Second Impressions

As of Friday evening I had survived my first working week in Haiti. As in made it out alive, but just barely. Things continue to be hectic and crazy. We usually start working somewhere between 7 and 7:30am and usually continue till around 6:30pm. Definitely not the work day I'm used to. And this weekend we worked 3 or 4 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. Again, throw in the language barrier to all of that and it makes for a pretty exhausting, um, life. Not to be dramatic. Now, don't get the wrong idea. It's not like I've actually been doing work all of that time, because I'm still just trying to get my head around this entire insane project. Instead I've been trying to act like I have some idea of what's going on, which I think is more tiring than actually knowing what's going on. And because we work and live in the same place, there are pretty much no boundaries when it comes to talking about work. After an 11 hour work day, if you're sitting drinking a beer on the porch and someone remembers something about the budget you were working on 8 hours ago together, they'll bring it up. Definitely an adjustment for me.

Today Justine and I started to divide up different parts of the project and assign ourselves to certain partners and proposals, so hopefully that will start to force me to take some sense of ownership of certain things and just dive in. Although I'm still very frustrated with my French, I do feel that I've made some improvements in both my speaking and my understanding in the last 1.5 weeks, so that's good, I guess.

What's been really nice the last weekish is getting to know the other people who I live/work with. The Country Director is a bit older, and I still have a really hard time with his French Canadian accent, but I feel like he tolerates my lack of understanding his French and anything else, really, quite well. The other two people (I didn't know before) are Ali (guy) and Geraldine (girl), both French. Justine and I are right around the same ages as them, and they're really cool. They've been uber patient with me and my crappy French and have already taught me some great phrases and swear words. They both have really good English (of course), so we tend to speak a lot of English on the weekends (well, if having been here for two weekends can be considered "tending to") which isn't necessarily great for my French, but is really nice for my sanity. I try and force my French during the workday, but it's nice to be able to have the option to have a break, unlike in Guinea where no one in my village spoke English at all. And we've been getting along so well already that I've been able to say, "When I say 'Pardon?' in French, please don't then just say it in English. Repeat it in French because I would really like to understand the way it's said." And they understand that and have been good about it. And they also want me to correct their English, which is funny because I really had to think about why Geraldine had had too much alcohol but too many cigarettes. English is hard sometimes. We all went out this weekend to a friend's (ok, I knew him for a week, but they're friends with him) going away party on Friday and then to another NGO's party on Saturday. After doing some work on Sunday Justine and I went to our friend from LSHTM's house, Heather. It was really good to see her and her place (they have a pool!) and to catch up on what's been going on since she left London.

On our drive back from Heather's house last night I saw my first dead body outside of a funeral home. Ever. That was...really disturbing for me. I was in the front seat of the car and we were heading up the main road that goes to our house and in the headlights I saw something at the side of the road, but couldn't tell what it was until we almost passed it. It was a man, fully dressed, laying on his back literally on the side of the road. He definitely hadn't been there a few hours earlier and when I asked Justine said there are a lot of road accidents in our area. When I asked what would happen to him she said nothing until his family comes and gets him. I couldn't believe there was just a dead body laying on the side of the road and that people were going about their normal business. I was definitely a bit freaked out, like when we saw a kid get run over by a truck on our second day in Guinea. I don't know if I'm alone in making it to this age without having seen a dead body out in the open, but I was definitely fine not having seen that before. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep because I couldn't get that image out of my head. I'm sure he won't be there the next time I go down that road (tomorrow), but I will still be nervous and looking around when I do. I'm sure it won't be the last time I see a body in this country, but I definitely was not expecting that last night. Makes me feel ridiculously sheltered and lucky to not have ever fought in a war or anything where that would be a regular sight.

And while we're talking about depressing things, one of our Haitian staff member's cousins was kidnapped today. Apparently Haitian Americans and rich Haitians are big targets these days. Based on these two events I just described, I'm beginning to think that the safety and security regulations I complained about in a previous post aren't so ridiculous after all....Many NGOs assign not only drivers to their staff, but body guards.

I'm definitely feeling really blah, though, due to a lack of any exercise at all. I've never been a gym person, but I've always liked not owning a car and walking everywhere. Now that I can't do that, I might seriously have to consider breaking down and joining the gym. Ali and Geraldine go every night, so at least I'd have people to go with. Ugh.

Ok, so not the most exciting or uplifting post, so the next one will be. Sorry folks, just trying to tell it like it is.