Every cloud...

Yo ho,

It's raining (again) and half the team are at hospital (again) so I have some time to write (again).

Things are pretty strange here at the moment. Although we have finished our orientation, this week there is THREE public holidays and one of the days we are going to a water park with 247 kids from the on-site school, so basically we're not working this week either. I think most of us are pretty gutted at that, by the end of last week we'd had enough of slowly slowly and want to get going working on the projects each day, however over the last three days we've had two unfortunate incidents in particular which have kept us occupied and actually helped bring the team together. I think as team we're hitting the ''storming stage', for those of you in the know about group social theory, which means relationships and roles are forming based on who we are on a day-to-day basis, not just when we're in 'hi nice to meet you' mode. So there's a few tensions and challenges arising. But like I say, we've had two incidents this week which have probably served to focus us back together. Every cloud.

Incident Number One: The curious incident of the dog in the night (I apologise for the copyright violation there)

This weekend we were offered a house nearby to stay in to get away from Gateway for a while, and to look after their dogs while the family went away. In practice this was a great idea. In reality it was still pretty good, up until we lost one of the dogs. Top stuff. Basically due to security concerns every house has security gates that need to be opened and shut whenever cars come in and out. Unfortunately dogs have a tendency to run out of open gates so we needed to make sure we kept a hold of them whenever we got in or out. On Saturday night we got back from a meal out and we managed to forget to close the gate behind us. We then settled down to a game of Monopoly (a recurring theme as you will see later). Two hours later when our friend was leaving, we noticed a) the gate was open and b) one of the dogs was gone. Error. Compounding this error was that the dog who had gone was old, deaf and partially blind. You couldn't write this stuff.

So about 11.30pm, when most of SA in asleep, we had to go searching for an old, deaf and blind dog. Oh and he was a black dog. Really useful colour for finding him in the pitch black. Oh and our car has only one working headlamp. It was amazing in the way that amazing is a horrendously bad situation.

So we looked for about an hour and I walked about the streets a bit which is stupidly dangerous in SA at night but hey, when a dog goes missing logic leaves the human mind. We rang (and no doubt woke) the owners who said it was ok and hopefully he'd be taken into the pound and that we should stay safe and not walk or drive around at night. Naturally we ignored that and kept looking for a while longer. Whilst this sounds very irresponsible, when you lose someone's dog who you are meant to be looking after, who has been in the family for years, and the family has FOUR small children, you don't think of yourselves and your own safety. You do your upmost to ensure the 'dog heaven' story isn't required the next day when the kids come home.

Anyways this bonded the team into a common sense of not so much panic but disbelief. The kind where you all stand around and say nothing. Close enough to each other because secretly you want to be comforted, and far enough away that no one thinks you're not devastated too. I imagine we looked a lot like penguins in captivity. Just standing around, moving slowly, seemingly doing nothing. Maybe penguins have all lost someone's dog.

About 1.30am we went inside and unsuprisingly no one could sleep. Except Jenny who had got food poisoning from her own cooking. But the rest of us were up. There was a LOT of silent prayer going on, but no one could speak enough to suggest a group sesh. It was one of the worst feelings in my life. I went from sheer anger at no one in particular, to disbeleif, and then to reflection about how this would overshadow our entire time here, even before it had truly begun.

About 2am me and Jonno happened to go outside, Jonno becuase he'd not gear locked the car (we lock gears here) and me becuase I hoped maybe Buzz (the bog) had come back and was trying to get in from outside the gate. As we walked out we saw Buzz run past. I don't think you can sense the relief. I'm not really a dog person, but I think I was converted in that moment. He was pretty tired and limping a bit, but he was Buzz and he was alive and the gate was now locked. The lift in mood in the team was so tangible you could spread it on a sandwich.

Incident Number Two: The one with the rain, steps and lack of torch.

This was last night. It seems to enjoy raining on Mondays which is annoying and it gets dark here about 6pm and when it gets dark there are no outside lights really so it's pretty much pitch black. We hang out in the admin block and although it's about 15m to our rooms, there's about 4 sets of steps in different directions and different sizes to get there.

Anyways, team bonding that night was called for so we whacked out the monopoly. I think we began about 9.30pm and me and Jonno had acheived world domination about 11.30pm. At this point, Abby pipes up and says 'I don't know why I'm laughing but I think I've broken my ankle'. What a line. We have a quotes book running. I have just realised that needs to go in it. In turned out that before we began Monopoly, Abby had slipped and hit her ankle on the steps. During the monopoly game, the pain had somewhat increased and her ankle swollen to the size of a small Zulu child. Apparently 'she didn't want to make a fuss and she'd deal with it on her own'. It amuses me because Abby and I share the same odd psyche (like it's proper freaky, the other day we had soup and everyone put the spoon in the bowl whereas the two of us put it on the plate. We also check our watches almost in synchronisation, check food status at the same times and are both as stubborn and self reliant as a particularly stubborn and self reliant donkey) so while everyone (including me) stressed that she should've just said earlier, I know I would've done the exact same thing!

Thanks to our collective medical know-how, we soon had it up on a chair and packed with peas. Note to readers, when using Peas to reduce swelling, don't use an open packed. It leads to peas everywhere. It did not look pretty so we did think maybe it could be a break, and she did seem in some distress. However we later found out this was more because she'd been holding it in for so long! We then rang our co-ordinator (phone off), our cell leader (not picking up) and our UK Oasis contact (no answer). Soon running out of people we got hold of an amazing lady called Di who works here. Unfortunately as it's holidays this week she was away on the coast. But she did direct us to the private medical centre. So at 12.30am we went to the medical centre, me carrying Abby through varying methods. The evil of having ample steps around is two fold: you are more likely to slip and hurt your ankle, and when you do you've still got those steps to navigate. Cruel world.

The medical centre was unsuprisingly very quiet so we got seen to pretty quick. I had to pay 300R up front (about 20GBP) to have her checked in, and then I was able to watch some of Arsenal - Derby with Jonno while Hannah stayed with Abby as she got checked out by the nurse (medically speaking that is). I felt very old I must say. I had to sign various forms on behalf of her, but when neither me nor Jonno knew the basic information about her, like her address, phone number, next of kin, d.0.b., the lady did ask how we even knew her. We laughed. She didn't.

Anyways, by this point Abby was doing better and swelling had gone down so we knew it wasn't a break. They discharged her with crutches and painkillers and strapping. She has to go back today for an X-ray (which I just found out was clear, there is no break anywhere. Bonus).

All in all this was another bonding experience despite the hard time when we thought it was broken. She wasn't amused when I told her that a broken metatarsal is 6 weeks out. But then Jonno corrected me and said that was the recovery time to play football. I love how my medical knowledge is based on Wayne Rooney.

So ya, aside from being frustrated that we can't start work in full, we're making trouble for ourselves, trouble that seems to arrive when we play Monopoly. We can't wait to begin work next week and by then I will be able to talk more about work things so you can know what we're doing!

Although everyone here keeps stressing that whilst we think in tasks, African's think in time and people. They say that just being here, talking to the kids, talking to the locals on site, listening to people about thier work and generally being from overseas to help them is makign a massive kingdom building difference. It's fair to say a lot of us are unconvinced. I'm on the fence. I see both sides. But come the end of the time we'll see who was right.