Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out!

So how's my psyche? Without being too much of a big girls blouse, I'm trying
to keep an eye on what's going on in my head!

Before I got here, I was very excited about the whole thing. Now that I've
arrived, I'm very excited about being here. Later on this week, I'm going
out to the field, and I'm very excited about that. Are you seeing a trend
here? When will this excitement end. and more to the point, what will it be
replaced with?

At the moment, I'm working very hard. I was traveling in Southern Asia for a
year until last June and since then I had been at home in Dublin, gleefully
drawing the dole and sitting around scratching myself. So it's been a good
year and a half since I've 'worked', and this is all coming as a bit of a
shock to my system.

I get to the base between seven and half past seven every morning. It's only
a ten minute walk from the compound we live in, so I get up at around
quarter past six which leaves me enough time for a bowl of cornflakes and a
shower before I hit the road. err, sand! I work until 1pm when I head home
for some lunch and then back to the base for 2pm. I make a point of leaving
the base by 6pm every evening, when our curfew kicks in and we don't walk
around outside anymore (we can still move around after that, but need to be
driven).

So when I'm in the base, I'm basically running around like a headless
chicken. Being responsible for supply means that I'm responsible for
getting the right materials and equipment to the projects and in the right
quantities, keeping stocks to a minimum and keeping a good overview of
what's in the country.

By the time I get home in the evenings, I'm ready to expire. I usually fall
into the scratcher around 10pm or so. As soon as I pull down my mosquito
net, I'm unwakeable until my symphony of alarm clocks start again at 6am the
next morning.

Everything's new and novel and shiny and fun and happy and good at the
moment, but I've heard one or two of the other expats refer to a 'honeymoon
period' so I'm trying to be aware of that. I'm going to adamantly defend my
leisure time, trying to leave the office at six, only working a few hours on
Saturday's and keeping Sunday's completely free.

I mentioned I'm going out to the field this week. There have been a few
cases of measles reported in one of the towns we are working in the east of
the country and a vaccination campaign for 20,000 children is on the cards.
Its appears to be fairly small campaign by MSF standards so it's a good
opportunity to get my feet wet and to see what a project is like on the
ground (the raison d'etre of it all). Once I'm back from that, I'll head out
again to see the other project that we have in the east. (At the moment,
it's just the two projects that we have in Chad).

More soon from the field hopefully (if I can find internet)

Ur man ready for his scratcher!

Landing!

So… A week after I got back to Dublin from India at the end of June last, I
was walking through my old alma mater, Trinity College, when I spotted a
poster that the universe conspired to hang in my line of vision: "MSF Info
Evening, Walton Theatre, 7pm".

For those of you that don't know it, the acronym stands for 'Médecins Sans
Frontières' ('Doctors without Borders'). It's an NGO which I had always
heard the name of, but didn't know too much about. I knew that it was
something about medical aid and thought that it was French. I suppose having
lived in Paris for a year, I would have heard it bantered about… in France
it was considered the NGO 'par excellence', the equivalent of Concern in
Ireland or Oxfam in the UK. However, it's 'frenchness' has changed and it is
now an international organisation.

So to cut a long story very, very short indeed, I now find myself having
volunteered for (or been employed by, depending on how you look at it) MSF
and I started my job as a supply logistician in N'Djamena, the capital city
of Chad in Central Africa, on the 31st of December, 2009, the final day of
the so-called 'noughties'.

I will spend at least the next nine months based here in N'Djamena, trying
my best to ensure that MSF projects in the East of the country get the
medicines and materials they need to fulfill their objectives.

It's quite bizarre to find myself in this situation because, in theory, this
is what I've always wanted. Since my early twenties, my lofty career
objective has been to become a dynamic problem solver in an aid or
development field scenario. I thought about the UN, the EU, IrishAid,
Concern, Goal, Trocaire and many other organizations in this field… but all
I did was 'think' about them. I never applied to anything or made much
effort to actually land such a position. In my head, I had rationalised this
'laziness' by saying that I would spend my twenties gathering relevant work
experience so that I could be active in this sector by the time I was 30.

And then what happens: all the powers of the universe, all the karma, all
the deities and spirits and fung shui and all that malarkey come together
and represent themselves in a little white A4 sheet, clumsily sello-taped to
a wall, brandishing the insignia of my future! Step 1: Go to the Walton
Theatre… Does it get any easier?

Well… apparently it does! I spent today snoozing on a deck chair at the side
of a pool in the Le Meridien Hotel here. It was a very humanitarian
experience altogether! Having fought it out in Dublin's damp cold for the
past few months, what a frickin' pleasure it was to chill the hell out and
catch some of those Central African rays.

Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, let me qualify myself here by saying
that I get a certain daily allowance here to spend (or save) as I wish.
Being a Sunday, and pretty much the only day of rest in an otherwise jammed
week, I decided to fork out the exorbitant entry fee and let my weary body
bask in the winter sun.

I arrived into N'Djamena at 11pm on the 30th, three days later than
scheduled due to visa f*&k-ups combined with a passport caught up in the
Christmas postal pandemonium. It was a good time to get here though. New
Years Eve was a day of briefings and inductions followed by a NYE session to
break the ice with the new team (and NGO expat community). New Years Day was
a bank holiday and I nursed myself back to health before a light day of
briefings on Saturday and the aforementioned day of sun-worship today.

Tomorrow though, (sh)it will hit the fan … My first full week of supply
logistics!

I have to be in top form though, and given that I start work at half seven,
I'm off now to catch forty winks… Must try not to get tangled up in my
mosquito net tonight.

Your man in Chad!