"Sweet dreams are made of these..."
   © Padraig McCarron
   
  
DRC I > DRC II > DRC III > DRC IV >  

manono I, march 2008

Dear All I have safely made it to the deepest darkest heart of Africa and so far am alive and surviving all the challenges. And challenges there have been a few. The first being the light aircraft transporting us to our jungle home. Fortunately all I suffered on that journey was near perforated ear drums, it wasn’t until the next flight with the country director on board that the brakes failed. At least that discovery was made before take off and she only had to be evacuated to hospital in South Africa with DVT when the plane did eventually take off. And when the next plane due to arrived didn’t make it due to broken propellers I wasn’t too distressed as it was only bringing our vegetables. So we arrived at our base in the middle of the forest to be confronted by my worse nightmare – a full on rat invasion. And I didn’t think much of the local rat killer, a tasty bit of chicken and sauce that was devoured greedily by the ants in a couple of days with no ill effects to the ant population. Fortunately we managed to find some western rat poison in the back of the cupboard and I spent the next week smelling dead rats all over the place. After the rat saga it was on to the snakes. Apparently the place is a bit of a den for poisonous snakes – green and black mambas being local favourites. I was asked by the CD if I wanted to order snake venom, apparently some of the snakes can kill in a few hours flat. Then again if the venom is wrongly administered it kills in twenty minutes flat. My mind was made up when after two weeks the cleaners found a snake in our pit latrine. Although they were more distressed that it was in the chef’s pit latrine than they were by the snake. So venom it is and let’s hope it doesn’t get into the wrong hands. As for that pit latrine. Lesson one: don’t go in at night without a headlight as you risk falling into the hole. Lesson two: Don’t bend down and take the lid off with the headlight fastened to your head as you get a full on very unpleasant view of the delightful contents and very nearly end up adding to the contents of your stomach to them. Lesson three, don’t bother going into the pit latrine at night full stop cos you get the backside bitten off you by mosquitoes. But the less than savoury sanitary conditions are more than made up by the fact I have a shower head fixed to a water tank. If it wasn’t for the fact the water is ice cold that would be a real luxury. I have just about got used to immersing myself in freezing water ,although sometimes I am out before I know I’ve even been in. Although sometimes the rustic conditions are a blessing - not least in the first fortnight when we had two earthquakes one weekend after the other (got to have some entertainment on a Saturday night). At least there wasn’t much risk of much falling on top of us and it was all harmless enough. Just as well really seeing as when I woke up to the shaking in the middle of the night I gave out to Padraig for being so restless and told him to keep still. At which point he started rabbiting about it being an earthquake and telling me to get under the mattress and I gave out further by telling him to shut up, the larium was making him hallucinate. So that’s your introduction to my new home and I haven’t even told you what's on the other side of the gate yet. If you can get past the oddities that might confront you at the gate. Last week it being two blokes turning up with a live crocodile, having walked 45 kilometres to sell it to the white people. As you can imagine they were not best impressed by being turned down. Although next time I’ll be welcoming crocs with open arms – goat, chicken and rice day after day gets a bit monotonous at times. Although nothing is as bad as the lack of potatoes. I was devastated to learn that they have to be flown in and the person responsible had forgotten to include them in the vegetable order. We have now been without for three weeks and it is a killer, I have begun dreaming about them. Fortunately though we have a flight coming in - just in time for St Patrick’s Day carrying potatoes and beer. And my Dad is DHLing some potatoes seeds over to our HQ so all is not despairing. Anyway that’s enough for now, I’ll get past the front gate in the next email. Hope you are all well and happy, Ciao Catherine x

 
 
 
PHOTOLOG