Grumpy this morning.
Woke up on the wrong side of the bed despite going home early (ish) last night from a Konpa festival. Festival was fantastic and was really impressed about how well it was staged - reminded me of those August weekend festivals in Hyde Park where you can sit around with a bunch of mates and listen to great music on a sunny day. [sigh] Getting a bit homesick...
It's 6.56am on a morning morning and am just about to face a nightmarish couple of weeks at work with budget revisions having to be done before our Country Director goes off on leave for a whole month at the end of the week, and quarterly reporting needing to be done before next Wednesday. Not to mention donor reporting also due at the end of this week. Ugh.
Just need to get through the next 2 weeks and then I have 5 lovely days in New York in which to totally indulge myself. Really couldn't afford to with the huge amount of money I spent last month on Cuba but what the hell. At the moment, having one of those jobs with a complete lack of responsibility where you clock in at 9am and clock out at 5pm sounds like heaven - what the hell did I have against them?
Anyway, [deep breath] better fact the music...
Monday 28 July 2008
Saturday 19 July 2008
Large Castles and Magic Sex on the Beach
Yep, capital letters r us. It makes me feel important, which is always a good thing.
Anyway, after all this whining and moaning, I thought I'd better try to sell Haiti. Yes, it has it's riots, poverty, dirt, kidnappings, lack of infrastructure.
But....
Yep, that's Labardie beach near Cap Haitian in the north of the country. And if Emma had played her cards right, where you're looking at is where she could have had a "Magical Sexual Experience" with the hunchbacked 83 year old married proprietor of the guesthouse we were staying in...
Just across the bay is a private beach surrounded on all sides by barbed wire. This is where luxury cruise ships dock to "experience Haiti" and come back raving about how much they lurrrve the place. Sarcasm and geriatric sex aside, this is a paradise place. Just a pity it's so far away.
This is Cap Haitian itself - a really nice laid back town. Very different from the overwhelming business of PaP.
Also, for the full tourist experience, there is The Citadelle. Built on a huge fucking mountain (well, more of a hill if you have to be perfectly accurate) in the middle of Bum Fuck Nowhere, it's Haiti's number one tourist attraction. It was built a couple of hundred years ago soon after Haiti's independence by Henri Christophe, Haiti's one and only King.
King Christophe was a bit of a character - you'd have to be to crown youself King. He orginally started building this fortress on the orders of Dessaline in the belief that the French would invade to recapture their colony, and continued after Dessaline's death and the subsequent division of Haiti into Northern Kingdom and Southern Republic. In the end the castle was never used, and Christophe ended up committing suicide (with a silver bullet) to avoid the ignominy of being defeated by Petion during the North/South civil that erupted soon after Independence.
Living in Petionville and not having much use for Kings, I suppose I don't really appreciate Christophe's finer points. However, he did create a bloody spectacular castle. Have a lookie:
Despite all of that, here is my favourite sight of the north. Oink oink.
Pics from Cuba and Engagement Blues
Well, here I am having a lazy evening of it - should get off my arse and actually have a think about what I want to do with the 5 days of leave I have in August for my [gulp] 29th birthday. New York? Dominican Republic? Miami again? Bum Fuck Nowhere? Whatever it is, it' going to be a somewhat depressing experience: one more year closer to the grave. One more year without a mortgage. Or any idea of what I want to do with my life.
Or boyfriend. Grrrrr....
Just found out this morning that two ex-colleagues whom I worked with in Lebanon have just got engaged. To say that this blindsided me would be somewhat of an understatement - I was practically choking on my corn flakes. Would have been a rather embarrassing trip to the hospital, have to say. I had absolutely no clue when I was there that there was anything between them. Of course, now I look back, they did spend a lot of time together and obviously liked each a great deal but [whiny voice] I thought they were just good friends... In my defense, she's an extremely vivacious Lebanese in her forties who could have her pick of guys, and he's a 25 year old blue-eyed American. I always thought she saw him more as a younger brother but shows you how much I know. OK, I admit it: unless I stumble across them in flagrante on the National Director's desk, I'm pretty much oblivious to these things. Now I've got this image in my mind - noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
Anyway, to celebrate singletonness, here are some pics from Cuba. This is from a boat trip that we took near Santa Clara to get to a restaurant (the things we do for food) and later a waterfall:
Or boyfriend. Grrrrr....
Just found out this morning that two ex-colleagues whom I worked with in Lebanon have just got engaged. To say that this blindsided me would be somewhat of an understatement - I was practically choking on my corn flakes. Would have been a rather embarrassing trip to the hospital, have to say. I had absolutely no clue when I was there that there was anything between them. Of course, now I look back, they did spend a lot of time together and obviously liked each a great deal but [whiny voice] I thought they were just good friends... In my defense, she's an extremely vivacious Lebanese in her forties who could have her pick of guys, and he's a 25 year old blue-eyed American. I always thought she saw him more as a younger brother but shows you how much I know. OK, I admit it: unless I stumble across them in flagrante on the National Director's desk, I'm pretty much oblivious to these things. Now I've got this image in my mind - noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
Anyway, to celebrate singletonness, here are some pics from Cuba. This is from a boat trip that we took near Santa Clara to get to a restaurant (the things we do for food) and later a waterfall:
And these are some kids who were determined to pose for me next to the Che Guavara monument. Soon afterwards when they discovered the (pretty crappy) video facility that I have on my camera, they all started showing off their somersauts and wrestling moves. Pretty impressive, actually.
And here's "typical" street scene in Trinidad, a city on the south coast of Cuba where we spent most of our holiday. Trinidad is picture perfect as cities go and pleasingly laid back. We stumbled onto a carnival on our first night which was crazy. Made us realise that 8 year old girls can move their hips better than we could. Yeah, but can they manage a EUR6m budget spread across 22 projects? Methinks not...
This has gotten me into a pic upload/holiday mood. Think will upload those Haiti pics.
Friday 11 July 2008
Post Holiday Blues and the Walking Wounded
It is now just after 5pm and I’m stuck in the office for another hour until our night driver can come to collect me. You know one of those days where you’ve actually managed to do a number of things but still feel like you’ve had no real focus? Yep, it’s been one of those. What’s good (or bad depending on your viewpoint) is that I feel remarkably guilt-free about it: I’m still in the last throes of holiday mode AND I just got injured this morning in the line of duty…
Before you start imagining wounds inflicted while protecting food shipments from marauding gangs or while jumping out of helicopters into a swarm of gun fire to sweep amazingly cute toddlers out of the path of danger - remember first that I am an accountant not an idiot, and secondly I am amazingly mal-coordinated and just a tad absent-minded.
I actually was just on the wrong side of a dispute with the road leading from my home to the office. It predictably resulted in my grazing my knees and hands, and any pretension to dignity that I ever had with my neighbouring Haitians. So, went home, patched myself up (used a bandage for the FIRST TIME EVER), threw my blood-stained [if you look really really hard] skirt in the laundry basket, worried a little about the apparent bits of dirt that seemed embedded in the wound, shrugged, and checked my tetanus vaccination expiry date. When I got driven to work an hour later, had a rather impressive bandage round my knee and was limping, again rather impressively.
I have an impressionable staff.
So, enough rambling about my heroic defeat at the hands of a heinous road. Post holiday blues is the next subject on the table as it’s only 5.20pm and still have 40 mins to go.
I came back last week from almost 2 weeks traveling around Cuba starting at La Habana and flying out of Santiago via Santa Clara and Trinidad. Did things like walking around almost deserted streets in tattered colonials towns in the early hours of the morning, horseback riding, soft-core hiking, soft-core dancing, soft-core drinking, getting frustrated at the lack of tea in the whole country, enduring long bus journeys, eating quite average to bad food, thinking about the good and bad of communism, visiting lack-luster museums, stumbling across carnivals, getting conned by the double monetary system, enjoying old soviet-style propaganda, and wondering why the hell I took salsa dancing lessons instead Spanish. All in all, it was a pretty successful holiday. I mean, I got myself a large blue Che Guavara flag…
It’s most probably the language thing and the complete lack of knowledge about its history and culture, but I never really feel in love with Cuba and I was really expecting to. My friend whom I conned into traveling with me to Cuba (and later on to Haiti), will doubtless say that I was expecting too much, but I did go away with a bit of a sense of disappointment despite having had a pretty good time. It did make me think about how I don’t even have a passing knowledge of Latin American/Spanish Caribbean, or Spain for that matter. They could be on a different planet for all I know.
Anyway, I was traveling around with Emma – an Irish girl I first met in Syria two years ago. The only thing we really have in common is a love of travel (though for very different reasons) and the fact that we are both only girls of single mothers. Looking back on it, I’m surprised that we were still speaking to each other by the end of it – especially as it’s been rather some time since I’d traveled with someone and completely forgot how to do it. We did do the sensible thing and take separate rooms after we started getting on each others’ nerves and that was fantastic. OK, not the separation as such I hasten to add, but the knowledge that after doing your own thing for the day, there was someone to have dinner with and tell about all the ridiculous things you experienced and did.
In a fit of distraction, Emma agreed to fly back with me to Haiti and spend a few days here with me. I honestly don’t think she really knew what she was getting herself into, poor thing. We flew up to Cap Haitian last weekend and visited the Citadelle – THE great monument of Haiti which, I have to say, rather underwhelmed us. It was a pretty impressive vista but was crawling with busloads of MINUSTAH (UN peacekeepers) troops in their blue caps taking pictures of everything and Hola-ing us. So not the deserted castle I was expecting. Also, our guide was frankly awful and seemed to want to speak to everyone apart from us. He told us absolutely sod all and it was a shame because it could have been a great place if we had someone to bring it to life.
To make up for that, we stayed at a gorgeous guesthouse at Labardie which was literally ON the beach (see photo which I will upload when I can be arsed). It had old-fashioned stone walls, hammocks, beautiful paradise beach – just the sort of place to take a significant other and shag each other silly. Also a virtue that it has no cell phone coverage and you can only there by boat. I had to leave after just one night and was pretty upset about it. However, seems like all I missed was being hit on by the 83 year old proprietor of the place who promised Emma “a magical sexual experience” in the sea. His wife had gone to bed, you see… I always miss the fun.
Anyway, Emma left for the Dominican Republic day before yesterday so feeling like the holiday is truly over. It was lovely going home to someone for lunch and eating out on the balcony – definitely reminded me where priorities should be and that a social life is actually a Good Thing and not something that just takes time away from Work. Also, found out that a good colleague and friend of mine is leaving so made me think about my own future here – and about what I want to do afterwards. Sometimes you can get so busy and stressed out that you don’t actually remember that you’re here by choice.
Ugh, the pus on my knee is starting to drip down my leg. Is that normal or am I getting an infection. Ah, what the hell. Will make myself a cup of tea and read a trashy book.
Before you start imagining wounds inflicted while protecting food shipments from marauding gangs or while jumping out of helicopters into a swarm of gun fire to sweep amazingly cute toddlers out of the path of danger - remember first that I am an accountant not an idiot, and secondly I am amazingly mal-coordinated and just a tad absent-minded.
I actually was just on the wrong side of a dispute with the road leading from my home to the office. It predictably resulted in my grazing my knees and hands, and any pretension to dignity that I ever had with my neighbouring Haitians. So, went home, patched myself up (used a bandage for the FIRST TIME EVER), threw my blood-stained [if you look really really hard] skirt in the laundry basket, worried a little about the apparent bits of dirt that seemed embedded in the wound, shrugged, and checked my tetanus vaccination expiry date. When I got driven to work an hour later, had a rather impressive bandage round my knee and was limping, again rather impressively.
I have an impressionable staff.
So, enough rambling about my heroic defeat at the hands of a heinous road. Post holiday blues is the next subject on the table as it’s only 5.20pm and still have 40 mins to go.
I came back last week from almost 2 weeks traveling around Cuba starting at La Habana and flying out of Santiago via Santa Clara and Trinidad. Did things like walking around almost deserted streets in tattered colonials towns in the early hours of the morning, horseback riding, soft-core hiking, soft-core dancing, soft-core drinking, getting frustrated at the lack of tea in the whole country, enduring long bus journeys, eating quite average to bad food, thinking about the good and bad of communism, visiting lack-luster museums, stumbling across carnivals, getting conned by the double monetary system, enjoying old soviet-style propaganda, and wondering why the hell I took salsa dancing lessons instead Spanish. All in all, it was a pretty successful holiday. I mean, I got myself a large blue Che Guavara flag…
It’s most probably the language thing and the complete lack of knowledge about its history and culture, but I never really feel in love with Cuba and I was really expecting to. My friend whom I conned into traveling with me to Cuba (and later on to Haiti), will doubtless say that I was expecting too much, but I did go away with a bit of a sense of disappointment despite having had a pretty good time. It did make me think about how I don’t even have a passing knowledge of Latin American/Spanish Caribbean, or Spain for that matter. They could be on a different planet for all I know.
Anyway, I was traveling around with Emma – an Irish girl I first met in Syria two years ago. The only thing we really have in common is a love of travel (though for very different reasons) and the fact that we are both only girls of single mothers. Looking back on it, I’m surprised that we were still speaking to each other by the end of it – especially as it’s been rather some time since I’d traveled with someone and completely forgot how to do it. We did do the sensible thing and take separate rooms after we started getting on each others’ nerves and that was fantastic. OK, not the separation as such I hasten to add, but the knowledge that after doing your own thing for the day, there was someone to have dinner with and tell about all the ridiculous things you experienced and did.
In a fit of distraction, Emma agreed to fly back with me to Haiti and spend a few days here with me. I honestly don’t think she really knew what she was getting herself into, poor thing. We flew up to Cap Haitian last weekend and visited the Citadelle – THE great monument of Haiti which, I have to say, rather underwhelmed us. It was a pretty impressive vista but was crawling with busloads of MINUSTAH (UN peacekeepers) troops in their blue caps taking pictures of everything and Hola-ing us. So not the deserted castle I was expecting. Also, our guide was frankly awful and seemed to want to speak to everyone apart from us. He told us absolutely sod all and it was a shame because it could have been a great place if we had someone to bring it to life.
To make up for that, we stayed at a gorgeous guesthouse at Labardie which was literally ON the beach (see photo which I will upload when I can be arsed). It had old-fashioned stone walls, hammocks, beautiful paradise beach – just the sort of place to take a significant other and shag each other silly. Also a virtue that it has no cell phone coverage and you can only there by boat. I had to leave after just one night and was pretty upset about it. However, seems like all I missed was being hit on by the 83 year old proprietor of the place who promised Emma “a magical sexual experience” in the sea. His wife had gone to bed, you see… I always miss the fun.
Anyway, Emma left for the Dominican Republic day before yesterday so feeling like the holiday is truly over. It was lovely going home to someone for lunch and eating out on the balcony – definitely reminded me where priorities should be and that a social life is actually a Good Thing and not something that just takes time away from Work. Also, found out that a good colleague and friend of mine is leaving so made me think about my own future here – and about what I want to do afterwards. Sometimes you can get so busy and stressed out that you don’t actually remember that you’re here by choice.
Ugh, the pus on my knee is starting to drip down my leg. Is that normal or am I getting an infection. Ah, what the hell. Will make myself a cup of tea and read a trashy book.
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