I drive!

You should see the roads... and the cars...

I drive big white jeeps, with big black Us and Ns on the side. The newer models also have diving pipes on the front left (I have no idea what they are for, but they sure look like they were designed for underwater driving...)

Remember what I said about the potholes on the roads? Now it's still ok, my neck gets sore if I drive for more than half an hour from tying to hold my head in place, but otherwise no problems... but I cannot help thinking about what it will be like when rainy season comes back, and the potholes will be replaced by swimming pools. I have already understood that the long white trousers will be repatriated to Hungary during my first R&R as they are pretty useless here. I am already always dirty from the knee down from climbing in and out of the cars (and from the knee up I'm always bruised from kicking the steering wheel every time I get in the car.)

Important to note that the two paved roads are not lit up either, and pedestrians have no sense of danger and use them instead of the sidewalks. I am in constant state of alert, being worried that I will run over one of them, since I have not noticed their intent to keep on the side or at least to try walking in a single row if they hear or see a car approaching. Even more exciting are the motorbikers. They are the local alternative of public transport and taxi, there are hundreds of them, with their numbers handily painted on their helmets, in case I would want to call them (I don't). They have either never heard of traffic rules, or they consider them as a challenge. They easily come facing me on a one-way road, they take me over from the right AND the left (often one on each side at the same time), they honk instead of looking around. In their defence it needs to be admitted that they always carry a second helmet (also with their numbers on it) for their passenger, but no need to worry, I haven't felt the need to ask for a ride yet.

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.)