Vive la difference!

Sweet relief! It’s almost embarrassing how much a little comfort can improve your mood. Not just in a micro sense – how you feel at any given moment – but in a macro sense too, in terms of your overall wellbeing. This morning, I checked out of my filthy little dive of a hotel and into a brand new “boutique” hotel called, amusingly if appropriately, “la difference”. It’s clean and well-equipped and I managed to negotiate myself a suite for a very reasonable price. (Everything in Congo is negotiable, if you have the stomach for it.) I have a leather sofa, a flat screen TV, and wireless. The wireless doesn’t work, because as usual our useless IT people have sent me to the field with a piece of shit computer that doesn’t work properly, but hey – that’s not the hotel’s fault.

I’ve never had so much trouble getting online before. The office bandwidth is truly pitiful. I had better internet access in the bush in CAR. I can’t use my laptop (see above), so I’m left a bit in the lurch, which is why the blog isn’t as active as it should be.

Anyway. This has been an odd experience so far. I’m working out of the MONUC offices, which means that I come to work in the morning in a peacekeeping vehicle. The compound is bristling with razor wire, bunkers, and APCs. There are soldiers everywhere. Every imaginable flag is represented on their shoulders. English is the lingua franca, a fact which I am having enormous trouble getting used to. It’s a very odd place for a humanitarian aid worker to find herself, and not altogether comfortable. This is especially true given the visibly uneasy relationship the peacekeepers seem to have with some of the locals. They are a dour looking bunch, cradling their assault rifles and gazing steely-eyed over loitering youths, as though expecting mischief at any moment. Which they almost certainly are. Ill-tempered exchanges appear frequent, and are sure to draw a crowd from inside the compound. Irate Congolese quickly find themselves swallowed within a gathering cloud of camouflage. The peacekeepers are much warmer towards their own, however, and it’s a truly bizarre sight to see a guy perched behind a gun turret waving cheerfully in your direction.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and hopefully will afford a chance to avoid work. As usual, the schedule has been hectic, so I’m looking forward to a little R&R.