And that happened . . .

Oh man. It's 2am and I can't sleep. My body is aching from some
undiagnosable ailment that paracetamol seems to work ok against. I'm a
little upset at this fact since tonight is the first night in a couple of
weeks where it's not too hot to sleep. A ferocious wind came through
yesterday afternoon, smelled like rain but then didn't, but at least cooled
things down. People were saying that there might be some mango rain - just
learned about it today - a kind of pre-rainy season rain that helps the
mangos ripen. Go figure, until today, everyone said that there would be 0
rain until end of April. Another example of me listening to people here
turning out to be the wrong thing to do.

Sorry I disappeared. I don't even know who I am apologizing to more, me or
the people who asked me to keep updated. That last post - well, I was
actually a little upset at myself for failing to get deeper. I never really
wanted to come here and write about curious cultural observations. At least
not exclusively. I also didn't want to write about things I would change my
mind about later. Turns out, that is all there is to write about here.
First impressions are happening non-stop and, frustratingly, I end up
interpreting most wrong. Since finishing my first month here I try every
morning to remind myself that whatever my assumptions for the day are, they
are probably wrong. For such a simple place, it's a little hard to get an
accurate reading.

So, now. I don't want to be vague anymore or bite my tongue afraid of
mentioning specifics. Amazing things are happening here. Everything that I
put down in this blog will probably turn out to be wrong in some way, from
some point of view at least, if not entirely. What I wanted to write about
instead of the stupid Christmas Pig story was the emergency patient transfer
to our referral hospital, 76km and 2.5 hours away. Rushing all the way to
get this young girl, not more than eighteen, who had a baby with no signs of
life in her belly, obstructed labor. Found out a week later that she was
actually 40, this was her 12th child and it ended up being born normally.
What a flipping ride.

Or about the woman who fell in the market while I was there with a team
fixing the well. Face first in the dirt with a baby on her back as the
whole market looked on, for just a second to confirm that she was having
some kind of seizure and then went back to their business. I went and took
the baby off her back, turned her on her side so she could breath and
radioed the doctor. We took her back to the inpatient clinic (IPD), she
recovered quickly, there's not really much we can do if everything is normal
after the fact, if the seizure isn't related to some other treatable
disease. Sent her on her way later that day. I thought I was saving her
life, but apparently this kind of thing happens to her often and she's still
around. I wasn't there to roll her over last time, and I won't be there
next time.

And a hundred other little stories, some about local economics - ask me one
day about Crepin's shoes - to farming practices, to water shortages. Oh,
yeah, that's a good one that I'll probably elaborate on later - we now have
one working well that produces about 10 liters/minute which, if pumped for
12 hours straight, would be about 1.8 liters/person/day in town. People are
drinking from the river. Funny thing is, it's apparently not a huge deal.
Just something to talk about, like the weather.

That's just been it. Figuring out what is a big deal. You can only make so
much of a big deal out of so much - everything is relative. When the
Chadian army was on the other side of the river wanting to escort some of
their people to retrieve the bodies of their kin who'd been massacred on our
side of the river, down the road some 25km . . . who were massacred in
retaliation for their ties to banditry on said road. And the CAR army didn't
want them to come in but they did anyhow? Was that a big deal? Yeah, I
suppose - I mean I spent 3 days with my jam bag packed trying to mentally
prepare to find myself in the middle of an international conflict. How
often have I found myself in the position of worrying about a foreign
military invading the town where I live? Funny thing is, a couple of weeks
later, it doesn't seem like a big deal. Eh, everything turned out fine.
Whatever the hell fine is here.

So. I'm sorry I haven't been posting. I've been more timid than I want to
be in life. I am finding my voice though, learning how to speak up in a way
that I feel doesn't cut short my openness to experience. In the past,
travelling for me has been about listening, observing. There's still plenty
of that to be done but to go the whole 9 months here without processing,
it's too much - I'll just crash when I'm done, throw away all the
experiences I put on my plate unable to digest them all at the same time.

Oh, and by the way, that Chadian army business is exactly the kind of stuff
that shouldn't get posted much farther than this invite only blog, ok? At
least for now.