My first awareness of the new day begins at 4 am. I’ve been rudely awakened by a rat…or 2…or 15 (my imagination argues for the latter) scratching about in the ceiling boards. The boards are made of styrofoam, so the slightest movement is amplified and I’m convinced they’re jumping, tearing, digging and using ratty-power tools in an attempt to break through the ceiling. Any moment, I’m going to have a flying rat burst through the boards and land like a clumsy trapeze rat – thankfully not directly on me – but caught in my all-protective mosquito net shroud.
….a wonderful way to begin consciousness.
Being conscious brings to mind the 95-item to-do list lurking in the back of my brain, and particularly the most salient 3-5 items that are eating away at me. This begins a noisy barrage of thoughts that cycle again and again through my semi-conscious brain. This internal noise is accompanied by a soundtrack floating across the compound walls. On a good night, the soundtrack consists of far off drumming from a funeral wake. On nights that require an extra dose of tolerance, it’s an all-night revival that sounds like it’s emanating from my living room, complete with loud exclamations of “HALLELUJAH!!!!”, impressively off-key singing, and frequent sound system feed-back. Eventually, consciousness surrenders and my body is able to return to sleep for the last remaining hours of rest.
Around 7, I wake up without an alarm, as I’ve lost my ability to wake up at any other hour. If my running buddy is around, and both of us are in good health, we begin the day with a 20 minute run through the waking town, past tooth-brushers on the street (public tooth brushing is an important neighbourly bonding event in Sudan).
A man watching the morning world go by as he
brushes his teeth outside his compound.
Breakfast consists of a cup of tea or perhaps some Ovaltine (a tradition I picked up in
Can you read that sign? Well, it says "Salvation Automatic
Bakery", sadly, it has since fallen down and they've
replaced it with a boring name, but it will always be the
Salvation Automatic to me.
My house mates and I enjoying a special Sundaymorning breakfast one day in our usual breakfast
spot on the veranda.
At 8:10 (the exact time that keeps the most people happy), I head out the door and round up the carpool to head to the office. Most days, I’m the designated bus driver. I drive a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck. It almost makes me feel Albertan. Who knew I’d have to go all the way to
The fully-load back seat, ready to be
jostled and jiggled.
The drive to work is conducive to promoting digestion, exercising core muscles for balance, and getting concussions. It’s impossible to drive more than 30-40km/hr, as the craters, ravines, mountains and gaping pits in the road would never allow it. We drive past school children in their green and white uniforms, with bright pink plastic chairs being carried to school on their heads. They shout ‘MORNING!! making us smile at their earnest waving as we drive past.
After a round of “good mornings” at the office, I settle down at my desk, download emails and open up my 95-item to do list to try to decide where to start. I generally make an over-optimistic (or, as my colleages and I have taken to calling it, an “under-pessimistic”) prediction of what I can accomplish, and set an impressive list of priorities for the day. I start on item 1, and rarely get past 2 or 3. Day after day, I forget that in
At my desk, hearing the woes of my partner
in logistical crimes.
My regular tasks consist of things like preparing drugs and medical supply cargo for the weekly flight to the field, compiling statistical data from clinic reports for quarterly donor reports, writing proposals, making security plans, and various other tasks that fall into my newly self-named “Department of Inter-Departmental Affairs”, of which I am the lone and vital member. I’ve decided “Program Assistant” isn’t quite descriptive enough for what I do, and since I’m in essence the “catch-all” to support all program activities, logistics, security, IT, and basic office operations…head of the Department of Inter-Departmental Affairs might better sum it up. Another suggestion for my job title has been “the Glue”.
In addition to my regular and planned tasks, I’m bound to get a few dozen interruptions and unexpected surprises during the day. Things like…our flight today has been completely disrupted due to rains making airstrips un-landable. So we have to plan a new route, provide last minute cargo for new destinations, and throw out a week of well-laid plans….Or things like: “Kendrah, there’s something wrong with my computer, can you have a look?”, and finding the “blue screen of death”, not knowing how to respond to the “blue screen of death”, and spending several hours researching on line, getting online support from IT-wise friends, and exercising trial and error problem solving techniques….Or things like: one of our staff is deathly ill this morning – we need to figure out if he has malaria, if we need to evacuate him, if he’s been taking enough fluids”… Or things like: there’s some shooting around town today, we don’t know what’s going on, we ought to stay put, things might escalate… Or things like: a sudden massive deluge of rain from the heavens, which turns our road into a river (complete with a newly-created waterfall), our bridge has collapsed and the water is backing up into the compound, and we need to do something quick to avoid a flood….Or things like….I think you get the idea.
This is my desk. And this is two men trying to
capture a rat that has decided to hide behind my
desk. Note my absence in the picture.
Me getting an RDT test, to see if I had malaria on a sick day.
The road by our office, turned into a rushing river.
At 2 pm, I realize that I haven’t eaten lunch yet and I’m growing faint with hunger. Rice and beans…my favourite. It really is. The food is good and my tummy is grateful. If my late lunch coincides with any other late-lunch eaters, we chat about how many cows fetches a bride in Sudan, compare R&R plans, share the burden of the morning’s frustrations, talk about our plans to get a pet goat, or dream of ways to solve Sudan’s problems.
Lunch time.
Back at my desk, and 100% absorbed in the tasks before me, 5:30 appears out of the blue. If it’s a pre-flight day, a little extra oomph from adrenaline spurs me on, rushing out to collect boxes of drugs from our drug store room, printing documents to send to the field, making inevitable last minute changes to our plans, and trying to squeeze in my “real work” in between the madness.
Loading drugs at the medical store room.
Thankfully, with a few extra hands on this occasion.
At 5:30, the conscientious among us, suggest that we ought to go home. At this point, the wise people make an early trip home, and the admitted workaholics among us, keep going on most days until around 7…7:30…8:00, when we pack ourselves supper to-go from the office dining room, and make the bumpy journey home.
Home sweet home at the end of an early day.
If I’m having a “wise” day, I come home early. I realize I need a break, and so I play a game of badminton, do some pilates, do some gardening or have a cup of tea and compare days with my housemate. Taking a shower to cleanse myself of the day’s grime is an integral part of the winding-down process.
My running-buddy, colleague and favourite neighbour,
watering our newly-planted garden plot.
On an “admitted workaholic” day, I stay at the office until the abovementioned hours. I come home utterly exhausted, and realizing I need some kind of break, I eat my pre-packed dinner accompanied by an episode of West Wing. This works wonders.
My living-room. Excellent for a book-read, or
West Wing at the end of a long day.
After option 1 or 2 for the close of a day, being more often the “admitted workaholic” than the “wise one”, I frequently revisit my computer for a late night session. I’ve discovered that I’m a highly effective worker in the night’s late hours. So I spend my day collecting things for the to-do list, and spend the night trying to achieve them. It’s a bad habit, resulting in ever decreasing amounts of sleep. But it does allow me to get a few things knocked off the troublesome list. (This blog is about confessions, right? Well…my name is Kendrah, and I’m a workaholic.)
Finally, my head hits the pillow, with a prayer for deep rest and that the rats will simply want to sit quietly and whisper to one another this night.
My bed. With my all-protective mosquito net above.
~~~~~~~~~~
Coming soon in future entries:
“How Kendrah Survives: things that aren’t frustrating, joys, blessings and coping mechanisms”
And,
“Field trips: What do we really do here? The
