Back from Break

I'm back at work, now that the break is over. It was a great week. The southwest corner of Uganda is beautiful. I did a lot of hiking, some canoeing, quite a bit of photography, and ate and drank a lot. And it's actually good to be back in Kayna.

I had already forgotten the pace of work here. I beginning and end of the day are the busiest times. In the morning, we have to distribute the drivers, hand out a lot of money, see what has changed during the night, etc. At the end of the day, we pay the day workers, evaluate what has been done, see what has changed (again), and try to plan for the next day. Things change all the time: the security situation; people to be replaced due to illness, or deaths in their family; visits from regional headquarters or from Paris; hospital or field emergencies; car problems; or about anything else that one can think of. There's never a dull moment.

We are 6 at the house for the moment, one short of a full team. There's Anne-Laure, our site leader from Paris; Agnes, our anethysiste also from the area around Paris; Alexandra, the nurse from northwestern France who was on break with me; Stéphane, a doctor from Benin who will be leaving in a couple of weeks; Gedeon, a doctor from Kinshasa Congo; and me. We are missing a surgeon. In principal, Christophe, who was here when I arrived will be coming back for a week to fill in this gap until Paris can arrange for another one. He's a great surgeon, but has quite a personality to manage. We have a really great team, who get along well together. Apparently, this isn't always the case. When you live and work together 24 hours a day, it's appreciable when the team has cohesion.

I noticed during my break that a couple of blog updates made via email didn't make it. I don't know if this one will get there. I don't know, either what I said in the updates which didn't get posted. It's not important.

I'm now midway through my six months in this first mission. It's going very fast. I feel a lot better in my poste, and hope that I am contributing something to the work here. Anyway, it's what I want to do for a long time.