What to say...

Friday evening and waiting for our night driver to pick me up for dinner with the boss and the internal auditor...

Actually, it's not as bad as it sounds - I really like my boss and have bonded (as much as is possible) with Zoe. But still, not my ideal way to spend Friday night. It has been crazy over here, though - the pain of uploading revised 2008 budgets which you know are completely useless due to the apparent freefall of the Euro since when they were done. And then preparing for 2009 detailed budgets/activity plans... Oh yes, small matter of quarterly reporting to Dublin. And the internal audit.

So, same old same old.

What has been pretty depressing, though, is reading about what's been happening across the world. In a rare moment of reason, the BBC World Service actually spent most of their newshour today on the DRC and the events happening over there instead of boring us with things we already know about the US election.

DRC was my second mission after Darfur - which sounds well hard but my missions at that time were quick in/out deals to sort out the latest financial crisis (of which there were many...). Still, as wretched as Goma the city was, it's hard to describe the effect that the East DRC has on you - it's too bland to say that it's beautiful: it's so much more primal than that. To be surrounded by jungle and overlooking Lake Kivu - however long I live, I will never forget that frisson... When I was there back in 2005, in contrast to most of the surrounding area Goma actually felt very safe due to the large contingent of MONUC soldiers over there. Still, you always had a sense that it couldn't last, that there were too factors pulling the area down the abyss, too many "skirmishes" and "incidents". And it looks like it's finally happened. To be honest, it's miracle it's taken that long for something to finally break.

OK, driver has arrived. Let's hope when I get back, I'll be in a better mood.