Normality

Something starnge has happened over the last few weeks, I can't put my finger on a particular day or moment, but something has changed. Being in Juba has become normal. I no longer feel like being here is a novelty or completely foreign to me - I have adapted my way of life to how things are here, and it feels like I was never anywhere else. Don't get me wrong, there are many things that I miss - friends & family, white tea that doesn't taste of cheese, climbing, feeling cold, the sea, and good beer to name a few - but in the same way that I miss the snow in summer and the sun in winter, it's just normal.

I think part of this is that I have developed a routine; I find this odd because I always thought I thrived on chaos, but over the last few years I realised routine is good for me. It isn't strict routine, it never can be when I work every fifth night and random shifts, but there is definitely a routine. I don't know if it just helps me know what day of the week it is, or if it's the fact my routine often includes 'normal' things like going for runs, meeting friends, and going to church. It could be that I just know what is coming over the next few days, so life isn't quite such a mystery.

I spend time with people who have been working here for much longer than I have, and they all speak of life here as if it is normal. Obviously some of the things that we discuss as normal would be completely alien back in the UK, like not being able to reach other towns in the rainy season (or people not coming to work because it's raining - imagine if that happened back home!). Just having a social network of sorts makes life more normal too.

Having 'normality' means that I'm just trying to get on with all the various projects which I've found myself involved in: work, teaching, audits, service improvement, and learning medicine. That's pretty good, as I only have just over a month left here, and still have a lot to do (in a couple of areas I've probably bitten off more than I can chew). I doubt that I'll finish everything that I've started but that's probably a lesson in itself - discovering how long things take to achieve and quite how hard you have to push to get things done here; it can be pretty time-consuming, but overall, very satisfying.