warning!

on the wall of our generator house:

adequate warning? skilled interests indeed!!

places to nap

this is one tree folks. ONE. what a fantastic place to take a nap. unfortunately, we went under the tree to have a community meeting. oh well - sometimes you lose. note to god - i want a tree just like this one in my next compound. thanks.

moments like these..

...make my day.

on purity and water tanks

Our water tank is very pure. It's always good to know.

all in a day's work

really, it is!! hmm, perhaps i DO need a dog. pictures to follow.
==
T:

so speaking of sitting around all day

guess what i spent my day doing?

S:

what?

T:

sitting around :P

only, in the bush

like literally

because we got stuck

AGAIN

(this would be the third time for me so far this rainy season)

with a myriad of near misses

and of course, today just happened to be the day that i forgot my kikoi, and all the food i usually bring on any journey

S:

WHAT?

you sat in a bush all day?

haha, that sounds like something from far side comics

daaaammnn..

why must you forget ur kikoy on bush day

T:

luckily, our driver had stolen one of my kikois which he likes to wrap around his seat, so we had one which we put on the ground and sat on

well, eventually i fell asleep on it

dude, we got stuck at like 12:00

spent like 2 fucking hours trying to get the car out

then a tractor came and it was a small tractor i guess or something because it couldn't get the car out

S:

holy shit.

T:

so the 2 dudes i was going with to do the work went to the place we were supposed to go and did the work

brought back the tractor

well, another more powerful tractor i guess

they left at 3, and came back at 5.30!

and we got the car out around 6

so i literally sat around doing nothing at all from 12:00 - 6:00

i stayed behind with the driver

so i mean, i guess we did stuff

like walk to where the water was so he could wash his hands and scare away the cows which were kinda scary

and then i fell asleep

for like an hour

then i was bored so we went for a walk until we heard the tractor coming

and then he started to randomly dance

S:

oh wow

did you have a book?

T:

(i think he was delirious from hunger)

no

i didn't have a book

because it was supposed to take 1.5 hours to get there, 1 hour of work, and 1.5 hours back

i wasn't supposed to have time to read

but usually i bring a book, but this time, i didn't have time to go home before heading out, so i forgot my usual supplies

oh man, we didn't eat anything - we were both so hungry by the time we got home

S:

aww

poor thing.

T:

at least i have reserves - he doesn't have any

either way, it's a whole other level of 'oh yes, i'm at work' taking a nap in the bush!

HA HA HA HA

S:

hahahahahha

"taking a nap in teh bush"

hahahha

only you t!

T:

at one point i considered collecting some tadpoles to have some pets but the cows were kinda scary

S:

HAHAHAHHAHAHA

hahahaha

omg.

you really need a dog

music (?)

one fine day in the office, i was playing benny benasi's 'satisfaction' rather loudly on my laptop. one of our drivers comes into the office, hears the music, and starts looking around for the source of the 'noise'. he comes near my desk, but is looking up at the fan (which my desk happened to be very nearly under) with a frown on his face and asks me, 'why is the fan making such a funny noise??' (although it was in broken arabic (for my benefit) so a direct translation would be have been more like, 'what's that?' with wild gestures at the fan.) he was turning to call the acting compound manager to figure out together what to do about the misbehaving fan when he looked down at me and realised the 'noise' was coming from my laptop. he starts laughing and says, 'is that really music?', and strolls out the door still laughing.

lovely :)

came across this lovely (following a theme here!) CV the other day. nothing to say but :) :).

watching the wheels

often my favourite driver because of his calmness, sense of humour and quirkiness, i found him on this particular seat one day and couldn't resist snapping a shot.

it's raining mangoes!

this is certainly something new! :)

on malaria

me: i had malaria.

friend: welcome to the club, I've had it 1000 times. mosquitoes run away from me now. they get malaria from me.

definitely one of the best laughs i had after i got malaria for the first time in my life. for those of you wondering - no, i wouldn't 'recommend' it to anyone. ;)

always a smile

this picture never fails to make me smile or laugh. i've no clue what was so funny, but it's a lovely candid shot, and it was a good day.

one headlamp

on a 10-hour drive from where i'm based to where i was supposed to go for a training, we left our base around 10 am (even though we were told in no uncertain terms by the operations manager that we were to leave at 8 am - and in the end it was because of him (and his team) that we left at 10!). so we drive along and eventually it gets dark (apparently this is a daily thing - but somehow always seem to catch us by surprise no matter what the situation). so it gets dark and we turn the headlights on - and well, they don't quite work and eventually sputter out. at this point, it's about 8 pm and it's pitch black (as in piiiitch blaaaaack holy shit am i blind??). so being the creative problem solvers that we NGO workers are - we took my headlamp, gave it to the person sitting in the front seat, who then hung out of the car window shining the light on the road in front of us which gave us just enough light to move on (albeit very very slowly).

so there we were, in the middle of the bush in the pitch black, one little headlamp shining in the dark and one co-worker hanging out the window. this is how we arrived at our destination (a big town no less, unlike the small village we came from). on the way, we almost drove into a swamp and also laughed our asses off when we confused the bejesus out of one motorbiker who couldn't decide what the hell we were (he thought we were a very tall person with a torch) and eventually rolled to an abrupt stop on the side of the road where we heard him say the arabic equivalent of 'what the fuck?' as we passed.

and on our way back to our small village, we started out from the big town at 8 am sharp and somehow still managed to arrive at our small village at 8 pm. i have decided that there's definitely a conspiracy against us ever arriving anywhere before dark (this is true - in my old base, no matter what time we would leave our base, we always arrived either just as the sun was setting or long after).

i did have a good laugh though because the person driving (the operations manager, or 'acting driver', as he likes to joke) turned the headlights on long before it got dark. i matter of factly pointed out to him that there was currently no need for headlights, but he just grinned at me. i figured that he was just showing off the fact that he had headlights again and was being over enthusiastic about using them (which i also pointed out to him and at which point he grinned at me even wider).

thrills?

i just pulled a car out of the mud. seriously, what  a thrill! either that, or my life is very very sad.

--

text sent to friend on 14/09/11

in control

so this is our driver while we were 'hovercrafting' in our car. i think he deserves a 'driver of the year' award.

it's a hovercraft!

travelling on a rainy afternoon, it's not so much a road as a...(i don't even know what to compare it to! feel free to complete!)

on romance

in a conversation about marriage one day, one of my guys mentioned that he would like to be married in 7 years, when he is well established and able to support a family. although he felt being able to support a family comfortably was very important, he did regret however that he would be 37 at that time and thus that would give him only 3 years to be romantic with his wife. when i asked him why only 3 years (after all, you can be romantic the your whole life, right?), he said, 'well, you can't be romantic after 40, because by then you're grown up and you can't be acting like that anymore.' 

:)

it's an art

(i'll let you decide whether the art is in giving these kinds of directions or actually finding the right place.)

so I gave the following directions to a village one day: there's a big tree, then 2 trees that are very close to each other, then a big hole on the ground, then a tree with a fence around it, then the village. 

think we made it there?

today's laugh (because i can't think of a clever title)

a colleague of mine, learning how to drive, was backing out of our creative 'parking space', and spoke rapidly to our driver in arabic. i was curious about what he said so i asked him, "what did you say?" he replied, "i asked him: 'what about my behind, is it fine?'" 

:)

a restroom please

a colleague from headquarters came for a visit to the field and asked our staff, "where is the restroom?" our staff replied, somewhat puzzled, "you want a room where you can rest?"

as a follow-up to a previous post...

told ya south sudan was beautiful!! (and these were taken with a camera phone!)