The Expat Disaster Multiplier Effect

D-“Shit happens.” A comforting remark I have heard many times in reference to life’s minor albeit annoying inconveniences that may befall a person on any given day. You get locked out of your house, you forget to go to the market, you get 90% of the way through cooking a meal before you realize you are missing an essential ingredient…these sorts of things. Well, I have learned from my travels and multi-year stints abroad that life’s “minor inconveniences” are made many times worse just for having them happen to you abroad. It all began at 4:00am this morning. I was startled awake by the loud crackling speakers broadcasting what I suppose is the morning prayer from the orthodox church. The sound can only be described as sort of a sour, droning chant that can (and did) carry on for hours without pause. Exactly what days this will happen is hitherto unpredictable for me. For obvious reasons, I procrastinated on getting ready for work this morning until it was time to run to the kitchen to heat up water for my bucket shower. When I got to the bathroom I decided I only had time to wash my hair (bathing is an extremely time consuming ritual now when we choose to do it). I proceeded to reach for the shampoo when suddenly I slipped back and gave myself the deepest cut of my life just above my elbow on the rusty, corrugated sheet metal door of the bathroom. The gash was BAD. If I were back home I almost certainly would have stitches by now, but if you read my previous post about my last visit to the hospital you might understand why I decided to try and tough it out at home. I went to work and taught as normal. The cut was on my left arm unfortunately as it is the arm I use to write on the chalk board. Luckily, despite how deep it was, it didn’t bleed a lot. Still, I was beginning to worry that I might actually need to call the medical office about it since my entire arm was feeling sore. After I showed it to Jessie, however, she demanded I call about it. We were coming home from an after-work coffee break with our site mate when I suddenly noticed that I did NOT have my keys. When I misplace something important in this country, I tend to get a little more worried than usual, as other PCVs and locals alike have warned me that if you leave ANYTHING in ANY public place, you will NEVER see it again. This time, I had lost the house key, compound key, and my school locker key that I share with another teacher. All kinds of things are going through my head as I panic looking EVERYWHERE for this key. Even doing that irrational thing where I look in my pocket 10+ times as if the keys would reappear there. Did it fall out at the coffee shop and the people who found are just waiting until I am away so they can rob my house? Etc. Luckily, I have an awesome local counterpart. I say that because he GETS SHIT DONE! I told him I was locked out and the only place I could think to look was at the school (it was 8pm). He grumbled on the phone but said he would come right over. When I walked over to meet him he said he had phoned the principal and she would walk with us to open the office and see if my key was there. My counterpart elected brave the pitch-black streets of Fiche with its gangs of wild dogs, torn up side roads, the distinct possibility of hyenas, and various other miscreants that roam the streets of the town after dark on the off chance that my keys were at the school. Cool guy 8-). It was a little awkward though when I got a call back from the PC medical office about the gash on my arm. I didn’t want to explain that it wasn’t a good time to talk since we were dodging wild dogs in the dark on the way to find my lost keys. After I hung up my counterpart laughed and said “This is probably the worst day in Fiche.” We were let in to the school compound by our M-14 toting security guard. “That’s some serious fire power to guard an empty school” I thought to myself. I should have been embarrassed, but I was so relived to find my keys dangling out of my locker. After I got them back, the cut on my arm hurt a little less and even looked smaller. Or at least, the worry I felt over my arm was quickly eclipsed by the key ordeal. Gotta love self-manufactured crises $-D Donovan Gregg