day 2

so i get up early. same thing with the blinds but this time i can't sleep so i'm up before 0700. perfect. i try to wake up with some pushups and squats before another "magnificent" shower. a quick check of my emails and a cup of tea (yes, i packed a bunch of my own tea; the coffee in the room is instant, so thank god i did!) and then i nibble a nature valley granola bar and i consider breakfast to be out of the way. for some reason it's suddenly like quarter to 9 so i make my way to the lobby and stand outside, conspicuously, and wait for a driver to pick me up. tomorrow i won't plan to be so early because people seem so taken aback by me. they probably aren't but i'm just not used to being so blatantly noticed. but then my phone begins to vibrate and chirp and it's godday, the same driver from the airport. but i don't see the land cruiser. "i'm in the front." "are you in the black car?" "i'm coming now." so i'm walking to the black car at the front and then a toyota speeds up beeping his horn "over here! Jessica!" woops. almost got in the wrong car. probably would have really pissed off some dignitary who was waiting for that car. my bad. drama's averted and we're on our way back to the office. it's a really short drive so i ask if i can just walk it. "why? i'll drive you." i have no idea. apparently if someone is going to drive you it's stupid to walk. fair enough. when in rome... so the office is a dod office in some fancy-ish old house with a great view of THE rock from the back offices. and then i meet the doc. finally. and he's totally nice, just a little short and gruff, probably all those years with army special forces; yeah, that's gotta be it. but we start off with an explanation of the program (PEPFAR, http://www.pepfar.gov/ , if you're interested) and then a meeting with a local pharmacist in charge of purchasing anti-hiv drugs. it's funny to watch them try to communicate. they are just coming from totally different places, literally. but the doc doesn't want to know how many pills are in the warehouse, just how many people/months of treatment meds are available. so he tells her to re-do the spreadsheet and she breezes out of the office. then there's charles. he's the guy i'm supposed to work with on my "project" which is building a "completed training" spreadsheet. kind of stupid for a med student to do, but it needs done and i could always use more work with excel since i pretty much suck at it. but no matter; the doc briefs us on what he wants and then takes off to meet more important people at the embassy. and where's charles? for the rest of the day i never see him again. there are only 3 offices but still, i don't find him the whole day. so i fool around with what i think the headings and columns should be for this training spreadsheet and proceed to search around online for tutorials so i don't seem like too much of an excel-retard. and i read a bit of my aids book that i brought from the school library. and i try to look busy. and people chat with me here and there. and someone is going for lunch, do i want something? hell yes, i do! what's she getting? sure, i want one of those too. i have no idea what i even ordered but an hour later when she returned with it i was happy. it was some sort of pita wrapped around some cooked chicken with some cabbage and pounded yam and a pickled something. it was quite good. and then i tasted another girl's lunch and MMMM!!! spicy goodness! meat and spice cooked inside a hogie roll thing. i want that tomorrow! but no one's around and this girl who got lunch (and whose name escapes me like the names of the 15 other people i met; it will be a disaster tomorrow when everyone is in different clothes!) doesn't seem to be too busy so i start asking questions and we talk about abuja and aids and military and marraige and culture and it's totally nice. so she's trying to get me to lagos with her next week for that aids festival or whatever and i hope i get to go! and then there's a 5 day A/B class for teens in mogadishu (Abstinence Before marraige) that she thinks i'd have fun helping teach, and of course she's right. so hopefully i'll get to do more hands on stuff in the next few weeks. apparently it's rough now because of the end of the fiscal year and trying to get everything together and organized, but hopefully that means i can invoke the "you're not paying me any mind so i'm going off with other people in the program to do cooler things than making spreadsheets for people who disappear." it's a plan. and then i'm told the driver will be ready to take me home whenever i want to leave. right now is fine, thanks. i can only look busy for so long, especially at the end of the day. and off we go. and another lady is catching a ride too, an american who's working with dr singer and she tells me things get a little crazy but i should just bring a book if i get bored. she's sure it'll get better next week. "and we'll go to dinner sometime too." sounds good to me. so i get out of the car and verify that it'll be back at 0815 to take me to the embassy for some more naira and some security training about all the things a white american girl isn't supposed to do (and i bet it's all really fun stuff too). other than that, who knows. maybe i'll see charles again. then i can do some data entry; woohoo! but at least it's something. and it actually will be helpful, according to the lady who was in the car with me. whatever, right? i'm just here. in africa.



but then i come inside of the hilton and people greet me. by my name! and everyone is really nice. and we chat about the weather (it's the rainey season and we're in the middle of a thunderstorm) and food and random shit (which means i didn't always understand what we were actually talking about). but it was really nice. and then i came up here and started typing. and now i'm wondering if i feel like eating dinner since i ate lunch so late and now i'm tired. it's pretty expensive here too; us$12-18 for dinner. normally that's no big deal but for me to eat alone? maybe i'll order room service. it may cost the same but i won't feel as weird. most of the white people here travel in packs, i rarely see someone alone, and certainly no girls. we'll see. when i checked my email tonight there was a funny-ish news story there and here's the link. i found it amusing. http://allafrica.com/stories/200709100232.html it's about street hawkers and traffic jams.