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I rarely see Hargeisa at night, and then only from inside a moving car as I travel from one walled compound to another.  I know little of the night-life here.  I don’t mean clubs and other such things—they don’t exist here—but I mean that even after almost 5 months, I know very little about Hargeisa after dark.  I know it is busy, but where are these people going?  What are they doing?  I see them, as I rumble past in a Land Cruiser with tinted windows and worn shocks, groups of women shrouded like ghosts, men with bundles of stems wrapped in plastic that one might mistake for flowers (perhaps a gift for a sweetheart) but which are in fact bundles of khat.  The men are on their way to chew these bright green leaves and forget themselves in the vivid, coked-out flight of ideas typical of khat use.  They build castles in their minds, think deep thoughts, solve all the world’s problems, and then wake up to find nothing but a pile of stripped branches and the same poverty, the same wife and hungry children, the same old life they had before, and all the great dreams spun in the night have vanished. 

The Mostly Unvarnished Truth

Again, it has been some time since I updated this blog.  I have been hesitant to share my experiences here; they are not always, or even often, fun, enlightening, “Out Of Africa”-style adventures.  It’s more like “The Constant Gardener.”  Facing poverty, disease, dirt, bugs the size of toddlers, laziness, intransience, ignorance, corruption and greed every day is exhausting and depressing.

I find I don’t want to be comforted, or reassured.  I don’t want to be told it will get better, or that I’m doing amazing work and it’ll all  be worth it in the end.  I just want to complain about my day with the people here who’ve gone through it too, and then go to bed and try to sleep through the constant cacophony of prayer call so I can get up and do it all again the next day.  I guess one might say that I’m not entirely happy here.

There, I’ve said it.  That’s what I haven’t wanted to tell all the wonderful people back home who have been so supportive.  I haven’t wanted to say that I am tired and angry and depressed and frustrated.  I haven’t wanted to complain about how expensive life is here, and how I’m going broke way ahead of schedule because the cost of things like fresh milk and toilet paper is so high.  I’ve hesitated to voice my frustrations with the way things are run here: the hospital, the store room, the OR…the list goes on.  I don’t want to disappoint all the people who’ve helped to send me here.