Toilet trips

Well, I’ve had my first bout of not feeling well. 35 trips to the toilet later and I was pretty drained! However, despite starting to feel a bit dodgy on Sun night I slept well, and didn’t actually feel ill at all, just physically weak and with no energy. I did try taking a blackcurrant flavoured Oral Rehydration Solution, but it was so disgusting I only managed to drink half! I was much better by Mon afternoon, though it’s taken a few days to get my appetite back. It was my first experience of diarrhoea, but not too bad. Though I could see how awful it might be if you weren’t within 30 second reach of the toilet….

As most of you know, I tend to enjoy my meals with gusto, so it was a new experience for me to look at food and to be physically revulsed by it. I think Mama Mkubwa (the cook) has been slightly concerned at how little I’ve been eating! Kindu food is fine and liveable with when you’re feeling ok, but if you’re feeling a bit dodgy it becomes very unappetising. The lowlight was one evening when dinner was some cold, flabby, oily potato chips and two bits of meat in some sort of fatty sauce. I heated a tin of green beans which made the rest slightly better. I’m looking forward to being in Bukavu next week when I’ll be able to eat a pizza, and maybe even a curry….

It’s been alright without Benoit here. I’ve been learning so much about how the project actually works. Previously, I hadn’t had so much to do with the day to day decisions – difficulties in accessing a particular village, meetings etc. There’s been various situations when I haven’t been sure of what decision to make, so have just had to take a deep breath and make a decision. Nothing seems to have gone horribly wrong so far! Michelle (deputy programme director) is here at the moment, so it’s good to have her company and to do some preparation for the bigger projects. The impact evaluation is going fairly well – we have a pile of 324 questionnaires in our office at the moment. It’s quite exciting to see the evidence of the work taking place! They haven’t yet been entered on the computer – my plan for the entry didn’t work out so I’ll get a couple of people in next week to do it. I spent a couple of hours with Josephine (our cleaner) giving her her first lesson in using the computer. It was quite odd for me to work with someone who’d never used a computer before; not many of those people left in the UK any more!

The first morning after Benoit had left I left the house at 8am for our morning devotions, to find Mama Mkubwa and Josephine sitting patiently by the guard’s hut. It turned out that Benoit always opened the house for them at 7am. I wasn’t so fond of this plan, seeing as I only wake up at 7.45. We managed to work out a compromise that they arrive at 7.30 and I stagger out of bed, let them in and go and snooze for another 10 minutes. I need all the sleep that I can get – whilst I’m sleeping fairly well the heat, the work and not feeling so good has made me quite tired. I had another 3 hour nap this morning (it’s now Sunday). The Inspector Lynley Mysteries is on TV…and we’re just getting to the last 5 minutes and the most climatic point and what happens?! The power goes!!!!!