. 

Tuesday 10 May 2011 - before noon

You never know what a day will bring.

Today I thought I would be hustling to get some purchase requests done, tidy up some financial issues, work through a few of the many problems we have come across lately…

Instead, I spent the morning in a hospital with a sick little girl and the afternoon sitting next to a dead lady.

I was on my way to the compound for some water, and a child of one of my guards was there, very very sick with fever. All of our medical team is on the field at the moment, everyone was looking to me for what to do. I was too afraid to give her any of my medicine, for fear of overdosing her little 4-year-old body. Plus, it was looking more and more like the fever was connected to something far worse than just a fever and even the flu can be deadly for a kid out here.

I took her, and her 9-year-old neighbour who brought her to me, in the Land Cruiser to the hospital. It was their second time in a car, ever. As I drove, I could feel the heat from the little one coming off of her, and she was not even touching me.

We arrived and I spent the majority of my morning with them, waiting for an adult from their household to come (their dad is one of our drivers and is on a field visit, their mama out working the fields). Normally I would not even see a sick kid like this, much less hold burning in my arms while she was being examined. However, as the vast majority of the staff here are currently stuck in Bunia because of flight issues, on the field for projects or here and down with malaria… it really left me.

You see, as the ‘Chef de Base’ I work on the support side of Medair's projects. Logistics, HR, finance, base management, fleet management, electricity… not super glamorous or sexy. I have spent the past six weeks in the same 5 km radius from the base and only ever interact with my staff. Also, for the most part, the only time I hear from anyone is when there are problems… and there have been a lot of problems with far fewer solutions to counter them.

In many ways it was what I needed. Don’t get me wrong, clearly not what she and her family needed. But holding her there gave me time for reflection after the culmination of yesterday’s issues left me so beside myself that I burst into tears when one of my staff told me we were out of onions.

Sitting in the hot, over crowded, under stocked, under staffed and only hospital in the area gave me room to sort through my thoughts and reflect on where I was and the people I was working with and for.

You may think it strange (unless you have found yourself in similar situations), but far too often I forget where I am and why I am here. About once a week I will stop, look around me and think ‘Oh my gosh, I am working in the flipping DRC with one of the most vulnerable and isolated populations on the planet’. 

Little Merveille, as it turns out, was treated for malaria three weeks ago but got more and more sick. This time around, it was discovered that she had typhoid fever. She was correctly treated and is now home talking about the white lady who took her in the car to the hospital and held her until she fell asleep (as reported to me from her dad).

Reflections on the hospital and dead lady afternoon later, as this post is already long enough as it is.

And the Beat Goes On

Things I See

I am just watching an overly paranoid mama goat try to figure out where the noise of the airplane is coming from.

This struck me as very amusing, I just wanted to share.

Too bad I forgot I had my camera with me. 

Soucis Sans Souris

I have reached a point in my French speaking development where I know immediately when I have said something grammatically or vocabularally wrong. Sure I might not know how to actually say it like a local, but at least I can recognize I sound like an idiot, accept it and move forward in making myself understood.

It was not always this way.

My second week in Ango I found myself examining the work of a local carpenter school we had hired to build some shelves for our new health depot. They were unstable and when he added the triangular bit I asked for, it was indeed stable... but totally lopsided.

I kept saying "J'ai souris que ce n'est pas doit."
For some reason this was not getting through. The conversation resembled an exaggerated game of charades that eventually resulted in solid 90 degree angled shelves.

A few hours later that morning I asked someone to do something for me.
"Pas de soucis." They replied.

Fast forward to mid afternoon when I nearly exploded out of my face in the middle of an OCHA cluster coordination meeting trying to hold back my laughter. Really, it was difficult to hold it together...

That morning I had spent nearly 20 minutes explaining to the carpenter, "I have mice that it is not straight. You see? It gives me mice. I have mice that it is not stable."

Ango awesomeness.