“Waiting for the Dawn….”

September 25th 2005, 0245B

One reason I’m looking forward to getting out of town tomorrow is to get away from the vampiric little bitches in this place – I swear I’m anaemic from blood loss right now. I’ve got a mosquito net over my bed – intact so far as I can tell – and I just about choke myself on the amount of tabard spray I use, never mind the bloody mozzies. But does it help? Not a chance does it bloody help, and there must be something like 30 of the little bitches buzzing around inside my tent. The tabard must be like fucking catnip to them or something, ‘cause it sure as hell doesn’t chase them off.
At least they’re fairly polite, and are quite happy for you to enjoy a good nights sleep. They buzz, but far quieter and at a much less intrusive pitch than their southern cousins, so it’s not like at home where one mozzie can keep you awake all bloody night – I reckon that whine is calculated to have the perfect pitch to drive you fucking nuts, & is living proof that God has a nasty sense of humour.
But as I say they’re not so bad in that respect here, so it’s only if they fly right into your ear that you actually hear them. Stealth mosquitoes. The downside to that is that they mob you without you noticing, hence my feelings of anaemia this morning. Oh, and of course they also give you malaria. I think I’d rather have the intrusive whine, because all things being equal I would rather prefer not to pick up a dose of malaria :P And we get the really pleasant variety of malaria here, where not only do you spend 10 days shivering & sweating when you get it initially, but also have a recession each year to look forward to. Don’t that sound like fun?
And God only knows how happy I’ll be not to have to take these bloody mefliam anymore. Right now I’m counting the days till December, not only because then I’ll have a better idea of when I’m coming home & can plan accordingly, but also because I’ll be able to start taking doxycycline as prophylaxis again. The doxy is a pain because you have to drink it every day, as opposed to once a week with the mefliam, but it sure as shit doesn’t have the side effects the mefliam does. And I am heartily sick & bloody tired of feeling like shit because of the drugs I have to take. I guess I actually have a reason to look forward to the festive season for a change, instead of viewing it with my usual dread. And given how cheerful I am anyway at that time of year, I really don’t need the mefliam making things worse, so it’ll be nice to have something to enjoy about it for once.

Anyway, enough about the mozzies. I’m awake at some obscene hour of the morning again in spite of the sleepy drugs, but at least I’ve been putting the time to good use. When I was online for awhile last night I managed to save a few peoples blogs to the flash drive, & I’ve spent the last hour or so reading through them. I’m still reading through one of them actually, because Ash’s blog is just insanely huge & there’s no way I can read all of it in one go :P
Being able to catch up with what’s happening in my friends lives, being able to maintain a connection with them even from thousands of miles away, really helps while I’m here. Of course, it makes me miss people even more & there’s always an element of sadness to my smile while I’m reading the blogs, but that’s a price I’m happy to pay. The ones where people have posted photos of where the gang has gotten together are the worst for that, but those are also probably the posts I enjoy reading the most lol
I’ve really got a great bunch of friends, and being away from them for so long is what I resent most about these deployments. The decidedly dodgy comms from here really haven’t helped at all, so being able to keep up to date & in touch through the blogs has become very important to me. I know I was saying in the last post that I may just extend this deployment voluntarily, but that really is going to be contingent on being given chance to go home for at least a week or two. Otherwise, there’s no bloody chance. Whenever it is that I get home there’s going to be a lot of catching up to be done, so I hope you guys are going to be prepared for a repeat of that hectic first few weeks after I got back from the Congo last year ;) Dinner at Spigga & Maan Hing, headbanging at Burn, a long weekend of drunken debauchery down the South Coast, and acquiring bruises at paintball are just a few of the things we have to look forward to people :P

One thing about blogging is that it makes emailing people who read your blog a tricky proposition – coming up with something to put in the mail that’s not already on your blog isn’t all that easy lol
Reading a persons blog can also have unexpected benefits though. Yesterday morning I woke up & suddenly realised “Oh shit, it’s Shirlz’ birthday in a week & I have no idea what to get her!”, & I spent the rest of the day trying to call everyone I could for ideas. The phone was up to its usual shit though & I couldn’t get through to most people. Eventually I even got desperate enough to call her directly to ask what she wanted, but her suggestion of “get your ass home, dammit!!” isn’t possible just yet unfortunately. Gareth wasn’t much help either I must say, ‘cause while I’m getting extra money while I’m here, I’m not getting THAT much extra – “two tickets to Mauritius” indeed :P
Anyway, I’d just about given up & was about to buy a Kalahari voucher for her – I hate doing that though - when something made me think of looking at her blog. Two minutes after the page loaded I had my answer – “…using photoshop, a custom brush tool and a mouse-gotta get me a stylo-argh!...”
So congrats on your birthday, Shirlz – I really wish I was there in person to give you a beeeg hug, but I’ll be thinking of you & hope you have an amazing day ;) – and I hope you enjoy your present.
It’s not a Wacom I’m sorry to say – they’re really hard to find in SA for some reason & again, I ain’t that rich :P – but this should hopefully do to start with, & I’ll get you the Wacom when I win the lottery ;)

I’m starting to feel a little droopy eyed again suddenly, so I’m going to wrap this up for now and climb back into bed. Hopefully I’ll be able to get another hour or two of sleep, ‘cause otherwise I’m going to be a grumpy bastard for the rest of the day.

Till later ;)

1540B

“The scenery changes, & they let me play with explosives…..”

You know, I often complain about my job. In fact, I’m often seriously fucking acid about what I do for a living, and with good cause - at times my job can be the worst job on the planet, such as when people are trying very hard to kill me. It’s been quite awhile since that happened to be sure, but it’s still certainly part of the package deal. Killing other buggers when they try ain’t as much fun as it looks on the movies either, I can tell you. Even the mundane “won’t kill you” day-to-day shit, like Tiaans’ wife losing the plot because he’s away from home so much, really isn’t much fun.

But it’s not all bad, not by any stretch of the imagination, and today has been one of the good days. I mean, how much would you be willing to pay to lie under a tree on a beach in some exotic location, drinking beer all day? And that’s exactly what I’ve spent my day doing, lying next to Lake Tanganyika drinking beer. Ok, so we’re not talking about Bali here, but Lake Tanganyika is still one of those places that 99.5% of people you meet have only ever seen on the Discovery Channel, & sometimes that kind of thing is one of the fringe benefits of this job. And I get paid for my time, instead of having to fork out long dollars for the privilege.

But it’s not just that. I’ve also seen, up close, a volcano throwing lava into the sky at Goma in the eastern Congo. I’ve travelled in a boat on the Congo River. I’ve met a genuine pygmy – bought him beers & spent a few hours talking shit with him even – and if I’m lucky I’ll still get to see a silverback gorilla in the wild before I come home. Maybe on the way home I’ll get to see Dar es Salaam, and experience a little of the history of that ancient African city.
If I think back there are a number of experiences like these that I’ve had over the years, and I’m quite likely to have more. And then there are the “regular” work experiences you get to have in the military, things that so few civilians ever get to do. How many of you have ever flown in a helicopter for example? I’ve done it so often that I tend to sleep through the experience these days. Getting shot at while you’re in a chopper isn’t quite so much fun, because there aren’t any rocks to hide behind when you’re up in the sky, & the pilot makes the heli do some interesting things you wouldn’t normally think it could, but it certainly gets the pulse going. Who reading this has ever experienced the ridiculous amount of sheer fun that it is fire a heavy machine gun, or to detonate large quantities of explosives? Blowing shit up may not be quite so good as sex, but it sure as hell ain’t far from it :P There is a price to this kind of lifestyle, as I’ve said previously, but it certainly has its compensations from time to time, and today has been one of those days where my job is an absolute pleasure.
The waiter getting the change mixed up, & effectively paying us twice as much as we should have paid him to drink those beers next to the lake, certainly didn’t hurt either :P

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve had quite a good day :P And not just me either – Tiaan is also looking quite a bit happier at the mo, so it was also “mission accomplished” so far as restoring a few of his happy thoughts goes.
He wasn’t too amused this morning when we found out that it’s 99% certain that our allowances have been increased – and evidently significantly so – with effect 1st October, because going home this Thursday means he’s going to miss out on the extra money, but he’s a lot happier now. I’m really keen to see what the bank account looks like this payday, because if the increase has been implemented it means I’ll be able to buy that lens I’ve been drooling over for so long, and still have more money at the end of the day than I thought. It’ll also make staying here longer, even if I’m due to come home in February, a far more attractive proposition. I’ll still be insisting on chance to come home though – no amount of money is worth 11 months away from home without a break.

That’s about it for the weekend though, so I’m going to bid you all a fond adieu for now. I hope you’ve all enjoyed your weekend as much as I have mine, & I’ll catch up with you all in two weeks or so when I get back from Mwaro.

Take care till then ;)