The longer I work out here, the shorter my patience gets.The more relaxed and laissez faire the society seems to be, the tighter the restrictions that are placed on our lifestyle. While we are expanding the project exponentially, our living and working quarters have been constricted with impregnable fences erected as added security. I used to look out through our razor wire fences as the crowded IDP buses whizzed by the cow-herds walking to feed by the women carrying firewood on their heads. I used to like to say to myself, “Now this is Darfur”, as I reflected upon the pulse of the road. Now we have a giant wall of sand. It has (un)ceremoniously symbolized the blanket which numbs all imagination, adventure, and uniquity which initially compels one to come to such a place.
So, in order to cope I’ve tried to get out more when I can. I’ve been speaking with various US folks here, Foreign Service Officers, my future profession of choice. I’ve had some interesting conversations with the concept how the government these days is really trying to combine development into the core of their foreign policy in emerging countries. I’ve further learned about the various entities that have their hand in a place like Darfur; from the governments, military, and intelligence agencies to the humanitarian side of aid and NGO’s.
One interesting thing I picked up recently was the difference between Foreign Service and intelligence agencies. The primary difference when handling information is how they gather and report it. As a political officer, the Foreign Service employee will open gather information and interpret it, reporting their analysis to policy makers in Washington. An intelligence gatherer has an assignment to gain certain information on a particular topic and report that information back to Washington in raw format, without any analysis or interpretation. It could be said that the art form to the Foreign Service officer is the interpretation of the information while the art form for the intelligence agent is the method in which he is able to obtain the information.
We’ve also learned to kill the time and fight the constriction with pranks. I suppose pranks are supposed to die out when you get older, but when push comes to shove and life become a mellow routine, you do what you gotta do. In true Siller fashion, I may have taken a recent one a little too far.
Several months ago a friend of mine and I tried to find a goat and put it into a sleeping quarters of a fellow colleague. This proved a bit more of a challenge, considering security limitations in night time wandering – oh and theft. We realized quickly in this environment it wasn’t that smart of an idea so it was nixed for a more tangible one. After a poker game one evening we sand-bagged one of the other player’s rooms. This simply means taking lots and lots of sandbags and barricading his door closed. It worked well and to good results, as he had to wake up to potty in the middle of the night and was forced to go in a bottle (fortunate for him, an empty was available.)
I suppose mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, because this prank was mimicked for several weeks afterward in various forms, among them upon me, where several conspirators with master keys and access to local labor had a wall of sandbags professionally stacked inside my room. When I opened the door, I was briefly surprised by the immediate obstruction.
These carried on for weeks with other various forms of silliness, Ceram wrapping tents shut, strategically placing rubber life-like snakes in inopportune locations, and the like.
No big deal and no harm done. So we continue. Recently, we had a little dinner and party to commemorate three years in Darfur (not going to comment on that) and coincidentally we had a new government representative arrive to oversee our contract. He’s basically the person who reports back to our client that we are doing a good job. We schmooze him and make him one of us and get him involved in our operation. So on his first day in theater I accidentally made sure he became involved real quick.
Since he was new, I didn’t realize he was a VIP, so to speak, and was not to be touched. While he was talking with two other of our employees who happen to be knee deep pranksters, my buddy and I snuck up and doused them all with water balloons, nicely soaking our new ally.
Mature I know, but he probably felt good that the comradery out here is tight enough to include him in the shenanigans so soon. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
So we trudge forward, voluntarily I realize. Cause when life provides lemons…
So for the infrequent visitors it has been some time since my last post. Thanks to the patient folk. I promise over the next few months to work at least one post a week toward entertaining you with the nuisances of our Darfur livelihood.
For those who I didn’t get an opportunity to visit over my extended break in the US, I have decided to stick it out a bit longer…pushing the two year mark. I still scratch my head and frown my brow at the thought of staying until November, especially when I re-read previous posts that show little if any enthusiasm about continuing.
But I made the choice to continue for a number of reasons and will stick by it. One of them centers around the idea that I have the improbable notion of attempting to turn this blog into some sort of readable book, but of course all I envision at this point is the NY Times Best Seller header on the cover, cameo appearances on daytime talk shows, and a constant stream of residual income, not the actual inner workings of the blood, sweat, and tears that it will take to spin a unique plotline and a sellable story in order to achieve this grandiose scheme.
Either way, there is still a lot for me to accomplish out here so I stuck with it. Judging by the plane ride back, I’m not so sure it was a good idea. My flight from DC to Frankfurt was struck by lightening. I had just closed my eyes and a giant flash reopened them abruptly, accompanied several minutes later by the pilot coming on air, stating in his strong german accent, “No worries, yes that bright flash you just experienced was the plane getting struck by lightening. We don’t think the electricals were damaged but we will find out when we try to lower the landing gear in a couple of hours.”
I envisioned him coming back on stating, “Has anyone seen ‘Memphis Belle’; We will need your assistance in the lower hull self-cranking down the wheels for each wing. Anyone successful will be offered a free upgrade or single segment voucher for their next Lufthansa experience.”
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I dozed back off to sleep and the plane’s engines seemed to get eerily quiet. I then imagined in my dreamy state feeling us dropping in altitude and the pilot coming on saying, “Yes, our electricals were fried and all engines have failed. We’re at 12,000 feet and can coast toward mother earth for another 10 minutes, but if we can not restart the engines, let’s go ahead an assume the crash landing positions. You all listened to the safety presentation, right?”
Of course my dreams started getting more carried away. I was hoping it was the several glasses of wine because I envisioned at the final moments the pilot counting down from 30 toward our death, only for the engines to be resurrected at the point of no return (with the pilot giving a big German Howard Dean ‘Yeeaahhh’ as we dusted the tree-tops and happily made our gasped accent back upwards…to safety).
Stopping the dream at that point wouldn’t have done justice to my buzzed imagination. I later realized once I analyzed this dream that I have been living in Darfur too long because just as we saved ourselves from imminent death over Germany’s Black Forest, the plane swerved hard left to avoid a rebel’s anti-aircraft missile, which I caught a glimpse of right outside my window streaming upwards in its onmious red and orange trail as it narrowly missed our wing.
In leiu of this dreamt attack, I believe standard protocol of the pilot would be to take precautionary sharp upward left and right avoidance movements with the aircraft, like a climber would in traversing a mountain, in order to quickly climb into safer altitudes. My pilot, in my infinite imaginary wisdom, decided flying was unsafe and emergency landed in a nearby field.
Once the plane landed (the landing gear did end up working) and was brought to a bumpy halt, I remember the rebels quickly approaching the plane and coming onboard to look for, in particular, Anti-Israeli individuals for immediate execution. I opened an eye and saw two men quickly shot by the insurgents as they recognized their enemies. I closed my eyes and played possum as they walked down the isles in their quest for redemption. When they came near me they stopped and I could smell their sweat and opened an eye to see a pair of two black ominous eyes staring in return. It was at this moment I realized there was a Palestinian seated behind me who at the start of the flight was wearing the traditional patterned black and white scarf. To my horror, in our impromptu and rocky landing the scarf had flown forward over the seat and into my lap. I looked down at the realization that I was end’s meat. How would one explain themselves in this situation?
I thought, yes I am in quite the conundrum. So I did what any rational person would do in that scenario of a dream, I confidently said “I think you’re mistaken, this scarf isn’t mine. It is the guy’s behind me. See him, right there. Yes, that’s your target.” I remember thinking, “Am I really kidding myself? Is this going to work?” and then, “Wow, if I don’t get killed by these guys, then the guy behind me is going to do it for them if he makes it out alive.”
He didn’t make it out alive, and as they passed by in their fierce and bloody determination, I snuck off the plane and into the adjacent forest, along the way hiding behind wreckage of other planes they had successfully shot down.
I later thought…hmmnn not a good foreboding about my last tenure in Darfur. Anyway…such is life and one’s own imagination. If, in these final months, I get to experience any of the fun I dreamt on the plane ride, then it will make for some quality posts. Stay tuned.
