DRC: logistics and football

No trip to Masisi today. We have to drive there in convoy with other NGOs for safety, and by 10am it still wasn’t confirmed that the convoy was going. A 10.30 start would mean arriving in Masisi at 3pm at best, and a 5pm arrival wouldn’t be unusual. That would leave me with one hour of daylight in Masisi, which isn’t great for a communications trip; it’s hard to take good photos in the dark.

Sadly, staying a few extra days isn’t an option either as you can’t travel at the weekend (no UN patrol), it’s a holiday on Monday, and you’d have to have another convoy, a space in a UN car, or a helicopter to get back on Tuesday. The logistics here are so complicated, I’m constantly amazed at the team’s ingenuity in getting things done.

On the up-side, it means I’m in town for the FA Cup final on Saturday! Stuart in Haiti has an Indonesian flatmate who supports Man United. Equally logically, my Kenyan flatmate supports Liverpool while the Cote d’Ivoirians prefer Chelsea. They’re very pleased that I’m actually from Newcastle and have informed me that Shearer was great, but that everyone knows we only went down a league to get some silverware and now we need to start playing properly again. This is possibly true.

So on Saturday we’ll have a repeat of last night, when we settled down to cheer Fulham on in English/ French/ Swahili with our pints of tap water/ bottled water/ beer, while a thunderstorm raged outside and the mosquitoes did vampire impressions.

Now, if you’ve read this far, you’re interested in football. If you’re interested in football, you’ll also be interested in our World Cup campaign: 1GOAL – Education for all. Check it out.