In Which Zoë 101 Gets One Final Day On The Air (Con)
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 27/Sep/2010 21:11, 34 days ago
The one morning I need to look respectable, there’s no hot water (and my dry shampoo is packed somewhere). *Sigh* Then we go for breakfast and they have run out of powdered milk and jam. It’s as if they know we’re leaving today.We have variously been told we are being collected at 7.15am, 7.30am or 8am. It’s 7.45am when our driver shows up...and promptly deposits us 30m up the road at the VSO office. Eh? We collect Teresa, realise we now have more people than seats, and squeeze into the back. The traffic is manic and we’re running late. After a failed detour, the driver zooms up on the wrong sideof the road which works fine until a larger car comes at us. It’s a weird game of Chicken that we’ll never win, so we pull over and let him pass before continuing, only to be stopped by a policewoman who essentially shoos us back up the road. She then berates the driver for his actions and, itseems, for not having his license with him. It’s really hard not to laugh, but of course we can’t. Teresa tells us to get out and it appears we’re going to walk and/or get a taxi but a few minutes later the car pulls up, police woman gets out, and we get back in. Evidently bribery is perfectlyacceptable when not done in front of the white folk.We get to the Ministry late to find Shona, Cat and Beth waiting– they’ve been evicted from the meeting as Teresa wasn’t there. So we sit in the Chief Medical Officer’s nice office, drink his water, and talk in mumbled tones about what has just happened. We are summoned to the massive board room full of doctors and managers. We introduce ourselves and then they do too – the only people I remember being the couple who work for the Tony Blair Fund (yep, such a thing exists). We shuffle out and back to where we were waiting before, and then the CMO comes in and ushers Shona and Beth off to a not very private corner of the same office for a Dictaphone interview. They give very good answers to the rather random questions.The Makeni lot leave and I hang out with Shona and Cat, until they too are collected. Teresa makes arrangements for me to travel up to Kenema this afternoon with a doctor heading back there (in lieu of an actual arrangement by my organisation), and then we come back to the office, dropping me off at Raza so I can pack my last few things and say goodbye to room 101. At noon I’m in the VSO office, being told Teresa is worried about my gas (!) and that Dr K has said he will collect me in the next hour. 2 hours later when I’m still waiting, I get angsty. There’s a whole VSO policy about not travelling after dark, and Kenema is a long way away, but there is little concern for my distress. I speak to Maria the sole VSO where I’m headed, and we discuss latest leaving times. In the meantime we ring and ring Dr K, but he’s not answering. The gas arrives in massive, heavy canisters, and once I’ve been shown briefly how to fit the regulator, the guy’s off. Apparently you cannot get gas up country which begs the question of what one does when this lot runs out... My lack of adeptness at the whole nozzle fitting thing also brings a new variable into the equation of what will kill me first – malaria or a gas explosion. At least, if I continue to insist Iwon't travel into the night, it shouldn't be a car crash.Theresa comes back having spoken to Yohannes, and offers me two options, though since one is to go when Dr K gets here (and it’s already pushing 4pm with no sign of him) this is not one I’m happy with. Instead, I agree I will accompany her on her field trip tomorrow morning (5.30am start!) to Makeni and on to the other provinces before eventually getting to Kenema on Wednesday afternoon. It actually sounds kinda nice to me... She is going to visit partner organisations, and has made arrangements already, so can't go to Kenema first, but this way I'll see some of the country...Jo and I spend the rest of the afternoon in her office, stealing biscuits from the workshop upstairs and generally chatting. She is a really useful person to talk to, having been here long enough to be able to explain some of the many little idiosyncrasies of this lovely country. One thing I still haven’t come close to mastering is the drinking of water from the little plastic pouches. You bite off a corner and then try to suck it out, but mine essentially goes everywhere any time I try, and decanting it into my water bottle is no better.I come home to repack so I only need one bag for the next few days, and then meet Jo and Freya. We talk of going to Bamboo Hut (despite the vaguely oriental name, it’s essentially an African place with a good vegetarian menu) but it clouds over so instead we stay in at theirs with Banke and Alex, and the girls cook vegetable curry which is yummy, even if the butterbeans were bought thinking they were baked beans, and the chickpeas we got in Food Land this evening are in fact already pureed into humous... I get a Poda back feeling pretty crap (a combo of stress, heat, mossie bites, not eating all day and antihistamines) but feel better for surviving that in one piece, and for the fact my air con is on when I return. It may be my last cool night in a longtime...