The grass is always greener...

The things I don’t like: Mice in the kitchen (just cannot get rid of them), cockroaches in the bathroom (they keep getting bigger and bigger and there was even one sitting on my toothbrush last week *blegh*) and off course the fact that you sometimes just want to take a shower (especially when it is as hot as it is now) but you don’t have clean, running water.

The thing I miss most though is information: watching the news in the morning right after waking up, reading the newspaper on my way to work in the train, the excitement when my favorite weekly magazine falls on the doormat. Not here. There are no newspapers, no library or bookshop and internet is so slow that I cannot even explain how excited I am when I can open bbc.com to keep informed on everything that’s going on in the rest of the world. Off course I know that there has been a terrible earthquake in Haiti and I am aware of the fact that the economical crisis apparently still didn’t get any better yet. But to be honest, I don’t even know where I got that information from. Probably from one of my colleagues who heard it from someone else. 

Which brings me to the thing I like most about living in Ambovombe: the team at the sub-office (including the UNICEF-team next door) is more like a family to me than they are just colleagues. We keep each other informed about things that happen outside our little town, we exchange books, we bring each other food (especially wine and chocolate-) when one of us goes to Tana, we go for drinks and discuss everything there’s to discuss till late at night and we check up on each other in case someone seems a little down. Living here can sometimes be tough and that’s the exact reason you get to know your colleagues really well in only a few months. We take care of each other, which is really nice. I already know that, when back in Holland, I’m going to miss my “UN-family”. On the other hand, I won’t have any cockroaches walking over my toothbrush any more, will be able to take a shower, watch the news and eat some nice food again… I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence ;)