Africanna?

Valentine's dinner with my dad, a glass of deep red wine by my side, some melatonin in my system and a terrible case of jet lag. This country is freezing cold even though it's only -13 C. I went to the gym today for two hours and haven't been smoking since I left Paris yesterday morning. Most importantly, this morning I was offered a tentative contract with Save the Children for a 2-month consultancy project in Freetown. I'd logged on this morning to my computer to do two things: 1) Send an email to Save the Children thanking them for the opportunity they gave me to volounteer for them and 2) Search for a job.

Instead, when I opened my inbox I had an email from one of my line-managers at STC asking if I would be interested in coming back: "Most important: we are seriously considering to offer you another consultancy to support the write up of the alternative report on the UN CRC, we are looking for funding and we got a positive feedback from a Save Sweden, although not confirmed yet. It will be a 2 months consultancy, I cant tell you now the terms and benefits, but for sure you wont be a volunteer!"

!!!!!!!

I have spent the day alternatively smiling and feeling anxious, shopping in my head ("I need a dentist appointment before I go, a haircut, a mosquito net, a... a... a....") and feeling something that I can't quite place, can't quite articulate. But I think the closest thing to it might be fear.

Fear. After my initial thoughts of holy fuck you're fucking kidding me I love you Save the Children yes yes yes my thoughts immediately returned to the email I received a couple of days ago from my darling boyfriend - informing me that he was seriously thinking about not returning to Sierra Leone after his vacation. I, having seen that he had long since been worn down by the extreme difficulty of living in Sierra Leone, strongly encouraged him to move on. Job opportunities exist all over the world and he couldn't access them when he couldn't be available for interviews. He deserves more responsibility and more credit. He wasn't happy there. And, of course, there was me: I wasn't going to be in Sierra Leone anymore. How was he possibly going to have fun, eh? Four days later, Mike has quit his job in Sierra Leone, is on his way back to Canada, and I am being offered work in Africa. Oops. Nice timing. On this Valentine's Day, Cupid really hates me.

So I'm going to be alone this time and it makes me a little nervous. I don't have a support network there, can't regularly chat with friends, can't log online after work to send cyber kisses to my loved ones, and I'm probably going to live alone in a tin shanty by myself. What will happen when I get typhoid this time and puke all over myself? Who is going to make sure that I am safe? Who will even care? I have never been the type of person to fear loneliness or solitude, feel extremely safe in Sierra Leone, and feel capable of living there again. But I will admit, that anxiety is there and I am nervous.

But - Never for a second would I think about refusing the offer. It's my dream job - a consultancy with an NGO on human rights.

This is what it's all about: Each State who is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is required to regularly send a report to the UN explaining how the Convention has been implemented and if/how the State has responded to its international obligations. In December, Sierra Leone completed its first report in over ten years. I read it over regularly and noted to my co-workers that it is riddled with factual errors, blatant exaggerations and outright lies. So Save the Children has been asked to write a counter-report to the one submitted by the Government. During my work there I regularly gave tips on what to look for in the document - how it mentioned that children were protected from sexual abuse (truth: only those under 14 actually receive protection, and only sometimes); how the age of criminal responsibility was going to be raised to 16 years of age (truth: it will be raised to 14); etc, etc, etc. Factual errors and exaggerations abound. Soooo... they want me to come back and work with STC in collaboration with UNICEF to write a report on how the Government of Sierra Leone has lied erred in its report. I can't refuse this. I have dreamed of doing this. I live for this and want to do this for the rest of my life. And this time I'd actually get paid for it! I'm scared, I hate Cupid and will one day kill Lady Luck for all the shit she's thrown my way, but I am so incredibly elated at the chance to go back and work on this.

Now. Can we have some kind of donation-drive going where I can collect all your left-over antibiotics? I think that I am going to need a lot of them.