Typical Day

December 04, 2009

It's eight o'clock and everyone else in the house is asleep. We call it Markounda midnight. It's been completely pitch black for two hours now, there's not much time for twilight – the sun just goes straight down
this close to the equator.

The village, on the other hand is still going. It's Friday night but I haven't noticed much of a difference the day of the week makes in how loud the singing or the drums are. The last couple of nights someone has been learning how to drum the same beat on what I can only imagine is the most beat up aluminum pot. I picture some seven year old sneaked the pot away after dinner. I can only imagine though, we are in the compound" 6pm-6am.

Today marks the start of my third week here. Week two was basically a repeat of week one with just a little more clarity. A lot coming at me, a lot I want to understand – every time I think I have even a slight handle on it though, I school myself a couple of days later.
 
I woke up this morning from an uncannily metaphorical dream. I was on a beach, wading into the ocean but the waves were high, like good 8-12 foot waves. The kind of waves that completely crush you if you get hit by them. Smash you to the bottom, spin you around, drag you out and then give you just enough time to stand up, get your bearings and see that you are about to get hit by another one. I kept trying to get out past the breaking point but the waves kept kicking me down. Then I remembered that if you dive all the way under the water, immerse yourself entirely, the waves just roll over you and you can pop up on the other side for a breath with plenty of time to prepare for the next wave. These last several weeks have been a lot like trying to get out to the open water. Big waves.

I have been having a hard time sitting down to write for a whole variety of reasons. A big one being tired and overwhelmed. Not wanting to put down thoughts or opinions that I know will change in a day or two. Normally, first impressions can be very telling but not so much when you are in such a new environment. So, that, and I don't just want to write about all the things that are different about living here – everything. I figure I might just illustrate a typical day so far:

I have been waking up about 5:30am or so. Sometimes I get up once awake, others I just lay there and think. It's been comparatively cold in the early morning, good laying under the covers cold made so mostly by the fact that I sleep with just a sheet in my underwear under the mosquito net. My room is fairly spacious, about 10x12ft with a single bed, a small desk, a stool, and two simple bookshelf units. French doors into a hallway and the same into the back patio.

Breakfast has been a little less varied the last week as our supply truck was supposed to get here on Monday and now it doesn't look like it'll make it till after the weekend. Powdered milk made with hot water and cereal, maybe some left over bread from the night before. The guards fill a thermos with hot water for us first thing for coffee, tea, etc, but making anything else hot involves a pan and fire. No toaster or microwave of course. I would be all about some eggs but the cooking utensils in our kitchen are not quite up to par and eggs are rare. The villagers seem to have asked themselves the chicken and the egg question and it came out that chickens are worth more than eggs so they would rather have chickens. That, and as came up at dinner tonight, I haven't seen any coups – everything is free-range, so I imagine hunting down where those sneaky hens laid their eggs is less trouble if you just wait for them to hatch and come running back. Needless to say, if we want eggs, we ship them in.

Office opens at 7:30am. Everyday everyone is there waiting for us as we roll in, whether it's on foot or by Land Cruiser. Bon jour's and ça va's and loads of handshakes before keys are distributed and everyone gets going on to work. I have been slowly assuming the role of supervisor for my half of the logistics staff – logistics supply warehouse team, construction and maintenance team, the water and sanitation team, and supervising the drivers and the trucks on a mechanical level. I can't quite say so much about what a typical work day is, everyday has been entirely different so far.

The expats eat lunch together at the base in a little gazebo/hut/tukul that serves as a nice shaded outdoor dining area. It is prepared for us by the house staff, usually a meat with a starch and some kind of canned vegetable(s). Water, coffee, maybe some juice. We usually take about an hour or so for lunch so it's a nice break.  By now it's started to get fairly hot, though not anywhere near as sweltering as I was braced for. In fact, except for the afternoon showers being absent here, the weather has been remarkably like Denver summer weather. It sort of seems like things slow down after lunch but they don't pick back up. Staff goes home at 4:30, expats, too, if they can be dragged from their computers. Several afternoons we've already pushed curfew staying almost until dark (or even after, once or twice).

It is about a 10 minute walk into the sunset through the village from the office back home. Just about every kid under the age of six will make an effort to cut across a yard or two to come and say hi which includes
a little hand shake that is usually just a quick little grab. Bonsoir's and ça va's again with the kids – I've been surprised that even the littlest of them know this back and forth and are rarely shy to show it. "Comment tu
t'appelles?" they ask, even if you told them the answer yesterday. Some of the houses we walk by are those of our staff. Almost all the houses are mud brick with thatch roofs. A couple have tin roofs, only one or two on the walk home have fences as all, and those fences are of woven grass mat. Hens and chicks, sows and piglets run free throughout town, I have no idea how they keep track of whose is whose but I am sure they know. Goats and dogs, same. The only cats I've seen hang out at the kitchen at the office which is well fenced. They keep the mice out of our food, we give them the left over bones – like man and cats were meant. There are a few cows in town but those they tie up 'cause they're pricey and rare.

Once home, the patterns disappear again. Some nights are social, others solitary. Some we have visitors, some everyone is tired. The staff make dinner and send it to the house at the end of the work day, we set our
own table and clear our own dishes for dinner. Maybe throw some beer in the freezer to cool quick, maybe watch a little TV (series on DVD) in the living room, maybe just go right from gravity fed shower to bed. The generator goes off at 7pm and from then we are on battery power so no hair driers ladies. And unless there's a card game going on, I'm pretty much slathered in DEET and ready for bed by eight.

The last few nights, I've taken to climbing our water tower which, at a lofty 14 ft or so high is easily one of the highest man made points in town. Since there are not any lights in town and people keep their fires
small, you can only really hear the town, the silhouettes of the trees and the stars being the only things visible beyond the couple of kerosene lanterns the guards keep to light the yard. I've been trying to get to know
the southern sky. I figure we should be able to see the North Star and the Southern Cross at the same time but it's been a pretty bright moon washing out the stars since I started climbing the water tower so I'll have to get back on that one.

So. Start week three. Just starting to get my head wet, starting to duck those waves. I wonder what the beach is gonna look like once I'm past the break point...

First days on the Job

Tuesday 24 November 2009 - First Days on the Job

Yesterday morning, my assistant came to me and told me that there
was a problem with the well. The output had fallen significantly and it was
taking too much time for people to get water. I went and had a look, it
looked simple enough - a couple of bolts holding a plate to a raised
concrete slab with a foot pump and a faucet sticking up. I told him that we
could have a look in an hour after I went through a couple of other things
that I had to do. I figured I would just do what I always do when something
is broken and there is no one else to fix it - take it apart and have a
look.
I went to the Log Admin (Log is short for logistician) who before my
arrival was completely in charge of all things "tech" and told him my plan.
He showed amazing patience as he explained to me the consequences of messing
with the well. If you take apart that pump and don't put it back together
right, that is our water. That is everybody's water. There are two other
wells in the village but they don't produce in the dry season (which just
started). That means everything that we have going on here shuts down
'cause we can't work without water. It's the main non-river water for our
inpatient clinic, outpatient clinic, house, and, oh, at least a couple
thousand other people. I don't usually think of technical problems with
simple things like manual pumps. Usually if something tinkerable is broke,
you have a shot at fixing it and if you can't, you just replace it.
It only took me about two seconds to see his point and to go
further. Additionally to our basic functionality, if I go and open up a
half producing well and put it back together and it produces nothing after
that then "I" broke the well. Then we compromise our community relations
and in turn our security. I went back to my assistant and apologized and
told him that some water is better than none and until the pump stops
producing entirely, we're gonna leave it alone. Balancing our image as well
as our functionality with a desire to have things work properly and
efficiently is a new challenge for me. I never had to worry too much about
image or basic existence.

So I come home today and go to wash my hands in the sink by the
toilets. No water. I go outside and ask the guard if he had heard anything
from the water carriers when they came by to manually fill our water tanks.
"Yeah, they came by and said that the pump isn't working so they weren't
able to fill the transfer containers." I went and got the doctor who is a
native French speaker to double check and make sure that I got that right
because it wasn't really a nod-and-smile-and-hope-everything-goes-fine kind
of situation. But sure enough, "Yup, that's what he said. Oh and, by the
way, could you turn on the generator? It was supposed to be turned on two
hours ago.
Point is, everything seemed so nice and cush' - we've really got a
nice place here, running water, flush toilets, showers, electricity. But
it's all quite tenuous as today proved. If procedure isn't followed and
everything else doesn't stay just right, you lose all that cush' pretty
fast. As it turns out, we made it alright for the night without having to
sacrifice anything. There is a smaller auxiliary water tank on the other
side of the house that doesn't get used but happened to have enough water to
take showers outside and the batteries hadn't been drained because no one
was home all day so we didn't crash our electrical system. Tomorrow will be
a different story depending on how well I do my job.
I knew about all of this stuff before I came but I guess I hadn't
internalized it until I got here. To think, how many people in Denver have
to fail to do their jobs, for whatever reason, for water and electricity to
stop flowing for the entire city? I don't know the answer to that but now I
know that here, in Markounda, the answer is three. The two guys we pay to
go to the well everyday and fill two carts full of water containers, push
them up to our house, carry them up the stairs to our water tower and fill
our 1000 liter tank and the guard who forgot to turn on the generator.
And in case you are wondering - we are the entire town when it comes
to running water and electricity.

The world just got even smaller

18 November 2009

Some days the world feels huge. Immensely huge. You look out the window of the plane and see the teeny little houses down below and think that each one of those is filled with a family and with a story and a personality. Each cluster of houses has its own village pride and its own high school with its own prom queen and English department politics and life altering infatuations. Our own experiences are just minuscule, momentary events in a world that would take lifetimes upon lifetimes to just have even the most cursory knowledge of. I figure that if it were your full time job to look every person in the world in the eye for one second and you did this without a break for 10 hours a day 6 days a week, no vacations – it would take you some 534 years. Needless to say, we are tiny and insignificant even on our own scale and anyone who says that they “know everyone” in a town or city or country is perceptually and mathematically challenged.

But today is not one of those days. Today, the world feels small. As I walk off my plane from my briefings in New York City and onto a train into Paris, switch to the metro, come up on the right street and cross the Bastille down the ally to the MSF-Paris office, sit down and have a coffee with a guy who just got back from Sri Lanka – the world seems smaller than it did last time I was here. I think it's because I know where I am going. A place where no one I have ever known well has ever even thought of. You add to the boundaries of your world and the places closer to you feel even closer.

Preparations

17 November 2009

How do you put your life on hold? Especially when what you are putting it on hold for is a different life or at least an addition to the life you want. My last week in Denver was a reminder of how much I love my life there – I love knowing the streets and the places, knowing that I can run into familiar faces wherever I go. Most importantly, I love my friends and my community and they have been so incredibly supportive of me and accepting of what I want to do. I don't want to end that life but the changes I want to make run contrary or at least separate to it. It makes preparing for this trip, this change, more confusing than anything I've prepared for before.

I did my readings, I went to my briefings, made my lists, double and triple check them. I set up my bills and delegated every task I thought need to but still... I feel like I have been locked in this extended version of that conversation, “No, you hang up,” “No, YOU hang up”. Now, I'm on the plane out of here and I feel like I am leaving something behind - it's not just getting ready to go but being ready to leave.

A Brief Note on Security

16 November 2009

So you have to have an invite to view this blog. This is not because I have some problem with people reading my thoughts or that I am a particularly shy person about sharing my opinions. Cue laughter. The reason for the privacy is that there is a real security issue with information coming from our operations. MSF relies entirely on pointed and careful communication with the parties involved the areas we work to maintain a safe environment for its staff and the community it works for. I know it may sound a little crazy but it happens – rebel groups and governments alike have access to the internet and will search for any information they can find to gather intelligence. People higher up than I am in MSF make the decisions about what gets shared and what doesn't and its for my security, my team's, and the entire organization.
With that in mind, I invite you to read freely here on this blog but please don't share it beyond that. Would that I post some clever story or interesting perception over the course of this adventure, don't copy and paste and forward it to your friends or your Facebook or whatever. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Welcome to the Blog/See ya later, Colorado

Just a quick note on my way out the door to let people know that I am actually posting here. Thanks again to everyone who helped me get here - I'll try not to disappoint. It might take a couple of days to get started but keep an eye out.

pavlo