3 o'clock high

I never blog in the day time.  It’s 15h00.  The reports that I didn’t want to do last week are done – the MSR, the TSR, the KPIs, the VFU sheet, my project equipment inventory list, and the 8 page narrative report that ties it all together.  Apparently, we do this every 4 months.  You’d figure that giving things away, charity, should be simple.

 

I am mostly caught up on supply papers. Still procrastinating a couple of receptions but I’ll have to get to them before the generator goes off with the printer.  And the fan.  It’s hot and I just figured out, on close examination of the fan (that only runs when the generator is running otherwise it’d suck the batteries dry) that there’s actually a fair chance that those whirling stamped sheet metal blades could just come down from the ceiling with little to no notice and cause some pretty serious damage.  Would cut your head off or anything but could result in some stitches, certainly some triple antibiotic ointment (which we don’t have, funny enough – only antiseptics) and would probably result in a broken laptop screen. The fan is attached to the ceiling with a bent 10 penny nail.

 

Water and Sanitation advisor from Amsterdam passed through here yesterday/today.  Learned all kinds of things that I would have thought I knew but didn’t really.  At the last minute he ran a test that I think might have just solved out team diarrhea problem we’ve been having off and on for the last couple of weeks.  Turns out that when concentrated chlorine is exposed to high humidity, it absorbs the moisture and begins to break down, becoming less potent.  Didn’t know that.  I had followed up on chlorination procedures recently, suspecting hygiene myself but everything added up as it should – I didn’t account for bad chlorine.  Rainy season stuck it’s foot in the door just about a couple of weeks ago and the ambient humidity been high ever since.  Switched out our chlorine concentrate for smaller, less susceptible to contamination containers. I’ll run the tests tomorrow and see if we’re back to normal on the chlorine side.  Total sum of the visit? A bucket of HTH chlorine, a couple of cases of soap, and a little hygiene awareness campaign would fix at least as many problems as a whole warehouse full of drugs can.

 

Landed a plane today. Not as a pilot, but as the air traffic controller.  Pretty easy since there’s no air traffic – you just keep the cows and little kids off the runway and speak little airplane talk – Red526, runway two one clear for landing, wind two zero, speed five to ten.  Actually, it’s totally routine now, plane comes twice a week.  Anyhow, today, right after landing, the military jeep the base in town rolled into the airstrip full of soldiers and with the big swivel gun obviously loaded (it’s not usually). Rolled in like they meant business.  No business, just looking.  Scared the crap out of me for about .5 seconds. Then I saw the lieutenant was wearing camouflage hot pants. Awesome.  We don’t get enough hot pants around here.