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I may have to admit defeat, after bitterly denying the grey hollow incantations of expat Sybils as they spoke from inside their ancient cans of beer, safely cradled in the hollows of embassy walls for pilgrims to come ask them for wisdom, I have emerged from the other side of my first month feeling as predicted, exhausted and thus slightly pessimistic.
The exhaustion is not really, as the oracles said, so much to do with the inevitability of Sudan, though it has it’s fair share of pressures, a simple one being making a common social outlet a source of tension and worry, e.g. the arrest and violence against UN workers in Darfur because they were having a party, or the raid yesterday on the UN de-mining offices in Khartoum on the premise alcohol was there. (Basically some sort of signal is being sent to foreigners, either pressure to leave or simply an ideological one, I don’t know, I’ve simply not been here long enough to gauge.) It’s mostly because work has become some sort of cyclical nightmare where everything is urgent but nothing gets finished. Rumours circulate around the office as to who is sabotaging whom and which staff member is truly crazy, people wander the corridors in packs and armed with staplers to prevent against predatorial bosses with new, more complex and Escherian style tasks to do.
Unfortunately I forgot my stapler yesterday and have not yet managed to blend into the pack. I’ve been given 5 different reports, quantitative monitoring, summaries etc, to be completed in the next week, none of which I can start without someone else’s input. They won’t be able to give me the input until after the deadline but I still have to have it ready before then. In response I’ve put up the complimentary DHL poster on my office wall and have started to scrape a tunnel behind it. Work is slow going since I am using a spoon I made out of the paper clips that arrived yesterday from Washington DC, (our friendly local stationary cupboard), it’s not very durable but it’s better than the only other spare piece of office equipment I had last week. I am currently digging in the soft patch left by a week’s worth of liberal application of green highlighter on plaster.
…I just got back from a meeting discussing donors and pledges to projects. In the middle of it a text came through to one of our staff members saying that a plane has been highjacked in Khartoum and diverted to Chad. The weird thing was she read out the text message which asked if any staff members had been on the plane, then seamlessly went back into what documents were required for which meetings. I don’t know why I find such practicality strange, I think I’m just used to public school assemblies where you mark these things with a one minute silence where you pretend to absorb and assimilate the information, only then do you go on to hymn no. 52. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L24200666.htm
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