Tuesday, October 23, 2007

D-Day

(That's Dora Day)

So my husband and mother-in-law made it in safe and sound yesterday. It's Dora's first time in Africa and everything seems to be pretty novel and exciting for her. I think she was surprised by how brown and dry everything is right now. That's because we're just coming to the end of the dry season.

The very end, it looks like, as it's just finished raining. Today's rain was the first I've seen since April or May. There's always an exciting feeling in the air once the rain starts. The air smells like rich earth, and there's a sense of coolness and cleansing all around you.

Besides, the rain here is pretty dramatic. It starts with a ping on the roof, then more, like the sound of those first few kernels of popcorn exploding in your microwave. Then all of a sudden, the popcorn goes crazy, all the kernels popping at once. The water is pouring down, waves of it rushing down the sides of streets, and I'm always struck by a desire to run out into it, as I would have when I was young, and stomp around in the puddles.

Except now I know better and have a healthy fear of cholera.

I needed the sudden child-like excitement today, as work is beyond stressful. It feels like I'm responsible for everything now, and it all has to be done right now. And to top it all off, yet another one of my staff has resigned to take up a higher-paying job.

I think the problem is that my project is very high profile; the staff here work throughout the country, meeting with many different organizations. They get poached off by other NGOs who assume they must be doing something very well, since they are working on this big-shot national project. The thing is, the ones that leave - well, I'm not really so sorry to see them go. None of them were the most impressive of the bunch. But the organizations that go on to hire them never call us for a reference, so I guess they'll just end up figuring that out on their own.

Oy, I'm not supposed to use this blog as a platform to gripe about work!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your next set of guests have booked their flights!!!

Alex Poveda said...

Hi.

Well... good to have Dora next to you, isnt? The Food, the jokes, and I think she's the only one capable of hit Jorge with a shoe if he isn`t behaving.

Say Hello to her and Jorge. Tell them both I miss them so much... tell dora she owes me a bunch of "deditos".

Bye! Good Writing!