Embracing the Chaos

For all of us, there are those days when life seems to be throwing all its got in our direction and we wonder if it will ever let up. Then there is Sudan. Sudan is a daily in-your-face kind of place, and you begin to wonder if there is such a thing as a normal care-free day. Now, this maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is - Sudan has its fair share of rough days.
Example:
You send a vehicle to the market to buy onions and an hour later get a call on the radio that the truck's been stuck in the mud for past 45 minutes. Buy the time you get the tractor ready and pull the vehicle out of the mud another hour and a half has gone by and a simple trip for onions has taken two and a half hours. Not to mention the discovery that the four-wheel drive doesn't work and the bushings need to be replaced...again.

My recent discovery has been that tripping over your computer cord can have devastating consequences. I haven't decided yet if my computer cord was severed by my falling computer when I tripped over it or if I somehow had the great fortune to have a rat eat through the cord on that same night - I may never know. The point is, my computer is now waiting for some way to be charged (I guess you can't just solder the wires back together - either that or I also managed to knock the connection lose inside the computer...now that would be Sudan!). Our team here is now enjoying the close fellowship of all sharing the same office computer.

Now, I know at this point it may sound like I am quite fed up with the way things are going - and to some extent I am - but actually, this is pretty much how life is sometimes and we just kind of have to get over ourselves and keep on going. A friend of mine, who spent the last two years here, recently wrote me and encouraged me to embrace the chaos that surrounds me. He knows, and I know, that it is far to easy to get caught up in the day to day details of our work that we forget to enjoy the amazing people that are around us and the craziness that makes up our days. Onions might take two and a half hours to buy, but digging the truck out of the mud has some pretty exciting moments. It is easy to get frustrated with the logistical nightmares that exist in a place like this, and so it is good to have the reminder to take it as it comes; embracing the chaos as it envelopes me...and in Sudan it always does!

On a slightly different note: I probably won't post an pictures until my computer is somehow charged again.