Apparently I have been tagged. This is blog tag. The rules are once you get tagged you have to write 8 facts about you in your blog and then tag 8 other people. I was tagged by Matt, unfortunately for the game of tag, Matt also tagged almost every single other person I know with a blog. On the bright side though I do at least get to stop this game which is in my mind akin to the old chain letters we used to receive when we were kids.

Call me a killjoy if you will, I don’t really care!

Here’s the way you play airplane games. You ask to leave on a particular day, say a Friday. Instead you get booked on a plane on Tuesday. You then hear a rumour you’re not going till the Wednesday after, then back to the Tuesday. Then you get emailed confirming you are going on the Tuesday. Then you get moved to the Friday, then you hear the plane of Friday is cancelled. Then you get a rumour there’s a plane on Saturday. Get the idea? Well it goes on like that for days until the morning you’re due to fly when you have a 50-50 chance of the plane actually turning up. Want to play?

Yup, that’s right my girlfriend stole my job. You may remember I applied for a job in East Timor to try and get us living in the same place, a job that I found out about when Stef suggested I applied. Well I found out I hadn’t got it the other week when Stef told me she had got it. That’s just mean!! She already had a job there!

This week saw the initially mysterious deaths of 3 guinea pigs. To be honest since I don’t feed them anymore it took me a while to find out and to begin the painstaking investigations into the guinea pig deaths. To be honest the investigations consisted of telling the kids to give them a good cleanout where they found there was a bit of a maggot infestation. Hopefully it has solved the problem although our guinea pig population is now at greater risk since our only male was one of those to die. No more baby guinea pigs for us!

So…

Erm…

Well…

I’m basically left here in Manono all on my own after almost all the expats flew out on the plane on Tuesday. Diana is my only company other than a couple of reclusive Kenyans and our ever non-present inpats. It makes thinking of things to do very difficult, especially since we have no scrabble set, DSTV is terrible, it’s raining and we have no internet! On the Brightside I am in charge of the whole base, I have the keys to all the buildings, the key to the safe (over $30,000) and my trousers are in danger of falling down due to the huge number of keys I have in my pocket. Who said having power isn’t fun!!

If you were to speak to someone who happened to be the chief of around 3000 square kilometres of territory and he promised you when you had your inauguration in his village he would make sure it didn’t rain, would you really believe him? What if the day of the inauguration came and on your way to his village it was raining? What if when you get there it was dry but here hen came a few spots of rain? What then, if he rushes of for an hour, obviously to carry out some rituals and when he comes back it is not raining? Still not convinced? What if you then find out it is raining to the north, to the south and to the west? Well, lets face it’s pretty good evidence and you’re not going to tell him he had nothing to do with it are you.

I must confess either way I was incredibly glad that it didn’t rain otherwise our inauguration would have been completely ruined. The event itself was really amazing. When Julien had suggested we have an inauguration and invite all the village chiefs all I could think was what a nightmare it would be to organise and how much work I already had to do. Thankfully our friend the big Chef Kiluba took over the idea and organised pretty much everything bar some plates, a few goats and pigs and of course the alcohol which we supplied. We also took along a good sound system and all our staff.

The event started with the inevitable speeches, most very good especially Julien’s which doubles as is leaving speech in which he cried (oh he’ll never live that down), then we were served food, impressively good food, unless you were a vegetarian. We then moved on to the traditional dancing and singing before reaching the apparently also traditional getting drunk and dancing. The dancing and drunkenness was predominantly displayed by our staff, many of whom I later found out don’t usually drink and one of whom later, I found out had never drunk before.

The one theme that predominated the whole event though was photo’s with Paul and Julien. You can actually see my smile getting more and more fake of you flick through the literally hundreds of photos taken by the photographer. Thankfully though he eventually ran out of film and when I finally managed to get away from demanding, drunk, chiefs and got dancing I had a really good night before retiring to my tent avoiding the drunken chiefs splayed out on a plastic sheet inside out newly built health post.

We finally found some real things to do at the weekend too. The last one in Nov saw Bens leaving do and Tara’s birthday accompanied by a nice big party, unfortunately with too much Congolese music but fun none the less after a six week break. The following night, Ben’s last, also turned out to be good fun with me Ben and Angela mysteriously staying up till 3am chatting, listening to music and drinking whisky. Poor old Ben though had to get up at 7am to catch his flight whilst I was tucked up nicely in bed.

The weekend after was World Aids day which was also a really good day. It started at a crazy 8am with a march at which I saw the true, slightly crazy, nature of some of my staff who were running around singing and dancing. Then after a huge number of official speeches (thankfully not announcing the Aids vaccine like last year) we got a show full of dancing, singing and theatre followed by a much needed cold drink. Unfortunately as I had to work I missed the evening cocktails but still it was a good day all round.

The last few weeks has in general been much better socially due to a sudden influx of visitors from Goma. Okay so they were here to pile on loads of work making plans for next year and finalising budgets etc, but it was really nice to have some more company and some more diverse topics of conversation. It has also meant that despite the stress during work hours it is much easier to chill out and forget about work during the evenings. It also makes you get out and about much more in a bid to ensure they all get to see the best bits of Manono.

After weeks on end of frequenting the same few ‘bars’ we finally found one on the main street which is actually like a bar. They have a terrace, chairs, tables and a room dedicated to drinking that is not someone’s front room. It’s awesome! The beer is cold and there is even a peanut seller just down the road. It even led to our first ever Saturday afternoon drink in a bar the other weekend. How cool is that!

Our animal collection just keeps growing and growing. We have had a recent addition of yet another 5 pigeons and a further 2 guinea pigs. To be honest we’re beginning to run out of space despite building a huge pigeon enclosure and adding a mezzanine to the guinea pig house. I wonder if any donors will stump up money for a new building to house them all. It’s even becoming quite a challenge to feed them so we have enlisted the help of two local kids who now officially own the guinea pigs but keep them on our base. The deal is they then get to take away and sell any newborn guinea pigs and we pay their school fees. Not a bad deal all round.