A month in…

Hope everyone is off to a happy and successful New Year!!  I have finally started settling in here in Colombia.  I arrived on the 30th of December and was introduced to my counterpart, and boss, on the national level – Guillaume.  A very nice fellow who has been all over the world with MSF (Doctor’s w/o Borders shortened and in French or Spanish – Medicos sin Fronteras).  He and his Colombian wife (no he met her on mission in Niger) just had their first baby (like Rob and Kirsten)!  It is a about 6 weeks older but, bad news here Rob and Kirsten, still VERY unhappy for hours and hours at a time – generally from 2am to 6am…

After a couple of days getting acquainted with the goings-on at the capital, it was off to Ibague (about 4 relatively sane hours by bus) in the state of Tolima where my team is based.  

The climate here (that is to say in the mountains of Bogota and Ibague) is very mild and one rarely needs a coat or shorts.  It rains a lot here in Ibague but not hard and not for very long.  It is much hotter down lower in areas like the coast (north and west), the Amazon (southeast) and the Llanos (northeast).

My job is not that exciting I am finding and resembles a lot of other jobs I’ve had.  That is to say, creating some semblance of organization and making sure other people get their jobs done.  I am the logisitician and administrator for the Tolima (the province we’re in) or Las Hermosas (an area where a lot of the work is) project.  This position hasn’t exactly been filled for some time, or maybe ever, so there is a lot of basic work that they wanted done up front (and of course, yesterday…)  To whit: an inventory of what if anything was actually at the office in Ibague (also an office in Chaparral (3 hour drive south via decent highway in our landcruisers) where 2 of the team are based 3 weeks/month  and dole out psychiatric help and support for hospital referrals), someone to actually keep track of expenditures and what they were for, an organization of existing supplies, and plan for organizing the offices in general.

There are 16 people working in my project – soon only two of us will be expatriots.  The others are all Colombianos from around the country.  All except the head of the project, or RT (responsable terreno), the asst to the RT, the housecleaner, and myself spend most of their time in the field or terreno.  For a week or two at a time, most of the team (el equipo) travel from village to village in the mountains and supply basic health care, hospital referrals, and mental health referrals to very poor villagers who have no other access to healthcare and nearest some of the most active areas left in the fighting between the government and, in our area, principally the FARC guerrillas.  However, after many years in these areas, things seem to be improving and there is talk of closing our project – vamos a ver (we’ll see).

You’ll notice the spattering of Spanish – that has been the real trick of it!!  As you may know, my Spanish isn’t the best – sure I can order a beer and get some directions wrong, but even that hasn’t been used for 8 years – and no one here speaks English!  My worst fears come true!  If only I spoke French – whoooaaa, one language at a time.  Actually, it could be worse – they could have been appalled at my pathetic attempts at communication and sent me home.  Instead they were very understanding and have sent me to a couple of weeks of Spanish tutoring with a language professor from the local university.  Some days I’m pretty sure my Spanish is getting worse but then that passes and I know it is – it gets frustrating and tiring when you can barely understand what is going on around you.  All that thinking in Spanish has the added side benefit of allowing me to forget the few words I used to know in English as well – I need a quicker and bigger brain!  Anyway, vamos a ver…

Since I am not out in the field, it is a lot like working in an office anywhere.  Our town is about 500,000 plus and has all the normal amenities like electricity, running water (relatively clean – it may or may not have worms in it, opinions differ, but I haven’t been really sick yet and will surely be very ‘seasoned’ for drinking the water in the wild at home), toilets w/ lids (though not always seats and it’s still 50/50 whether the TP goes in the commode or the trash can), Internet (I’ve been stealing wireless from a family in the neighborhood), and broadcast tv.  The ‘cascina’ (house-office or casa-oficina), as I like to call it is roomy enough, if a little noisy as it is on a busy intersection, many cars and motorcycles (lots of motorcycles here) lack mufflers, and the single pane windows lack much in the way of sound insulation.  Or, like last nite, there was a rumba (paaaahhhttyyy) that started around 2am and finally wrapped up around 7am – apparently there aren’t any public noise ordinances, or they aren’t very vigorously enforced.  Nonetheless, I have my own room (unless out-of-town guests come or some of the national staff don’t go home) and share a large but rather old and dilapidated bathroom.  The casa part is upstairs and the oficina part downstairs with the exception of the kitchen.  The kitchen, as it is, is very basic and not a lot of cooking goes on there.  It isn’t really worth cooking anyway as a meal ‘o’ the day (or comida corriente or almuerzito or plate del dia or …) can be had for between 4000 and 5000 Colombian Pesos (COP) or between 1.60 and 2.00 USD.  Thus our monthly per diem of 1,000,000 COP goes pretty far for food (good and plenty but pretty much all the same), beer (light lager just like everywhere else hot and 3rd worldish-but very serviceable), cigarettes (yes, I started but have already quit again), and aguardiente (evil national drink full of sugar, tasting a bit anise’y, and served by the bottle with some citrus and shot glasses).  Plus, I’m a millionaire once a month for about 2 hours!

Well, so far, so good.  I was hoping for something more hands on but beggars can’t be choosers.  I hope to go out in the field (terreno) with el equipo in febrero (that’s Spanish for February and, no, they don’t capitalize months or days of the week) and see what it is we are really doing.

Hope the snow is deep and crowds are slim – how is the economy and the new Prez anyway?

Hasta luego, rick

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