I am behind on my entries, apologies.  Let me catch up:

And to catch up, let me back up.  First, I should re-describe my entry to the country.  Following my relief at finding a connection waiting for me at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, the first leg of my Afriqiyah flight took me to Tripoli, where I was briefly immersed in the crossroads of north and western Africa, with people waiting for flights to Cameroon, Nigeria, and the CAR.  Our Bangui-bound flight took off at sunset and flew south over the surprisingly semi-green of the Tripolian environs.  As the sun sank, the terrain changed to sand and dunes.  We entered a dark cloud for a time, while below the fading sun refracted a million billion times in gusts of Saharan sands, an unearthly pink sunset reflected up at us.  Darkness settled in completely and the captain came on to tell us that there were thunderstorms in CAR, but we would continue.  Several hours later, rapid flashes of lightening on the horizon announced our imminent arrival to Bangui.  For a moment, we passengers held our breath as we headed towards the storm.  But when we reached the airport, the clouds had moved on.  As we descended close to midnight, the city appeared below, lit up in a kind of threadbare glory.  Electricity!  Not one but several roads lined with lights, and sprinklings of of blue and orange speckles in the night showing a city spread out and alive with at least some familiar comforts.  Above the town, on a hill, a large signed blazed in white but I could not read it.

Rain sprinkled us as we walked across the tarmac.  I had in my hand a guide sent by my supervisor, instructing me how to navigate the entry process.  Without a visa, I would have to surrender my passport and receive a receipt from the “desk at the end of the row”.  My first introduction to the ways of the CAR was a jumble of passengers and immigration staff, no orderly queues to help delineate the process, nor signs to explain the responsibilities of various stony faced officials.  A metal gate was the only clear indication that there was a barrier that needed to be passed.  However, the immigration staff were quite helpful, and in no time I was on the other side waiting with the rest of the flight for our bags.  I was expecting a driver to meet me, as per the instructions clutched in my hands.  Small wiry men tried to help me with my two bags but I politely refused, watching instead as they helped passengers with large boxes and suitcases in the hot, humid night air.  My supervisor met me instead, a young German guy, with his German friend from another agency.  Another passenger, an anthropology student from the states, joined us in the gleaming white UN landcruiser and we sped off through the night.

A place had been arranged for me; I would stay at the residence of the UN resident coordinator, who was out of town.  We sped through the town, past the roundabout that marks the center, and up a long hill, skirting the presidential palace.  I would be housed at this exclusive address for a week.  The resident coordinator lives in an old colonial building on a hill behind and slightly south of the presidential palace.  The hill rises some hundred feet over the town, and overlooks a generous bend in the Oubangui river, a wide stretch of water that is so far away when pirogues (wooden boats) are launched they look like tiny logs with tiny ants paddling.  The similarly green, forested hills that a clutch of buildings across the river are built on is actually the Congo.  Practically spitting distance.  The first night I could not fathom how one man could live in such a large house.  I slowly learned that the house supports its own ecosystem, of flora, fauna, and men.  The first man introduced himself when I groggily awoke on Thursday morning after not being able to sleep, the heavy rain drops banging a loud rhythym on the tin roof right outside my window.  The room was large and spacious, a pair of large wooden windows facing each other across a twin sized bed.  A desk sat under an air conditioner tightly wedged in the wall, behind the desk a thick cable sprouted and attached to an relatively sophisticated UPS (a backup generator for computers).  Unmarked, well-oiled cabinets faced the bed and I sprawled out listening to chatter of the two security men under the loud sound of rain on metal.

The house man’s name, I learned later, was Timothy.  But I have trouble with his heavily accented French.  Or, my French is terrible and so I have trouble his perfectly accented French.  I think this means my French is bad, if I can’t tell the difference between accents.  Timothy offered me coffee but I said I didn’t drink it.  The shower in the bathroom next to my room did not work, and later as Timothy showed me around the building I came to realize that I was in the guest room.  In my fatigue I had thought the resident coordinator had lent me his personal room and I felt overwhelmed with gratitude.  It also became clear later that many people spent their first night or nights in this room, waiting for living arrangements to be worked out.  The kitchen is well-kept, a hallway just outside houses an electrified refrigerator and an adjacent room was built explicitly for washing clothes.  Timothy opens the freezer and tells me I can put water in there.  But don’t drink that water!  That is his water.  Do I understand?  I understand.  Upstairs is the resident coordinator’s room and another room, for guests.  The bathroom here works and I understand that I should take my showers there.  Of course if all else fails, I can always use the pool.  Yes.  There was a pool.

In the morning, I wake up late and am introduced to the organization by my workers, who drive out to chat on the veranda.  As we drive into town, I have a hard time absorbing everything.  There are well-built buildings in the center of town, but with few exceptions they hardly rise past the second floor.  The Landcruiser slows down or speeds up as necessary to ply streets filled with people.  People walk everywhere.  Taxis float around, and occasionally another SUV.  The sun is bright and sky blue, the heat palpable but not unbearable.  My new co-workers point out the Ministry of Foriegn Affairs, the Treasury, a craft market.  This road, they tell me, is wide because it used to the landing strip for the airport.  I can’t smell anything from inside the airconditioned vehicle.  We eat lunch at a French cafe, run by a Lebanese guy, who wordlessly changes money for me.

Later, we drive by the Ministry of Planning, with whom our office works very closely.  In the late afternoon, I help translate a procurement process into French, creating a flow chart that will aid our co-workers.  The day finishes across town in the offices of the Office for Coordinating Humanitarian Aid, the second-most important international organization in town after ours.  Here there is internet and electricty (the UNDP building had lost it sometime during the day), and five of us cluster around laptops trying to finish a mid-year review report, due at midnight.  At 11:30, I’m given a ride home.  I haven’t eaten or drunk water since lunch, and jetlag induced fatigue has settled in.

That was my first day.

The rest of the week unfolds similarly.  My ankle swelled considerably during the 30 hours of transit from New York to Bangui, so I limp through an airconditioned bubble, getting rides to and from my hilltop residence in a Landcruiser down to the office.  There isn’t time for proper introductions so I slowly piece together the structure of the office.  My job is to help support and expand the capacity of the office to help manage the coordination of aid and build the capacity of our local government counterparts.  I work on editing and formatting reports, and try to catch up on what has already been done.  For the first week, I see little of the city except during my travels to and from the office.  The work is difficult, the local politics a black hole.  There is a lot to learn but it is taking some time to absorb and understand everything that is new.  Being in the bubble helps by limiting how much I have to learn initially, but of course being cut off from daily life on the street I feel almost as far from this country as I was in New York.