..but I've been busy. really busy. I've got a new job (fourth one in a little over three weeks!) and a new boss here, the acting Deputy Police Commissioner for the South Region, he has made me his Special Assistant. 10-12 hours days again (and 7 days a week this time, no weekends to recover), working non-stop from 7 till 6, with an hour for lunch in which I go to my container and sleep. And I have Contingent Commander duties to do including planning our upcoming medal parade and contingent meeting, which I'm doing now at 4:30 in the morning. I'm pretty tired these days. Unfortunately, unlike back home, I still have to do some of my own laundry, cook for myself, wash my dishes, shop for food, go get water twice a week etc. etc. so I don't have a lot of free time. And the *&%&*$!# Internet has either been down or slow as hell for weeks, it takes about three minutes to open an email at times. So there. Those are my feeble excuses.
I have some odds and ends to put in the blog, things I've thought of along the way but didn't put in for one reason or another, usually lack of time. Kudos to Steve Morris for making me laugh, he emailed me after I got back from London and had been moved into the job I didn't want and said "I wonder where they'll transfer you to when you go on your next trip with your kids!" Very witty, Steve, I laughed at that one.
There are some new Germans in the Mission, replacing the ones that left in Aug. I worked for a week or so beside one, Holger, who has a very dry sense of humour, especially about that legendary German fixation with detail. One day someone came into our office asking for Holder's countryman, Joerge, pronouncing it "Joerg" (you'd have to be German to appreciate that subtle distinction I think). Enyways, Holger said to him "Its Joerg-uh, not Joerg, uh, like the sound of a man stepping on a frog, uh" A bit of a pause. "But I suppose the sound would depend on the size of the man stepping on the frog". Longer pause. "Or the size of the frog." I was rolling on the floor laughing by this time.
We celebrated (?!) another End of Mission last Friday night, Joselyne, the former Deputy Police Commissioner's Admin Assistant, from Zimbabwe, a wonderful woman, unfailingly cheerful, helpful and good natured, with just the right amount of mischieviousness mixed in. My buddy Resistant, who was my Logistics Officer when I was Chief of Administration, is also Zimbabwean. I like everybody from their contingent that I've met (and I've met a lot of them, believe me, our Admin Office was a gathering place for the whole south region for them. And they were forever phoning Resistant and he was forever out getting a police vehicle serviced when they called, I started anwering the phone "Resistant's Answering Service", but anyway I digress), their country is in such turmoil, but you'd never know it when you work with them and know them, they're just fun people to be around. My hats off to the people of Zimbabwe, they'll turn their country around. As the dj said at the party last Friday, the future is bright for Zimbabwe and the future is bright for Sudan.
I'm going to borrow a bit from my email to Anna here, I'm still really enjoying it over here, Africa really grows on you, it gets under your skin and in your pores and in your heart, I love the African people, good natured, easy going, friendly, demonstrative, lots of handshakes and hugs and backslapping and laughing. It feels good to work with them and know them. And they're neve in a rush to do anything, which I like, believe it or not. I like stopping to talk with people throughout the day. It think it was Cam who told me it would be like that, he'd worked in Kenya with the UN and he said Africa just grows on you, and you were right Cam, it does, I was sitting at an outside restaurant last week, looking at the stars and thinking I'm really going to miss this when I go home. Not that there aren't stars in Canada but you can't sit outside and watch them year round. Well, I suppose you could but at certain times my butt gets too cold when I do that.
Enjoy the upcoming winter everybody.
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