ramblings of a workin' man

I just realized it’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve posted anything here. Huh. I just think maybe I’m not cut out for this type of journaling, at least not while I’m here. I’ll try to post every two weeks max, but I think the odds of posting every day (every other day, every week) may be slim.

In part I’m crediting this to the fact that the ‘new-ness’ has worn off a bit. Things feel remarkably normal for me now, and as such I don’t find I have as much to comment on – that gloss of difference for me is much diminished.

The Happy Spot…Stopped here for cold soft drinks, stopped nearby for bush meat out of a, well, vat. The bush meat didn’t turn out so good on the picture, so you get to see the Happy Spot. The owner was quite proud of her new establishment, and when asked about the name, she said, “Liberia is rebuilding! Jobs are coming back! Things are looking up! Why not the Happy Spot?” Fair enough!

I’m definitely busy, there’s a whole ton of stuff to do, but a lot of it’s work – and I try not to focus too much on it when I’m supposed to be “off” (like now). Plusses in work in the last couple weeks:
o No new massive cholera outbreaks
o No major car (“mobile”) troubles
o We’ve got water
o We’ve got electricity
o Construction of the clinic is proceeding well in hand (foundation trench completed, warehouse almost done, foundation to be poured next week!) (pictured: guys working on the warehouse
o We received a big drug shipment which means we’re not in rupture for a lot of medical items


Minuses? Yeah, a few of those:
o Small mobile trouble which left me on the side of the road in the bush. (hidden plus: I got to spend a night in Monrovia and have PIZZA! Yeah!)
o Still having ruptures in some medical items.
o 4M report is due May 5th … blech
o Found out the construction on the annex for SGBV leaks like a sieve…which is not good since the rains will be starting soon. I’m going to have to rebuild the whole thing.
o Also found out that the ‘examination tables’ that we requested be built were in fact built as…dining room tables. Which just isn’t that helpful for the midwife.

In twelve days, I’ll have been working for MSF for 3 months. Yikes!

We had kittens. Four of ‘em. We haven’t named them yet, but I think they should be: Gertrude, Bessie, Esther, and Matt Damon. We watched the Bourne Supremacy the night the kittens were born.

Got to play Settlers of Cataan the other night. That was really nice. I’ve been feeling a bit restless in the evenings after dinner. I’m trying not to go back to work once dinner is over, which then leaves me sort of milling about. On Wednesday we played settlers (Christian, Susanne and myself)) and it was a really nice way to unwind at the end of the day. The alternative is usually to go into one’s room by oneself and read or what-not, or sit on the front stoop and have a drink, or go to town and sit and have a drink. Since it would be really nice not to come back an alcoholic, I’m limiting myself to one night a week (beer). Of course, this means I’m becoming addicted to soft drink.

Let’s see…last week I got stuck in the bush. Yeppers. We were heading down to Kakata to buy some special bricks for this incinerator I’m building and had purchased our bricks and were headed back (it’s about a 4-5 hours drive). Driving along minding our own business when Yaah (the mobile) just up and stops. Huh. So we’re out and poking around, trying to figure out what the problem is.
The Landcruisers we use have two tanks for diesel. Front tank and rear tank. Each holds 90L. If you ask the drivers who have experience, they say this is from during the war. It seems it was quite common for rebels to ram your truck to damage the fuel tank so that you would run out of gas and then they could take what they wanted from you. With one tank up front, even if they damaged your rear tank you could still get away. Also for this reason, we’re always supposed to use the rear tank first, then switch to the front one when it’s empty.

We had known full well that the front tank was going to be empty for the trip back, but we should only use about half the rear tank – plenty to spare.

Well, except for one pesky fact: the rear tank didn’t work. Try as we might, we couldn’t get the engine to take diesel from the rear tank. We must have fiddled around with the damn thing for an hour before finally throwing up our hands and calling for rescue. All we needed to keep moving was a three foot length of tubing to siphon from the rear tank to the front. Could we find one? Nope. Not in any neighboring villages, not in the nearby refugee camp, nada. So we had to wait. And wait. And wait. Oh, yeah – and it was raining. Of course.

But, in the end, we made it to Monrovia by 2130, I spent the next day in Monrovia while Yaah was repaired (serious leak in the fuel tank combined with faulty relay for engaging the rear tank pump). And, the next evening, I got to have PIZZA! And it was GOOD! And I was EXCITED! about that. The pizza appropriately balanced the fact that I had to wear the same clothes for three days in a row.

Last weekend we went back to the mines in Yekepa so that our visitors (Christian – Head of Mission, and Anne – Procurement Officer for Liberia from Amsterdam) could get a bit of the great outdoors under their belts. It’s still nice, and this time I’m going to include some pictures here (I hope – if blogger and my pokey internet connection let me). It’s quite neat, and it was nice to get out and stretch our legs. However, I think I’m going to take a few weeks off from the mines – I’ve now been there twice in a month, and it’s nice and all but not _that_ nice. It’s a pleasant walk, and not too hard a drive, but there’s not so much to see that I need to go too many more times.

For the most part, since the newness has worn off, things are becoming a bit status quo, honestly. I’ve yet to figure out how to schedule my day, really, but it’s getting better. I’ve just accepted the fact that the first two hours of my day will be spent in chaos control as we try to get all the mobiles out to their various locations…including drug supplies, expats, national staff, patients, and other cargoes. The balance of my day tends to be spent putting out fires, which I don’t especially like but am slowly working on shifting to PROACTIVELY taking care of situations and not waiting for them to become emergencies…a chronic problem here. It means shifting an awful lot of how we (MSF staff, both national and expat) plan…or not, as is usually the case.

I’m struggling with my evenings a bit, as far as what to do with my time. By and large, once dinner is over the team sort of spreads off to their own activities. Which is perfectly reasonable, especially given the length of the day and the intensity of the activities we find ourselves in. For me, who (some of you may be surprised by this, but it’s true) is quite a social person, I do find it hard at times. I just need to get a little more motivated and organized, and come up with some solo activities that work for me. I think it’s especially hard as the logistician – I pretty much stay on base and don’t see many people all day, particularly the expats. The hospital staff are inundated with people all day and just need a break when they get back. It was really nice to play Settlers the other night, and I’ve been watching movies on occasion, and of course my old stand-by: reading; but I am also working on finding some ‘constructive’ activities to engage in if I’m by myself. Haven’t figured out which, yet, but I’ll get there. Any ideas would be welcome.

Last minute addition: Yesterday (Sunday) we made another day-trip. We went to a waterfall near Gbedin, about 45 minutes south-west of us. I was a little hesitant, after the last journey I made to a waterfall (near duotiayee) not only wasn’t much of a waterfall (small brook, really) but also as I got so dehydrated by the walk that I couldn’t eat anything or drink anything for 2 days except for Oral Re-hydration Salts – which, trust me, aren’t that tasty. Any time I tried to drink water or eat anything, it would just come right back up again. Whee!

But, in this case, it was about 1.5 hours each way, and on Saturday we had gotten quite some rain. And the waterfall was an _actual_ waterfall, not a tiny facsimile thereof. It was quite a nice hike (walk), although it was still bloody hot and humid, and I still managed to be dehydrated, just not so badly as the previous time. Pictured here: Beryl in front of the waterfall. We had two (three) guides who were quite nice and did a good job finding the place. I understand that the expats had tried to find this waterfall once before but ended up with unreliable guides…which meant they walked around in the bush for 4 hours.

A neat sight: people making cane juice in the bush. They’ve got these whole setups going there…some of them have motors, but mostly they’re hand-pushed cane mills that squish the sugar cane to get the juice. Then they boil the juice and distill it into something that’s an awful lot like really raw rum. Actually, it probably is raw rum. And it’s good.

I’ve found I quite like it, except for the smell. If you mix it in a drink and don’t take a big whiff before you try, it’s quite good. If you take a smell first, well, then it maybe doesn’t seem so good.

If anyone has any ideas on where I should go for my first holiday (coming up in May or June) in East Africa…please tell me! I have not a clue about most of this part of the world, so I don’t really have any ideas as to what I may want to do or go see…

Ciao for now…if anybody has any requests on topics they’d like me to expound upon, please advise…
taj