The Work Begins

Monday, June 28, 2004

First day of work. I fell asleep around 8:30pm last night, and then woke up at 12:30pm. It took another two hours to fall back asleep. No reason to wake up; I just did, thinking it couldn’t be long until time to get up. Wrong! I saw the end of this horrible western starring Woody Harrelson before I could fall asleep. Got up at 7am and tried to take a shower. I say “tried” because I only managed to wash my hair before the water ran out. I wonder if showering in the morning is the reason. I may try showering tonight to see if I can at least get 10 minutes in before the water runs out. Between that and the toilet not flushing EVERYTHING, the bathroom situation could be better.

I had a huge breakfast. They made me scrambled eggs, ham (which they called bacon), banana yogurt, toast, and this orange drink. It’s made from concentrated OJ, but it’s mixed with water and tastes like Kool-aid. Apparently, Zimbabwe is famous for this drink, and it’s very good. I was full when I went to work. I gave some scraps to Smiley, the guard dog. He’s so funny, and acts just like Emma and Jackson at the dinner table.

Shock of shocks, I wore a white shirt for work. I still detest white dress shirts, but I looked OK, and I figured it would make the best impression. The WHO complex is neat. It’s a bunch of brick buildings that have French doors everywhere. Casey shares an office with two other people, but they travel a lot, so it’s not bad. I basically sat with her today while she showed me all these different spreadsheets, etc. I think the job will be OK, but she sure does have a lot of information to juggle. It sounds like I’ll be sorting through information a lot and sending it to various people who need it. Kind of like what I do in Atlanta in many ways.

I got an email account set up for my visit. The IT people even came by in the afternoon to set up my connection. What speed! My goodness, the WHO-AFRO help desk puts ours at CDC to shame. They were my first encounter with body odor. It was pretty rank, but didn’t quite take my breath away like the poor staff workers at the cottage do. I’m noticing that the higher the class, the more likely they are to wear deodorant. I understand it’s not high on the priority list, especially when you’re struggling to eat enough. This poor country is really having problems. Last night, I heard part of a very funny newscast (funny in that it was so unprofessional) where they were talking about the Zimbabwe equivalent of the Fed doing things to bring inflation down to 200%. I cannot imagine inflation hitting the 600% or so it is here in the USA. The President would be thrown out of office either by an election or by impeachment. It would not be pretty.

Many seem to think that Mugabe will evict all the NGOs who are here to provide aide to the people. That would include the US Embassy, since all we really do here is provide humanitarian aide. Speaking of which, the ambassador himself said I could come to the 4th of July party. Apparently, my insistence on wanting to go got his attention, so he said I could come. I don’t think I’ll have to work either  Casey did say the embassy could give me grief for having a personal passport rather than the brown official one. I’ll have to be sure I have an official passport in the future. Makes things easier, and it gives me diplomatic status. Zimbabwe used to be such a well run country, but it’s declining quickly. Scary thing is that the South African president wants to strip whites of land just as Mugabe is doing. Sad situation overall.

My driver Eddie is a nice guy. Pretty young. He’s got a baby and is building is house. It will cost Zim$70,000/day for driving me. That comes down to about $12/day, which isn’t too bad, I guess. I’ll pay him in USD since that is worth more than Zim$. I’ll be paying him once a week, which is fine. I’ll also be paying Pet in USD for my room/board. Sad when foreign money is better than local. I got a money changer to give me money for $300. That translated to over Zim$1.5 MILLION! For the first time in my life, I’m a millionaire  Truly bizarre considering the sums of money things cost here. Not bad when you translate it, but it’s shocking to spend Zim$70,000 on a meal, even though that’s just $10 US.

Richard called me at work. It was great to hear from him, but I hope he’ll call me at the cottage now that he has the number. I got to check my hotmail, and answer some emails. It was a bit slow, but I think my WHO email will be much quicker. Still, it is nice to be able to check my email and write back. Poor Richard thought something was wrong since I wrote back, but he forgot I don’t have access except at work. Even this journal is written at night and then copied/pasted in Live Journal while at work. Takes just 3 minutes, so it’s not like I’m just journaling all day. Still a little tired, but only at weird times. I get sleepy mid-morning and just after dinner. Hopefully my body rhythms will settle down soon.