eyed when my torch picks up a silhouette on the wall. It's a very
recognizable shape and before I can even find the word for it, my mind is
ringing alarm bells. "ehhh, I think there's a scorpion on the ground there!"
I eventually manage to dribble. Whattodo, whattodo. it's me or him, him or
me! "Standondamudderfucker" jumps into my mind and before I get a chance to
analyse the situation any further, my flip flop is jamming down on top of
this poor creature with immense force. I swear to God, I never made a
conscious decision to do it, it just happened! Had I thought about it at
all, I'm sure I would have run away whimpering like a little girl, but I
didn't get a chance to think about, my foot took over and squashed the
little bastard until he was a gooey mess of bits of shell and evil stingers!
I have to say that I did feel very brave afterwards though. I thought to
myself "must get to computer, must write blog post to redeem myself after
last weeks frog antics".
So now that I'm here I might as well mention what a nice Sunday I had today.
I woke up at half six but didn't have to get up, so kept on slumbering until
nine. Then I got up and had a breakfast of champions: Muesli with milk
powder and cold water and some baguette with butter and apricot jam. And
some peanuts of course. I have peanuts with every meal here. and as a snack
between meals. and as a snack between snacks. and just before I go to bed.
and just after I go to the loo. in fact pretty much every time I inhale, a
peanut enters my system. They're the loveliest peanuts in the whole world as
well!
So then I finally finished my book. My boyfriend Barry gave me a book called
'Africa' before I left. It's a great read cos every chapter is a different
country and you get a bit of a socio political history as well as a little
anecdote or two. The only trouble is that I feel mildly mortified reading it
in public, my first mission greenness already well noted amongst my
colleagues. It's not exactly kosher sitting by the pool with "Africa for
Dummies" slapped open in front of you!
Sara's the doctor here in Kerfi (which by the way is the other of our
projects in the east of the country which I'm visiting at the moment -
should really have mentioned that in the start) and we did pancakes for
lunch and then I slumbered on the couch afterwards waving the flies away.
The flies are pretty bad here, they annoy the fuck out of you and their
objective in life seems to be to get inside your head via either your nose
or your ear.
After siesta, we went for a walk down to the wadi. I'm gonna explain what a
wadi is cos when I got to Chad, everyone assumed that everyone just knew
what a wadi is and they were all like "wadi this" and "wadi that" and I
didn't have a rashers what they were on about. So for everyone who doesn't
know what a wadi is, it's a dry riverbed that becomes a river in the wet
season and is then just a sandy riverbed in the dry season. So the walk was
cool anyway and we saw people getting water from wells and cutting bricks
out of the earth and generally having a bit of a laugh on a Sunday
afternoon.
The town of Kerfi is quite small. There are about 5000 inhabitants and the
same again in displaced people who have set up camp here. Our project is a
Health centre with an inpatients department, outpatients clinic, maternity
ward and therapeutic feeding centre. Sara's the doctor in charge and we have
a few Chadian nurses as well.
So I'm off to my bed now cos I've a rake of shit to do tomorrow. I have to
fill sandbags for our safe room and try to somehow build a morgue table with
drainage for washing dead bodies. Should be interesting!
I'll try to post some pics as soon as I get back to base in N'Djamena.
Ur man in Chad!
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