up in an office tying up various loose ends. The monthly statistics , and
various contract wrangles have taken up days on end. I doubt if we will sort
out all the contracts by the time it is time to sign the new ones next year.
Selfishly I won't be here when that happens so I can very much pass the buck
and just concentrate on this years organisational disaster. Which, frankly,
is more than enough.
I think my essential problem is that there are too many 'Mary's' in this
country! Out of a staff of fifty five I have to supervise eleven are called
Mary! This country gives it's people a plethora of names after their first
name. All are similar sounding similarly spelt, rather like China (which I'm
told only has four variations of surname!) and the vast majority of them
begin with the letter N, Vowels pop up in perculiar places and the whole
notion of words being spelt like they sound is clearly alien here (the 'TH'
sound, sounding like 'si' anyone?)
The contracts of two Marys were mixed up and sent to the wrong clinics,
signed by both of them and sent back, so now I've got to go through the
whole process all over again. Included the dreaded social insurance form. If
I'd really appreciated how time consuming it would be to get the contracts
for the Marys (and the others) sorted I would have probably filed them in
the bin at the beginning. That a country lacking in even the most basic
healthcare infrastructure can construct such an impressive assault course of
bureaucracy is baffling.
I'm never going to call any future offspring Mary out of protest. If all the
currently employed Mary's all did different types of jobs we would have
enough of them to staff an entire clinic with people called Mary. Or, to put
things another way, and the link is a little tenuous I grant you, we have
enough Mary's to make a football team. Which neatly leads me on to my
Saturday afternoon activity
Some of you, I'm guessing, may have watched a game of football this weekend.
The particularly active ones might even have kicked a football round the
park or played in a more organised game. I spent the afternoon playing a
game of football like one I've never played before.
The teams were mainly members of our staff. All in their mid twenties, like
me, all very keen on football, like me, all able to play high tempo football
in forty degree temperatures with apparent ease and there the similarity
ends!
The match was conducted on the airstrip, the only area of flat land without
scrubby bushes. The ball was a nice new one we had flown in. The goals were
hastily erected sticks. The referee dispensed with the more usual black polo
shirt and shorts and instead went with a long flowing white robe and a
cowboy hat.
Most of the players opted to play minus shoes but from the power with which
they hit the ball and the boldness of the tackles you would never have
guessed. I had told myself that getting injured doing this would be a
particularly stupid thing to do, so any tackle that looked a bit dicey I
stayed clear of, making look like a complete wimp.
In their ultimate wisdom, my team decided that out on the right wing was the
place for me. If I'm honest I think it is because they wanted me out of the
way. When David Beckham plays on the right wing he does so with gusto
running for miles on end up and down the line sending in cross after cross
with laser guided accuracy. When I play on the right wing I flail around in
the manner of a lost lunatic. If the ball ever heads my way I try to do
something productive but inevitably end up apologising to my team as the
ball sails out of their reach. Very much a squad player me.
The game was interrupted by several pitch invasions, firstly by a group of
moping donkeys and then by a group of cows. One of whom decided to sit down
in the middle of the pitch and had to be encouraged to continue on its lazy
stroll.
The game was also halted for the six thirty bugle and ceremonial lowering of
the national flag, this disrupted my teams brightest portion of play for
about half an hour. I wondered what Alex Ferguson might have said had he
been in charge 'Well Garth, I thought we had the upper hand until the
flipping bugle and those donkeys!' Maybe something for FIFA to consider,
nothing is beyond them.
A tough, equally fought contest that defined the term 'a blood and guts tie'
. In fact with some of the tackles flying in it is a wonder that some of
those same blood and guts were not scattered across the pitch.
It finished two-two, and in the best footballing traditions both sides felt
hard done by.
