Getting started

I figure it’s about time I talk a little a bit about the reason I am here: my internship. The fact that I had been abandoned at the airport and that I received no answer to my frequent email requests to begin working a few days early (I wanted to beat the rush of interns, and to be honest, I was pretty bored) made me a wee bit nervous, so when I showed up at the visitor’s entrance to the ICTR I was pretty relieved that the guard told me I was expected. The internship coordinator Felicia took me to get my UN ID badge and then escorted me to the Office of the Prosecutor (which is actually several floors of a building, not one office) for my assignment.

I’m not sure if it’s the UN or Africa (probably actually a combination of both), but getting started was extremely slow and complicated. To get my assignment I had to talk to one person, but to get my computer I had to talk to someone else, and to get a computer log-in I had to talk to yet another person, etc. etc. and everything has to be done in a particular order (i.e. before you get your computer you have to get a log-in), but no one really tells you what you need to do, who you need to talk to in order to do it, or where those people are, and if you do manage to find their office, they probably aren’t there anyway. Some other interns arrived before I did so they helped me through the process, but I still spent a few days without an assignment, then with an assignment but with no computer, then with a computer but it didn’t work, and even now sometimes I don’t have all of the programs I need and everything is more or less 2 small steps forward and one big step back. The comforting part is that everyone is in more or less the same boat so we try to have a sense of humour about it. One girl I work with quipped that EDP, which is the UN tech department, stands for “Everything Doesn’t Perform” and another, noting that the elevator doors are the doors of death and are always shutting abruptly on people, said “They are the only thing that works fast here.” And one day the fire alarm went off, but rather than being alarmed we were all giggling uncontrollably because no one was really surprised that the ICTR would, with all of its other malfunctions, catch on fire. (Turns out it was just a fire drill and that we need to reduce our exit time from 12 to 3 minutes). To be honest, I shouldn’t complain because I was more or less set up in three or four days, whereas some of the interns who came later than me were waiting weeks for a computer.

All of this, however, has made me realize that just the enormity of the UN is probably the main reason that it hasn’t always (ok, usually) been successful at solving the world’s problems. Being down at the bottom of the enormous UN totem pole (unpaid interns don’t rank very high), I now have a much better grasp of just how hard it is when something goes wrong to pinpoint who exactly is responsible or, at the very least, who to complain to. I did consider calling up Ban Ki Moon if my internship goes awry, but somehow I don’t think this would be effective as I’m sure he has more important things to deal with, like civil wars, AIDS, denouncing Israel, etc.

Arrival in Arusha

When I stepped onto the tarmac at Kilimanjaro International Airport the first thing I noticed was the smell. I had never smelled it before. It was like wood and earth and heavy air and will always be the smell that for me embodies Africa. (Soon after I discovered lots of other, less pleasant African smells, but for the moment that’s beside the point.)

Despite the images “International Airport” might conjure, KIA is basically two rooms: one for arrivals and the other for baggage. I made it past my fellow travellers to fill out my visa forms and thought I would be the first one through until I got in the wrong line and had to start all over again, but I somehow avoided paying any visa fees, so I was relatively pleased, mostly that I wouldn’t have to take any money out of the money belt mom made me wear and that made me look misshapen.

Considering I was on a direct flight from Amsterdam and my bags had successfully made six connections from the time I started my trip in Charlottetown about a week previous, it didn’t even occur to me they wouldn’t come until I heard the dreaded sound of the baggage belt coming to a stop and still didn’t have any of my luggage. A porter suggested I look around on the floor for my bags so I wandered around trying not to totally lose it and start bawling in the middle of the airport. All I had in my carryon were a few extra pairs of underwear and my malaria medication and I was about to spend three months in Africa. Soon after I got in the lost luggage line, resigned to the fact I would never see my possessions again, the belt came back on. Turns out they hadn’t unloaded everything because the plane was continuing on to Dar es Salaam. Hallelujah.

So I got my bags and tottered out to where all of the safari operators were standing with name cards looking anxiously for my own name or at least the familiar blue UN crest. Everyone knows how much I love the UN, but all of my dreams of the noble world government were shattered in that moment. They weren’t there. Soon I was surrounded by men saying “Taxi? Taxi?” and I was responding “No, ICTR, UN” and holding on uselessly to my “Intern Information Sheet” that indicated that the UN transport would pick me up at the airport. The taxi drivers or whoever they were started crowding around me, looking at my sheet and saying “Eye See Tee Are” and one even phoned the number of the internship coordinator, of course to no avail since it was 10pm. Despite the fact that they were all at worst harmless and at best helpful I was so overwhelmed I pretty much fled (as best I could with a luggage trolley) back into the airport and asked an airport staff/soldier (he really could have been either considering he had a rifle) where I could get a taxi. He pointed to one of his friends and told me he would take me for 50 USD and heard the voice of the guy on Unsolved Mysteries in my head saying “No one ever saw her again.”

As I slumped in the back of the taxi feeling sick, scared, and alone I looked out the window and realized that even the stars are different here. I had never been so depressed in my entire life. The cab driver Edward was nice and weirdly kept telling me “You are welcome” [which I later learned was because in Swahili, the word “karibu” means “welcome” but like the Quebec “bienvenue” can also mean “you’re welcome” (as in post-thank you)]. We arrived at my guesthouse in the pitch dark and I signed in, noting that I was the only non-African on the guest list and feeling this did not bode well, and went to my room with the gate person carrying my heavy suitcase on his back. It was actually quite decent even by Western standards, certainly not luxury, but functional. But after spending a week in pristine Bavaria with Miriam I felt like I had just been kicked out of the Garden of Eden and sent right to hell. They had turned on the TV for me to some Latin American soap opera dubbed into English and as I looked at the mosquito net hanging over the bed, the windows that didn’t quite close (thank goodness I was on the second floor), the Spartan furniture, and the drain in the floor that marked my shower, I really did cry. When I got into bed under the mosquito net I had my money belt and flashlight beside me and tried very hard to touch everything (including net, sheets, pillows, blankets, etc.) as little as possible. I curled up into a miserable ball and prayed that when I woke up I would be back in Montreal about a month previous when my life was still intact.