On the job

Engineering is one of the field service support units providing backup for the good men and women, both military and civilian, of UNOCI's field services as they monitor human rights and the protection of children, and make sure that the demobilized groups are reintegrated into civil society, and rule of law is respected in the courts and the prisons.

My job is to make sure the mission has safe drinking water, and that all sewage is disposed of appropriately.  In practice this means keeping tanks like the one in the picture full of water with enough chlorine to kill any bacteria that might take our minds off our work, and dispatching our team of local plumbers and electricians to deal with leaks or problems with the "ablutions" (prefab toilet/shower blocks).  Yes, the position of Volunteer Water and Sanitation Engineer is as glamorous as it sounds.

Many of the other field service support staff are also volunteers, mostly from other African countries, with the occasional West Indian and south Asian.  The military contingents are each responsible for their own area of Sector West, and we have Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nigerien (from Niger not Nigeria, whose nationals are Nigerians - tricky!), Moroccan, Jordanian and Beninese (what Google says you call someone from Benin).  All that I have met so far are very welcoming, and I'm never allowed to go back to Daloa without having at least had a snack and some juice, even though it's Ramadan and all of them are fasting.

I'm still a bit of a novelty around here.  The Pakistani crane operating unit who delivered the new ablution to a Bangladeshi camp this week thought it was worth a picture, so I had them take one for me too.