What's similar

People. We know by default that I am the last person on this planet with the naive belief that everybody is like her. Like me. This results in me not being able to understand how can somebody not like a butter-mustard sandwich, Nick Hornby, the smell of freshly roasted coffee, sleeping in, or Dr. Carter. I have now grown to accept that there are people appreciating Stendhal and Scorsese, but still cannot get over the fact that some people don’t like cheese.

Surprisingly, with all these expectations, I still get surprised when it turns out, that people are really similar. Not to me, but to themselves.

I don’t know why I expected that I will find something different here, other behaviours, different reactions, different expectations. I am the first to tell myself and anybody else around, that at the end of the day this is only a job like any other, and I don’t believe that there is anybody in the world who jumps out of bed every single morning, joyfully shouting „yeah! I can go to my awesome work today again!”.

So I was surprised that everything is like I always thoguht, and people aren’t very different.

Really. Some are addmittedly here for money only, and some who are driven crazy by those who are here for the money. Some came here convinced, or for professional challenges, but now they don’t know anymore why they are here – probably for the money, or because they can’t imagine themselves anywhere else. Some take seriously what they do, and they are good at it, and I can look at them with the big admiring eyes  - it is fascinating that it depends on them whether the soldier with the baby blue beret has the proper medical kit and knows when and how to use it. (Eventually somebody competent could have a look at my mirrors as well.) Best is of course to be around people who know what they do, but also know that it’s just a job and don’t take themselves too seriously.

Usual expat-routines can’t be avoided of course. Introduction follows the way too familiar pattern of what’s your name, where are you from, which section you work for, and chances are, nobody will remember your answer to the first two in five minutes.  The term „geographically single” needs no further explanation, but it’s worth mentioning, that it is even more striking when you hear „my wife told me to stay another 3 years, the kids need to finish school.”

No surprise in experiencing that I’m not always accepted as a grown-up.  I’ve arrived only two weeks ago afterall, it’s my first mission, I’m a girl with the big admiring eyes; some people can’t imagine that I’m not doing my nails every morning. I support those perceptions with my heels  (brought two pairs but will soon collect another two) and my button rings. Whoever wants to categorize me based on that, can have it. I was told the first week „you’re not gonna last 6 months here, I can tell from your face” , but also „don’t worry, you’ll be fine”.

People find me with impossible questions, but it’s part of my job, and I’ve known for long that impossible questions have nothing to do with somebody’s geographical location or nationality. I correct my colleagues’ English, and doesn’t respond very well if they try calling me before 8. :)

Oh, and I live with somebody else’s husband yet again!

The weather

When I arrived, it rained (remember, red mud). I was surprised, is this the rainy season or what? I did my research and rainy season was supposed to end with May.

Then I thought, OK, not too bad, it only rains once a day, usually at night or in the morning.

Then I thought, OK, it IS bad, it starts pouring at six the afternoon, I can't hear my very own and very important thoughts, nor the tv, and I cannot sleep.

Then there was two days when I was downright scared. The rain came with a thunderstorm, lightning and everything, and insulation here isn't exactly what I'm used to.

It hasn't rained since. It's been about a week. First I was content that not all my clothes will be decorated with red mud, and that I was right with my rainy season assumptions. After three days I started noticing that I drink all the time, because I feel like I've been snacking on a handful of (red) dust and didn't manage to swallow it all. Then I started feeling that the touch of my clothes is strange. Especially the ones the boy was drying on the balcony. It became increasingly suspicious when my own skin started feeling like it was dried outside on the balcony. I keep constantly washing my hands, and there is a significant amount of dirt coming off every time. Makes no difference though, besides my clothes it's also my desk, the papers, the mouse having a dusty existence. Please be kind and tactful when you next see me and don't start with „true, you look kinda dirty”. I take showers every day, and that's not easy either.

Otherwise it’s not too hot: 18 degrees in the morning when I get in the car, and not more than 25 the afternoon. But the dust sits nicely in the air.

Getting there

Ok, fine, arriving to Goma was a bit of a shocker. The plane could have served any given Luxembourg-Vienna flight, without the cheese sandwich. But then landing in Goma... difficult to describe. As far as I understand it's only used for military/humanitarian/UN purposes, it's tiny, looks like five warehouses have been quickly set up, and the people waiting around, or maybe working there, or maybe unemployed, sit and lay around the buildings, on the grass. The luggages are brought by a minivan from the plane, then unloaded, everybody looks for their own and then the staff simply removes the baggage tags. And they disappear with the passports for an infernally long twenty minutes.

The road from the airport to the base is impressifying: red dust everywhere, and although the traffic returned to the proper side (the right one, haha), but lacks any basic system of rules (I have learnt so far, that here you have to yield to the right when you're inside the roundabout. You have priority going in.), by the side of the road women are selling bananas and avocados, and men sim cards, and in general there is a mass of people on the streets.

Then, like sudden cut in a movie, we stop for a sandwich. We enter a building under (re)construction, with a French-style bakery on the second floor. One that could easily compete with  counterparts in Brussels. It's bright and shiny, comfortable, I guess there must be wifi because half of the clients are buried in their laptops; on the shelves croissants, baguettes, petits pains aux chocolat, chicken sandwiches and strawberry pies. Freshly squeezed strawberry-pineapple juice is served in lovely glasses, and the baguette is fresh and has pesto in it...

This feeling of sharp contrast is the main thing I remember from the first week here: the world on the streets, the markets, even in the few shops is a completely different one from that inside the houses protected with walls and barbed wire fences. The road isn't paved and has potholes that could serve as a playground for my nephew, but inside the compounds you have the feeling you could be in any European city. I've seen apartments that would qualify as „too much” even by Kirchberg standards. You see the generator in the court, because electricity here is like happiness: you have to enjoy it when it lasts, because you never know when it goes away and when it may come back, but once you enter, flat screen tv and wireless connection is basic equipment, the kitchen makes you envy the owner (or his wife), the living rooms are huge, with heavy dining tables , every bedroom has its own bathroom. To be an expat is always a bit absurd, and apparently absurd in a similar way, no matter where you are

14.06.2014

Slowly but surely I am getting a bit of a cultural shock here and there. In the break between trainings, while lining up with the South African military police for the ladies' room (it is still, not logically but consistently the same everywhere that the number of ladies' and men's room is exactly the same. There is still some progress to be made in this world.), one of them turned to me and said „my sister, the last one isn't occupied”. At first I was puzzled, we certainly didn't look like sisters, but by the end of the day I learned that it's usual here. The trainer called the men in the audience „my brother” just the same. In the canteen the men are „papa”, the cleaning ladies are „mama”, and it has nothing to with their age, but means something between sir/m'am and „my friend”. Our cleaner is papa as well, he will be mentioned later on.

One evening, still in Entebbe, Uganda, I was poking around my phone in the hotel lobby (the only place with wifi), when a guy I knew from the morning shuttle to base showed up and asked if I wanted to join them for fish. I normally don't turn down offers like this, so the next thing I knew was sitting by the Lake Victoria, under palm trees (still no bananas), with a bunch of strangers who work in far far away corners of the world in peacekeeping missions, and are talking about the great parties they had in East Timor when they were UNVs (which is what I am now, a UN Volunteer). Then they warmly welcomed me to the UN family and told me to forget about paying for my taxi, they will do that, and one day when I grow up, I can give it to somebody else who will be a newcomer then. (If somebody has the strange feeling that I have told this story before, it's no coincidence. Feel free to replace „UN” with „EU” or „NATO”, the Lake Victoria with Tallinn or Senningenberg, and voilà... nothing new under the sun.)

09.06.2014.

I thought everything was going to be very different.

And in a way it is very different, there are monkeys on the roof of the neighbouring house, the tropical rain leaves red puddles and we're stomping in red mud (no, the tropical rain isn't red, only the soil it falls to), but at the same time, it isn't.

It all started with an early morning departure, the Heikkila taxi took me to the airport, nothing unusual. The girl at the check in desk was on her very first day, I had to explain to her how excess luggage fees work, again, nothing we haven't seen before. Flight, cheese sandwich, connection. I've seen airports before, even big ones where excessive amount of walking was required. Then a long flight, where the crew feeds you constantly, you have time to watch Saving Mr. Banks and probably one episode of Glee (what happened to Mike Chang?), sometimes it's a bit shaky but nothing unbearable.

At the arrival in Entebbe it was a bit out of the ordinary that they wanted to see my passport and visa exemption, and i couldn't go in the fast lane, but at least it wasn't the US immigration officer being all fussy about the purpose of my visit and the length of my stay (I always feel the need to tell them, worry not, your country with it's non-existent social net and tiny amount of paid leave days isn't attractive enough for me to emigrate now, when we can freely come for just a visit, and that thank you, I'm fine being in places where i can earn the price of said visit). Then the shuttle to the hotel is a Toyota, and although the steering wheel is on the wrong side, and it drives on the left side of the road decorated with palm trees, for all this it could still be Malta instead of Uganda.

The hotel is a bit dodgy, but for smell and comfort level it's nothing different from any given pension during any given Bender-trip. For breakfast they serve cereal, fruits, fries, sausages, hard boiled eggs – some French hotels don't try this hard.

So I'm waiting for the shock to hit upon arrival to base, but there is nothing unfamiliar about the tpouring rain, or the security entrance procedure, which, unsurprisingly, is slooooooow. For every competent person there is another three who just happens to be there.

And it continues the same way. There is a girl with an unpronouncable name and a boy with a cliché one, and the compound consists of container items and tents and red mud, and I've never been in a place like this and I'm afraid I'm going to get lost because all the tents and container items look the same, somehow it all feels very familiar. The administrator boy on his first day, the incredibly, unnervingly patient mentor of his, the check-in procedure that takes three infernally long hours. There is a drama queen, a funny one, one that can't hear well, and the fact that everybody has a different accent isn't even worth mentinoning. It would bother me more if it wasn't like that. Then I would stand out.

It seems that people are so different that at the end they are all similar. Or maybe it's because I have the same reactions to similar situations, regardless of the scene or location. Because I am still the same. No matter where I go, I come with me.