So after a long flight, and then a pause for a night stop and then more
flying...... I'm back. I'm currently in the second base that we operate
from. It
has only just been re-opened and everything is still very much in it's
infancy. As for the outreach locations I've only visited one (see 'out on my
own') and that was a while ago, so the simple and most accurate answer is
that your guess is as good as mine as to what state we will find them in.
I'm pleased to report that rainy season is drawing to a close. It still
rains but the gaps between each storm has widened considerably even in the
time I've been away, (It last rained on Wednesday). This should make the
walking easier under foot but the heat will now be a problem. In fact in
many ways it seems we have swapped one set of problems for a whole load of
new ones!
The ground is starting to resemble what I thought it would be like here all
the time. Slowly the greens are turning to browns, soon to turn to scrubby
dessert conditions. A long hot 'summer' stretches out before us.
The other thing to report is that we have also had a change of personal. My
first outreach buddy has decided outreach really wasn't for her and gone to
work on another project. So Suza the German has become Francis the Kenyan.
Luckily for me he's done a few projects before (though never outreach). We
are the first bloke outreach team anyone can remember here, so we had better
do our gender proud!
At present we are stuck in the base, the reason for the delay? A satellite
phone that doesn't have the right SIM card. So 21st centaury technology
is being rescued by a medieval solution. A man is
running from another base with one! It will take him two days.
Still, as can be imagined, I don't think I will be sitting twiddling my
thumbs doing nothing, as the task here is the wrong side of enormous.
Thankfully on my return I've found most of the problems that I left have
indeed been sorted out by somebody else, perhaps I need to go on holiday
more often!
