back in Habillah

family, don't read this first paragraph...

i HATE el geneina. i hate it, i hate it, i hate it. the last 3 days i have had FAR too much time on my hands and that means that i have far too much time to think. because my trip to kenya involved taking 4 flights each way (half of those flights on small, wobbly planes) inevitably my thoughts turn to geoff. i had it under control though, until el geneina. the last time i flew in to el geneina, in june on my way in to darfur, i saw (and mentioned in a previous email) that the air strip has the remains of two downed planes sitting beside it. the planes are fairly intact and i can manage to convince myself that maybe the people inside of them survived the landing. it doesn't make it any less of a painful reminder to see them, but it's a consolation of sorts. this time i flew in from the opposite direction and saw the remnants of two more crashes. these planes, unlike the ones on the other side, are shattered into several large pieces that spread across parts of the field. no one survived those crashes. i see this and i automatically look away but it's too late- i have just seen the red fire truck that sits beside the runway, waiting to douse our flames should our plane crash or catch fire upon landing. and in my mind i am back at geoff's crash site and the coroner is pointing towards the airport and telling us that the firetruck had been en route even before their plane crashed. he tells us that they arrived 2 minutes after the crash. they could have arrived 2 minutes before the freaking crash and it wouldn't have made any difference- he was unconscious before they landed and, if he was still alive, he died on impact. suddenly it's hard to breathe. i hate el geneina. i hate it. i hate it. i hate it.

i spent last night in el geneina, then this morning i took the helicopter back to habillah. with all of the things that people in khartoum and el geneina keep sending with me, my luggage was 25kg over the weight limit (the weight limit being 15kg) and i was afraid they were going to tell me i had to leave the care package for my team behind. if they said i couldn't bring it i would have come back to habillah for basically no reason. i arrive in habillah to find that half of my staff had a revolution in my absence. when corinne and carmenza are done explaining everything that transpired, i tell them that i wish they had emailed me before i came back because if i had known then i wouldn't have come back. they tell me that that's precisely why they didn't email to tell me. i tell them they are jerks. i didn't even go to the women's centre to see them today because i want to fire half of them now, which is not a nice way to come home.
i have only been here for half a day and i am already feeling like i want to crawl out of my skin. i don't know how i am going to stay here for another 9 days. i asked carmenza to give me something that would knock me out for a week but she said no, that it would be unethical or some lame excuse like that.
i think i'm going to go to bed and try to dream that i'm in kenya again...