Dunno what to think....

It is Wednesday late evening and I finally made my way into my new accommodation. I have a quite proper room with my own small bathroom (although the shower is broken right now, but that doesn’t matter so much since we have no running water right now anyway) and the only thing which needs to be changed as soon as possible is the mattress…..well, I will figure out…there are two other guys I share a kitchen and a living room with, they are coincidentally also from Germany and work for a bank resp. for an alarm system company. Further, there are two dogs which have some kind of trouble with each other right now, so I just try not to end up between them when they are fighting…apparently there are also some rats, mice, bats and millions of other weird living creatures sharing the apartment with us, but until now I just have seen a couple of spiders and stuff….not exactly my favourites but there is nothing I can do about….
Well, if someone would have told me a couple of years or maybe only months or weeks ago that I would just deal with not having running water and not having proper food (but I will fix that, no worries, am on the right track) without being in an annoyed mood….I dunno…I probably wouldn’t have believed it.
However, this country is kinda fascinating me. The only irritating thing is, that everything I see on the streets seems so familiar, but not because I have already seen it in reality, but I have read about so often, I watched documentaries and stuff, that I just feel thrown into one of my academic books…..so maybe I haven’t realised yet that it is for real. It is also hard to describe how it looks here…..sometimes it seems to be a huge township/slum whatever, however I am lacking a proper definition of slum (Chels, help me out here please)…..I guess Wiebke and Cat might know what I am talking about. There is rubbish everywhere, it smells not exactly nicely in most areas and there are people, people, people….but it works somehow and people are so friendly. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaan (kisses to the Swedes), it is really hard to put in words what I wanna say….pictures would be helpful, but I have problems to take some because I don’t wanna make people feel being animals in a zoo….but I will work it out soon soon.
At work everything is fine, I actually got some work to do, but before I could even start today, my colleague Joy told me that I will join her for the meeting at the British Council. Well, the meeting turned out to be a five hours workshop about the role of media in respect of monitoring and implementing human rights and was organised by the Canadian NGO (Chels, one of the guys working there lives an hour away from Toronto – what was the name from your hometown again???) which is called “Journalists for Human Rights”. It was quite interesting, they had food (sometimes it is difficult to explain why I am not eating meat – I decided to use my whatever religion as apology) and afterwards I went with Joy to get her gym clothes….on the market for sure, check the pic below to see on which kind of “ground” the stall was built, hahaha.
Now the weekend is coming closer and I cannot wait to go to the beach….it must be just gorgeous……aaaaaaaaaand it is just a 10min walk from here. I also figured out how to get to my organisation from here, I am actually not even using poda-poda (the Sierra Leonean public transport – minibusses filled with up to 30 people) but taxis where only 5-6 fit in since it the same price for the distance I have to go and then I prefer then nice taxi….but no worries, Wiebke, the day will come where I will use the poda-poda anyway, hahaha…
Well, that’s it for now I guess….thanks for all the comments, and yes, right now I am quite detailed in my description since it is also a way for me to handle all these things just happening…but no worries, at some point it will turn into a kind of routine and then my posts will be less extensive but with more pics and stories, which are worth to tell.

So far so good, I am fine here, but I also miss you all quite a lot….
Chels, Kathrine (miss you two big time), Adnan and Niklas, have a safe trip to India and have the time of your life.

Kristina S., I hope you had a safe and sound flight to Kigali and Sarunas is showing you around. Will try to check tomorrow on facebook how you are doing. Sarunas, I am sure you are fine (reading from facebook).
Toomas and Niclas, I will come back to you soon soon concerning the amnesty lecture, hihi, well, but I guess you got from Karolina’s email that it will work out. Are you already I contact with Klas for December 4th?
Vivian, let me know how Kenya is treating you. Hope you are doing well.
Sanaz, lady, rock the Suisse people, I am sure you will have a great time in Geneva. Have you decided to take the apartment close to the French border? Hope so! Saknar dig!
Janan, babe, kisses from Hase,hahaha, miss you loads....how is it going at CIVIS and how is the cutie doing? Hälsa Juliana!
Sina, just take care and tell me what is going on….you know what I mean. Drück dich! Have you received my SMS? It is apparently not working with texting to Germany….
Mama, Papa, Torben, Wiebke and Malte, miss you and take care.

Sorry for putting all these things up here, but messaging everyone on facebook/ studivz would take too much time right now, since I have only access to internet a couple of minutes every day, but next week it will be better….

Puss o kram o ha det bra!

PS: Certainly I got visited by my favourite insect later that night - a big roach found its way from my bathroom into my bed room....but Ilan was heroic enough to get rid of it.