In Which If You Always Do What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Always Get What You Always Got
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 11/Nov/2010 20:31, 34 days ago
There are some things that just seem wrong. Through connections of Tash, Alex and Cheryl in Makeni, I was made aware of a possible placement opportunity, at a foreign-run charity hospital there. While not wanting to jump into anything, I agreed I would speak to VSO and arrange a visit to scope it out. That was yesterday. Today I email Theresa and Yohannes with this, and get an almost immediate reply from Theresa saying no. It’s scary how rapid the response, and how definitive too. It’s not a possible or a probably not, but a flat out no. The deciding factor, it seems, is that this place has too skilled a workforce, and therefore there would be ‘less capacity to build’ (the VSO term for what we’re supposed to be doing here, sharing skills, changing lives, etc etc). It is all I can do not to ring her up at once and ask how much capacity she thinks I’m building sitting around in the sun all day. The other strike against it is that this place isn’t a VSO partner organisation. The same was said about theIRC. So, to recap, I have essentially been offered two placements in the last month, both better than the failed one that was pre-arranged, and VSO have refused to consider either. Today is my 49th day in Kenema. That’s 49 days of doing nothing, and not through lack of trying.I go to see Vasile in the office for an outing (and to bemoan the absurdity of the above) and then come back via the shops. Leader Price is following Choitram’s example, and has yet more new, different goodies in stock. Yum. I come home to sit in the sun and re-read Green Oranges On Lion Mountain because I’ve gone through all the decent books at least once, and this one appears to be a staple of every VSO library out here. It’s crazy that in the 20years since it was written, this country has barely changed (minor civil war aside). Everything seems so much more real reading it here, from the Krio/Mende hybrid to the state of the hospitals to the markets, but even though she had to deal with rebels and unrequited love and killing patients by botching their treatment, I can’t help but feel a little jealous of Dr Em: she at least had a proper placement.After a day’s delay, Alex arrives in town before 4pm. Her colleagues disappear off (no doubt staying with friends / relatives and saving their field-trip allowance for more important things like beer) as we settle down to chat. We wander out to the shop, and it suddenly gets crazy hot so it’s a slow amblealong the road and back, though scoring some 5-for-7p bananas on the way. Vasile returns and we cook and chat and eat cookies by candle night –after a few days of bliss, the power is off again tonight, no doubt to serve us right for boasting to Alex of our uninterrupted supply. Hopefully the multiple showers she can enjoy here will make up for it a little bit.