Somalia or bust

I am in Amsterdam. This place is so quiet that the most dangerous things on the roads are the bikes. Again I find myself walking on the bike paths having mistaken them for sidewalk passing lanes.

I am stoked. I left Canada on the evening flight from Fredericton to Toronto. Transited through Toronto with a bit of a hickup...seems that my trunk was heavier than the approved 32kg!!! I had to repack almost 10 kg into my carry-on bag (to be fair all this extra weight are my 'gifts' of books, chocolates, skiddles and coffee). Landed in London in as the sun was rising and made the final link from London to Amsterdam. It was a long flight which lasted overnight.

I went to the hotel for a quick clean up and then directly off to the office for a briefing and scheduling. The next day was another wirlwind of activity starting with an oversleep due to jetlag. In a panic I went straight off to the vaccination clinic for my last shots and then off to the predeparture preparation course (PPD).

The PPD found 42 folks from Germany, Canada, England, USA, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Sudan, Nigeria, India, Nepal... I think that is all??? There were 10 logistics staff (I hear that is not normal as the course generally is full of logs), nurses, doctors and even a couple of Mental Health folks. There was only one Project Coordinator (PC) and only one Admin person.

The PPD lasted from morning till night. It was about challenging us with teambuilding and testing frustration levels. We did receive two great presentations by folks just back from their first mission - a Log and a MD. We got to hear the nitty-gritty and the down dirty of a mission and these presentations provided more information and ideas than the rest of the PPD, I think.

It was a long and tiring process. Most of us were scheduled to leave for the missions directly after the PPD and so the focus of our attention was NOT on the course material. Lets get going was the mantra of the moment. Since many of the missions are in unstable or difficult living conditions we had spent so much time investigating and analysing and struggling to reach peace with our decisions to go, we held on to our sanity with threads of attachment. Sooner is surely better and then we can find out that life is easier in reality than in expectation.

This is true for me in my decision to go to Somalia. It is truly a difficult and scary placement. Living conditions (a greater fear for me than the potential for warfare) will be difficult as we will be confined to the smallish living compound when not at work. So our relationship within our expat 'room-mates' will be so important for our health and sanity. I take this challenge as one worth the effort as I see my own limitations with social situations. As far as the constant threat to security I have less concern as there are tangible methodologies for dealing with threats. We have security protocols, of course, but also guards, radios, security checks and security watches. Ultimately, there are evacuation protocols (which are enacted more than a few times already) which add to the belief that systems in place are working as they should.

I am pumped, tho I fear that my uncurbed excitement will cause some problems.