Go Egypt!!

Had a pretty good weekend - made Jack go into the office yesterday to talk to me about filing (poor thing) but hopefully made up for it by taking him out to this astronomically expensive French restaurant with Karishma, my in-coming flatmate. The bill for the three of us came to a ridiculous $175. Right, need to start watching my wallet.

As for today, spent the morning moving furniture around and feeling well chuffed with the result. Here is the main room of my flat:



Still needs a bit of work ie a rug, paintings, bookcases, cushions etc but I reckon it's just about livable for the mo...

The rest of the day was spent watching Egypt beat Cameroon for the African cup (Egypt did deserve to win but I did feel rather sorry for Cameroon in the end - afterall, not entirely sure how Egypt can really qualify as "Africa") and walking aimlessly around Petionville. While meandering around the place, I had a number of Haitians ask me if I was alright which was a lovely thought - they're obviously not used to seeing a "blanc" walk around obviously purely residential (not to mention "non-blanc" areas). For those of you who know me and are mystified - a "blanc" is any foreigner. Apparently, they even call African-Americans "blanc"!


Not feeling particularly inspired to write more so here is a picture of the front of my block of flats:

And a peek at the street where I live:

There are worse places to live, on reflection.

8th February - By the light of the silvery ...

Writing this by torchlight – our inverter in the flat has crashed out and have no electricity for the second night running. Jack’s done the sensible and sociable thing and crashed our neighbour’s flat downstairs but I’m feeling far too tired to do the pretty. I actually don’t mind the lack of electricity – it reminds of holidays and exotic places. And with my MP3 player behind me and a strong lantern next to me, it has that cosy cocoon-like feeling that’s quite soothing after a pretty long day.

That’s not to say that I won’t welcome the return of power tomorrow (insha’allah) – this would probably get old very quickly...

It struck me yesterday when talking to Jack how quickly time has gone by. Jack has only another week left and has basically blocked off next week to concentrate on his handover notes. Leaving me in charge. [Gulp.] I suppose I’d been thinking of him as a security blanket – someone to turn to whenever I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing (ie most of the time) and to think that he’s not going to be there much longer scares me. On the other, feeling a bit more centred – a bit more aware of what’s going on. Had a meeting with the Country Director this afternoon which made me realise that I do know what I’m talking about and I can improve things in this organisation. I may have a crap memory and be rather scatter-brained but I can still do the job. I hope.

I realised I’ve been here nearly three weeks already and spent most of that time in the office and home – really haven’t explored the place or found out much about the country I’m in. Where I’m living, it’s so easy to think that I’m in some gorgeous mountain village in the south of France which just happens to be populated by mostly black people – this is to the extent that I’m continually surprised when I remember that I can’t walk around at night or take public transport wherever I wish.

Been reading this book called “Bonjour Blanc” – basically the well-written ramblings of a journalist who spent 4 months in Haiti. It was written a few years ago so when Haiti was a lot more unstable than it is now, to a scary extent from the sounds of things. Anyway, there’s a lot of incidental but fascinating tidbits that the author mentions: such as how Haiti helped Simon Bolivar win independence for Venezuela in the 1800s on the conditions that should he get to power, he would free all the slaves in his country and recognise Haiti who was a bit of a pariah state back in the day. Also, how the expression “OK” comes from the phrase “Aux Cayes” (Cayes being a port city in the south of the country) that used to be stamped on shipments of Haitian rum that made its way to New York docks. Whereas other shipments had to be checked for quality, it was apparently well known that the goods “Aux Cayes” were, well, “OK” (sorry, couldn’t resist).
I like stuff like that – once I find some time to breathe, would love to find out more stuff – I mean, I can’t know any less about the place. Need to find a proper bookshop here and get out more. Mmmmnnhh. Weekend round the corner....

P.S. Found out that I will have to share the flat with this Asian girl for a few months. Not really looking forward to it but it’ll probably be good for me. And it’ll be nice if we actually get along to have someone to have late night conversations on the balcony.

Karnaval! But I'm still in the office...

While the rest of Haiti is out partying and/or enjoying the Karnaval public holidays, Jack and I have been stuck in the office trying to finalise our year end reporting. It's been bloody frustrating - being the paranoid type, I've felt like there was some sort of IT conspiracy to stop Jack and I from ever having the time to do a proper handover. I was actually looking forward to three days in the office - just the two of us - sorting through issues and getting to grips with the job without the distraction of day to day work. However, it's already halfway through and we still haven't got this sack of shit off our desks...

Excuse my language. I'm just feeling pretty pissed off and so damn tired of the whole thing. I actually long for the days of doing accounts on excel spreadsheets because then you have the control and you can find out what exactly went wrong and fix it. Software and databases are all very well but are the absolute shit when they get buggy and go wrong for inexplicable reasons.

OK, got that self-pitying whinge out of my system. I think I'll grab some lunch and then concentrate on my handover for the rest of the day.

Less work-related, I did manage to get to Karnaval on Sunday evening. I went with work colleagues and we got tickets to one of the stands that lined each side of the carnival route. And when I say stands, I'm not talking small-scale here - I'm talking fucking huge: each were the height of a three storey building and had their own colour scheme (t-shirts provided) sponsored by a particular Haitian corporate. It felt a bit like being in a football arena with hugely jacked up supporters on each stand dancing around and trying to one-up each other.

Talking about the dancing. It's all about shaking that thang, baby!! And have to say, whatever you say about Haitians, they are certainly not shy displaying their assets. I'm not sure if beauty standards vary here but hotpants/very tight trousers plus tight/crop tops seem to be the order of the day. And this seems to go especially for the larger women out there...

The actual real disapointment were the floats themselves. Most of then were just huge two-story trucks going past with brimfuls of revellers and ginormous sound systems. Only a handful were actual floats with costumes and sets. The ones I did see were fantastic but too few.

Towards the end, though, I was getting so tired that I was curling up and dozing despite the noise. It was a good experience but not sure if I really want to repeat - or if I do, only if I go with a bunch of mates rather than work people...

Highs and lows...

God, this day has been both utterly fantastic and completely shit.

The fantastic bit was in the morning. If you've been reading my blog, you'd know by now that Saturday morning=shopping. Found this fantastic shop which sold all sorts of household stuff including A RICE COOKER!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy, I was practically skipping. I think my designated driver for the day thought I was definitely off my rocker but was far too polite to say anything. If that wasn't enough, I also found a supermarket that sold chopsticks and proper soy sauce, not to meantion Haagan Daaz.

Life was good. At least until Jack and I made it to the office in the afternoon.

Yesterday, we had finally sorted out all the bugs that were plaguing our financial system and got a very close approximation of our year end accounts. All that was left to do was to tidy up loose ends and alter a few donor allocation journals. But no, the Powers That Be obviously decided that they had to really fuck us up but good. After a couple of hours of happily passing final journals, we did our final check with one hour to go on our server (it shuts down automatically at 5pm every day) and voila - back to square one with no end in sight.

On a more positive note, found that a friend of mine who's just arrived in Beirut for a month's stay is actually not going to be working in a Palestinian camp. I'm usually pretty oblivious to danger but I was pretty worried about that. Now I'm just jealous of her and missing Beirut like crazy. She also reminded me of Forbes annual "Most dangerous destinations" list for 2008 - they are as follows:

1. Somalia
2. Iraq
3. Afghanistan
4. Haiti
5. Pakistan
6. Sudan
7. DRC
8. Lebanon
9. Zimbabwe
10. Palestine

I won't even start to go on about how stupid this list is (Haiti more dangerous than Sudan? Lebanon more dangerous than Palestine?) except to note that the person who wrote the accompanying article also wrote an article on healthy airport food. And besides, how can you categorise whole countries - some larger than Western Europe. Sure, dining at the Ritz in Khartoum is probably less dangerous than walking around Cite Soleil in Port au Prince dripping with jewelry, but how about South Sudan or Darfur? Those are bloody war zones... And I really can't believe Lebanon is even on that list: as long as you're not a Palestinian or a politician, and you're not stupid, Lebanon's fine. Except for the huge SUVs and no traffic rules.

Upshot to this list is that I'm feeling well hard having been to half the places on it ;-). Another five to go...

1st Feb - Nothing like a good chinese...

Photo of me and my fellow inductees in Dublin two weeks ago. If you know me personally, I would hope you would have no problem identifying me. If you have just stumbled onto this blog while bored at work, please feel free to imagine me as the best looking one.

Have just come back from a huge chinese and feeling well-stuffed and happy with life. Spent the last two days being bludgeoned on the head by our Great Pains system which decided that the day before our year end reports were all due, this was the perfect time to get all buggy on us. We figured out the problem just in the nick of time (literally while we were dragging our team out to lunch) and life is looking sweet again...

Carnival next week!!