Office monkey

I’ve been an office girl for 4 weeks now. A new set of Pioneer volunteers have swept through Fort Dauphin and off to Volobe being shepherded by the very capable hands of the new Coordintor, Jim. It’s been very strange not being involved much in the meeting and greeting of new volunteers and having to get used to sitting down for the vast majority of my day but there have been some perks.

I have become domestic once more. I revel in my weekly trip to the market (woven market basket in hand and ridiculous grin on my face) where my veggie lady gives me freebies as a reward for using her as my regular supplier of green stuff. I love the patter you get from buying things from a person as opposed to picking it from a shelf. I look forward to doing my laundry on a Sunday morning before it gets too hot. I sweep my house out every morning. I am also loving being able to cook for myself so much, definitely getting my 5 a day now. I think I’ve eaten rice once in the past 3 weeks! Spending my weekends lazing by the beach evening out my “pioneer tan” and devouring books again. Carrying on my knitting, learning how to surf, trying to get better at French (I have realised that in order to work in large parts of Africa, French is pretty much essential…why did I do Italian A-level?!) and spending hours on the internet trying to update my frazzled and infested laptop. I have acres of time to myself with nobody ringing up at the last minute asking me to organise something.

And yet I think all of the aforementioned things would feel much better if there were more people around. As it is, Lisa and Jim have shipped off on their bush placements with their volunteers and other Lisa isn’t due back in town for a few days. Not many vazahas to play with in town, just me and Davey (who works for one of the mining conractors in the area). It’s so pathetic, I used to be so good in my own company, what’s happened to me?! I’ve gone soft…

And that makes me think of all the things I miss from the bush. I miss being outside constantly, even when it rains, the sunrises and the sunsets, I miss the simple routine of the day (eat, work, eat, sleep) I miss the constant music and not caring at all what I look like. But I think what I miss the most is the banter with the bush staff. There’ve been some great times and some not so great times in the last year and without the guys in the bush, I wouldn’t’ve been able to do my job at all. They’re a great team and I know that with Jim as Coordinator they’re going to have a ball in the coming 12 months.

But having said that, I do not miss the Pioneer diet, not being able to escape the insane heat at this time of year, desperately trying to stay neutral in between various work related issues and feeling permanently exhausted.

What a contrary young lady. Jeez I’m a hard one to please…

On the plus side I’m heading back out to Volobe for a long weekend tomorrow so that should be enough to get myself a good bush fix for a few weeks. Then a new batch of volunteers are arriving next week to do english teaching, helping with the HIV project and other random tasks. It'll be great to get some new blood in the town and I'm hopeful that one of them might have brought some cheese.