One week trapped at home

I'm so bored.

We get daily updates about the situation and the security. We are allowed to walk between the two house with a guard, it's only 50m maybe. The community were furious, thinking we practice witchcraft or voodoo. The negative attitudes have also been felt with other NGO's and they have also reduced their curfew.

It's weird for me as I have not seen much at all. I just get updates of what is going on, but am left in this little bubble of maison B, so its pretty surreal. While walking to the other house one day I heard a passer by say ' je deteste les gens des emergency' which means I hate the people of emergency.

We have stopped all operations for 1 week now. After about 2 days all the drugs and medical supplies were gone, which means the mums need to go to an external pharmacy to buy everything, and it's not cheap. Imagine if your kid was on amoxicilline IV 4 times a day. You need 4 vials, 4 syringes, 4 diluents, 4 needles. That's just one drug for one day, and assuming the kid already has a cannula. It's challenging for me as more kids might unnecessarily die due to our absence and lack of free supplies. But we can't give them our keys to the cupboard where a few more supplies are because we don't just give out drugs we educate and empower local staff. It's also a method to get the government to appreciate our presence more. - it is also unsafe.

We had almost all the national staff visit us which was lovely but tiring. They miss us and it was a great show of solidarity. They did almost drink all our beer though :)

Apparently on Monday the community are having a protest against the U.N. blue helmets. So we are hoping to recommence activities on Wednesday if it calms down back to the general level of dislike.

At home I have drawn, played guitar, watched movies, hung out with my team, we did a mini salsa night which was fun. Made cakes. But it's also really hard. I feel trapped. The Italians are lovely but rarely switch to English or French when I'm there, so I don't understand anything most of the time. I feel bad asking them to switch, they seem like they are having a great time and I don't like forcing people to speak English when I'm there. Although I need to.

Also everyone here smokes, I did not expect that at all. So after three weeks now my throat kills this morning. I'm pretty sensitive to it so can't hang out too long. And there are also a few people that smoke weed. I used to be fine being around people smoking weed but now I can't stand it and go to room straight away. I think i partially blame it for turning my lovely caring boyfriend into a selfish arrogant one that came home at 4am every night. Too many bad memories with it. And actually, I've never had a good experience with it.

Now I have so much time I'm also starting to get a bit stressed again about finding a job after this.

To top it of the internet is even worse with everyone using it and this morning we don't have any water.

Please tell me about your lives and the outside world! And if you write a comment, don't forget your name :)Read more