Jessamyjoy's travel blogs:
- Senegal 2007
- Two months translating, interpreting and... 2005
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A day in the life of
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Just so you know it's not all uproarious conversations with dashing and gregarious Béninois who propose marriage on the first meeting and hold out hope despite my anxiously-awaiting nearly betrothed (true story), I thought I'd share a couple less than exciting aspects of my day. For the majority of the day, as usual, I sat in my artificially-winded yet oddly not that cool office, alternately sticking to my slip and rolling my chair over my broom skirt, all the while mindful not to show the back of my knees or any of the skin that persists in peeking between the top of my skirt worn uncomfortably higher than usual and the bottom of my continually stretched shirt. Some of the time I perfected the margins, fonts and grammar of an outgoing communiqué (news letter of sorts), briefly, I joyously translated a personal letter from a local missionary to a family in the US, but for the largest chunk of time today I labored over my ever-increasingly-hot lap top to translate from English (INTO French, my SECOND language, mind you!) a repair and maintenance manual for a piece of hospital equipment that doesn't really exist in North America or probably most of Europe-a vaporizer. Ring any bells? A little apparatus into which an "anesthesia agent" is placed to be vaporized and then manually pumped through a tube to the (literally) anxiously waiting patient who needs to be put out for a reasonable amount of time in order to be operated on. This is done by an impressively large and complicated machine that needs no more than the flick of a switch at home. Many, if not most, missionaries speak some English, but let's just assume we ourselves are patients in a hospital and need to be knocked out in order to undergo a painful and probably graphic procedure. How much do we want the vaporizer to work, having been well-maintained and/or repaired by our dear non-native-English-speaking doctor? I thought so. Perhaps most unfortunately, it is in my novice hands to ensure this happens! HA! So, in the absence of the missionary trained and prepared to clean this little apparatus, I have taken the liberty of taking it apart! Well?! I have to know what the pieces are and do if I'm to render them into appropriate and comprehensible French don't I?! Yeah, knowing what the pieces are and rendering them into French that someone who may not even speak French as their first language are two entirely separate things my friend. So there I am, greasy hands, screwdriver at the ready, shooting appropriately friendly greetings over my desk to everyone who enters the larger office, tapping away at my three dictionaries...inserting comment after comment, "What does that do?" "Is that the right term?" "Do we even have this part?!" You may want to pray that when my good pal Ted comes home I haven't broken anything of his valuable machine and he finds the dismantling as amusing (and necessary) as I do! This is translation at its best and a perfect example of why Africa brings a whole new meaning to the word "improvise".
I then came home to my house which is quite possibly bigger than any place I've lived at home, considering that I've always shared and here I'm alone, to make another make-shift dinner with left over supplies from the previous missionary here and my few "essentials". If you'd like a fabulous bachelor/student/don't-have-time-and-nutrition-is-of-no-consequence recipe, it follows. Chickendog Soup
In enough water for however many people want soup, add enough chicken bouillon so it tastes good and once it's boiling throw in rice noodles so everybody gets some and enough tiny chunks of chicken dog. Serve hot.
Bon appétit!
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