Yet another Annual Update: my year 2011 in 67 photos

Dear family, friends, and those who fit into both (or other) categories, this is that once-yearly mass email I send out and post to my blog to bore you with the details of 365 days of my life. It’s safe for work, except that you might fall asleep face first on your keyboard while reading it, thus creating a small commotion in your office.

The short version:

And now for the extended version, with a sprinkling of photos, some of which I’ve put within sentences (how clever).

When 2011 started off, I was nearing the end of a super fun three week holiday in Vancouver. Technically speaking, when 2011 started off I was on a dance floor surrounded by green lasers

Laser green goblin

…and booming bass, doing my best to jump up and down and side to side in what I hoped might be mistaken for dancing, while wearing a Buzz Lightyear costume with glowsticks lighting my flightpath at the wingtips.

Buzz Lightyear

All good things come to an end, however, and by January 2nd I was sitting back comfortably in a Vancouver International Airport departure lounge. The fact that I can show a little piece of plastic to a company and they then let me sit in a chair, in the middle of the sky, speeding over the land and sea at sometimes over 900 km/h, still amazes me. Two days of travelling took me back to work in Juba, South Sudan, where I had two months remaining on my contract. On January 9th I was lucky enough to witness the referendum on secession that resulted in South Sudan becoming the world’s newest country six months later.

Biggest polling station in South Sudan's referendum on independence in Juba, South Sudan

I also witnessed the delivery of, and first flight of, South Sudan’s first air force

South Sudan Air Force Mi-28 transport helicopter, Juba

…went hiking up Jebel Kujur to take a Sunday mid-morning nap…

Taking a nap atop Jebel Kujur, Juba

…and got a guided tour of the Physical Rehabilitation Reference Centre run jointly by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the South Sudan Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare:

Touring the PRRC in Juba, South Sudan
Artificial foot at the PRRC in Juba, South Sudan

In my final week in South Sudan, I just barely managed to make it to see Juba’s best kept Engrish secret, the manure cure shop:

Thong Ping Salon, Juba, South Sudan

After leaving South Sudan, I spent the last week of February visiting friends in the UK. Within hours of landing at Heathrow, I was in real doctor’s scrubs in London, complete with anti-bacterial silver oxide thread participating in the Imperial College med school’s time-honoured, purely academic activity known as the Circle Line Pub Crawl with my friend Aidan and his fellow future doctors.

Circle Line Pub Crawl with Imperial College medical students

I also visited my friend Jackie in Cambridge, where we went to a show and the next day I took a long walk along the River Cam…

Narrowboats and rowing clubs on the River Cam in Cambridge, England

…and then Fraser and Kate in Abergavenny, where Fraser and I went mountain biking

Fraser above Abergavenny, Wales

and also saw my friends Katie and Louise in Oxford before hopping on a plane to return to Vancouver at the beginning of March. While waiting for my plane, I saw the mythical Airbus A380 roll by, the largest passenger aircraft in the world:

Qantas Airbus A380 at Heathrow Airport

I spent the next three months waiting in Vancouver to go somewhere new and unknown. I filled my time sleeping with no alarm, going to physiotherapy for my knee, building a couple of custom single speed bicycles (one for my sister, one for me)…

Custom single speed freewheel bicycle for Lisa
BumbleBike custom single speed freewheel bicycle for me

…checking the forecast for days when I could comfortably take my motorcycle out on the town (there were very few of these days in what was apparently Vancouver’s wettest and coldest spring in the last half century)…

Honda CM400T motorcycle

…and watching the Vancouver Canucks make it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since I was 10 years old. The city came alive like nothing I’ve seen (I was in London for the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Olympics, living 5 minutes from one of the 2012 Olympic sites, so I missed out on all that craziness), with free taxi rides, SkyTrain antics, downtown street parties, and all kinds of awesome all around.

Celebrating a Vancouver Canucks win on Granville Street

Into these three months, I also somehow squeezed a trip to Kelowna

Kelowna, BC

…a couple of quick visits to Bowen Island

Bowen Island, BC

…a two night trip to Ottawa to get a visa for Côte d’Ivoire and see my friends Alex and Luke…

Parliament Hill, Ottawa

…and a motorcycle ride to Salt Spring Island

Salt Spring Island, BC

With the Canucks comfortably ahead in the final series against the Bruins, I left town to start my next job. Having spent a year and a half with Medical Emergency Relief International (Merlin), in the UK, DR Congo, and South Sudan, I’d decided to try on a different pair of shoes: Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, aka MSF). They decided to send me to Côte d’Ivoire, but first, I flew to Germany (with a few hours spent hanging out in Amsterdam to see my friend Pieter-Henk) for the MSF PPD, a 10 day group introduction to the organisation for new staff. I can’t spoil any secrets by talking about it online, except to say that it was really fun, and I met and befriended some very cool people.

MSF PPD, Bonn, June 2011

During the PPD, I even woke up one morning at 4am to watch Game 7 of the playoffs streaming online, then had a productive day in Germany not torching police cars on camera.

By the morning of June 19th I was back up in the skies.

Flying to Côte d'Ivoire

By supper time that day I was eating supper (how appropriate) with my new colleagues in Abidjan, the biggest city and former capital of Côte d’Ivoire (Abidjan was also the name of the local watering hole in Buea, Cameroon, where my friends and I used to eat barbecued meat with a beer in the evenings after a good day’s work back in 2007).

Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire

The next day I arrived in Daloa, where I spent the next three and a half months working my butt off. Work was hard, but I gradually trained my staff to do a lot of the work I was doing myself, which greatly increased the number of hours I spent sleeping. It also let me get out of the office a bit more, including a day trip across the border into Liberia to help bring some medical goods into Côte d’Ivoire.

Welcome to Liberia (Pékanhouébli border crossing)

In Daloa, I saw our medical stock grow from taking up the space of a small bedroom with a few shelves…

First medical storeroom in Daloa

…to taking over my bedroom as an overflow area.

My bedroom, the overflow storage space in Daloa

At the end of July I organised to move our office out of the house and into a dedicated office space, where we had a new warehouse space in which I had custom shelves built…

Building shelves in the new warehouse space

…and another room of boxes stacked on pallets. What a difference a couple of months makes!

Medical goods on pallets

We also helped the Ministry of Health run a measles vaccination campaign for over 15,000 children and later on collected the dozens of sharps boxes from remote health centres.

Sharps boxes for safe disposal of vaccination needles

I also helped improve the water and sanitation standards of health centres around Daloa by donating soap and other supplies, and making these hand washing buckets for patients and staff:

Hand washing stations for health centres around Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

We also spent a fair bit of energy rehabilitating a couple of health centres that had been looted and badly damaged by armed groups during the conflict.

Smashed glass on the floor of a looted health centre near Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

They needed doors repaired, smashed locks and windows replaced, electricity and lighting restored, furniture built and donated, grounds cleared and cleaned, and much more.

New door for a health centre outside Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire
New door handle and lock for a health centre outside Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire
New electrical panels for a health centre outside Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

One health centre had a puddle the size of a lake right out front, the perfect breeding place for mosquitoes, so I organised to have it fixed:

The lake outside Zoukpangbeu health centre, Côte d'Ivoire
The lake is gone outside Zoukpangbeu health centre, Côte d'Ivoire

My logistician, Moussa, did a great job of supervising all this work.

Moussa, my logistician

Two months into my time in Daloa, a few friends and I managed to see a huge wild elephant nearby.

The elephant outside Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

By the end of September I was pretty tired out, so I decided to take a week’s vacation next door in Ghana. I had to fly out of Abidjan, so on the way from Daloa to Abidjan I visited the biggest church in the world in Yamoussoukro:

Basilique Notre Dame de la Paix, Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire

In Ghana, I became perhaps a bit too familiar with Ghanaian buses for such a short stay…

Bus broken down near Mole National Park, Ghana

…and had two different vehicles break down from radiator leaks, but the trip was really fun, and I got to see a whole bunch more elephants while I was there.

Elephants in Mole National Park, Ghana

I also saw lots of sideways lightning, which I’ve only seen in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

Horizontal lightning in Mole National Park, Ghana

Back in Côte d’Ivoire, within two days of my return to Daloa, I was asked to move to Tabou to replace the logistician who was leaving a bit earlier than planned. I was a bit surprised, and quite moved, when two of my staff broke down in tears when I announced the news to them. Tears of joy, perhaps, to finally be rid of their boss? The next weekend I arrived in Tabou, a very small town on the Atlantic coast, just a few kilometres from the Liberian border, overlooking the Gulf of Guinea.

Tabou, Côte d'Ivoire

I spent the next two months in Tabou, squeezing in three short trips north as far as a town called Para, with some beautiful stretches of road…

The road from Tabou to Para, Côte d'Ivoire

…and some short stretches of road almost as bad as the one we travelled from Buea to Mamfe, Cameroon, or the not-really-roads outside Kindu, DR Congo.

Rough spot of road en route to Para, Côte d'Ivoire
Rough spot of road en route to Para, Côte d'Ivoire

The last few weeks in Tabou were really focussed on closing down the project, which at its peak had over 40 national staff running 20 mobile clinics, plus support to 12 health centres (of which the farthest was 6 hours away), and running an intensive therapeutic feeding centre plus an ambulatory therapeutic feeding centre for malnourished children. Closing the project involved a LOT of paperwork (I might have drowned if it weren’t for the wonders of mail merging), but also some fun stuff like big donations of drugs and supplies to health centres and the Ministry of Health.

Paracetamol to be donated to health centres near Tabou, Côte d'Ivoire

Our office/warehouse space went from being completely packed with medicine…

The MSF office and warehouse space, full to capacity

…to completely empty!

The MSF office and warehouse space, totally empty after many donations

Other big jobs in closing the project in Tabou included donating all sorts of furniture and office supplies to another NGO working in the health sector, which involved lots of trips back and forth from our office to theirs…

Donating a vaccine fridge to a medical NGO in Tabou, Côte d'Ivoire

…and uninstalling our radio and comms equipment, like the VHF antenna bolted to the top of a 15 metre pole. The VHF antenna is on the left, not the huge mobile phone tower in the background!

The VHF antenna (on the left) in Tabou, Côte d'Ivoire
Removing the VHF antenna in Tabou, Côte d'Ivoire

I also got to burn all the unimportant paperwork in our big fire pit, fun!

Burning unimportant documents in Tabou, Côte d'Ivoire

Having closed the project, and with the December 11th parliamentary elections having passed without any violence, our team returned to the MSF coordination office in Abidjan. Eating extra oily omelets with my colleagues on the way to Abidjan was, as usual, good times:

Evening omelet time in Gagnoa, Côte d'Ivoire

I spent the next few days in Abidjan, finishing up some final reports and burning more unimportant paperwork…

Burning unimportant documents in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire

…then took a three day road trip to the Liberian border to import a Land Cruiser into Côte d’Ivoire as the Liberia mission was also closing.

Bringing a Land Cruiser from Liberia to Côte d'Ivoire

My last few days in Abidjan were spent helping the Financial Coordinator with some actually important paperwork (sadly, this did not involve any fire).

Important paperwork

Then, on December 22nd/23rd an Air France jet kindly carried me to Paris for a coffee with Thomas, a friend and all-round amazing guy on break from his job in Afghanistan. Having finished coffee and a croissant, I high-tailed it back to the airport just in time for my flight to Toronto and eventually Vancouver. I landed about three hours before a DJ show downtown, for which I’d bought a ticket online a month earlier. Knowing that several friends would be there, I showed up downtown to surprise them. And, with the 6 month beard that was weighing down my chin, they were definitely surprised.

DJ show in Vancouver, BC

The next day, Christmas Eve, I went to Studio D Hair Salon

Studio D Hair Salon, Vancouver, BC

…and had my beard bleached white, morphing into a very odd-looking Santa Claus for the next couple of days, long enough to show it off to my grandma in Nova Scotia on her first ever Skype video call…

Santa beard
Grandma's first Skype video conversation

…and to the extended family at our annual Boxing Day party.

My cousin's kid testing whether my Santa beard is real

With that over, I removed all my white Santa hair in time to avoid scaring the surgeon who’ll be slicing my knee open in the future. On December 29th we met, we talked, and we settled on fixing my knee once I return from wherever I go next, if it’s about 5-6 months from now (oh, how I love waiting lists).

On December 30th a huge group of friends descended on the King’s Head in Kits to say goodbye to the place…

Closing party for the King's Head pub, Vancouver
Closing party for the King's Head pub, Vancouver

…which then shut its doors on New Year’s Day. Apparently it’s going to become a Wing’s. The following night, a potluck of culinary delights…

Preparing a veggie roast for New Year's Eve potluck
Mike's bacon coated turkeys for New Year's Eve potluck

…followed by another crazy New Year’s Eve party with friends…

New Year's Eve party in Vancouver

…helped shut 2011 down, and open 2012 up, a year bound to be filled with 24 extra hours of adventure, and boy am I looking forward to it!

If you got through this entire summary, I’m impressed; if you take the time to send me an update on your life, whether it be short or long, I will be even more impressed, and promise to read it too (I’ll even reply!).

Cheers, beers, and bicycle gears,
Chris

Creatures of Côte d’Ivoire

From June 19th to December 23rd (with a short break in Ghana from October 1st – 9th) I was in Côte d’Ivoire working as a logistician for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). As usual, I took loads of photos of the little and not-so-little critters I saw. My Ivorian staff sometimes thought I was strange to be so interested in the little bugs around me, but when I explained that many of these guys don’t exist where I come from, my hobby of creature photography immediately became completely normal and acceptable. In fact, staff sometimes excitedly came to tell me about some little bug or animal I should see. Twice, friends of staff even came by to show me their pet monitor lizards (photos of one of the ornate monitor lizards below), and in both Daloa and Tabou we had neighbours ask if we wanted to see their crocodiles (photo of the Tabou crocs below). The descriptions are based on my observations for the most part, not on actual researched names, so when it says “woodchip moth” for instance, it’s my description for an insect, the name of which I don’t know, rather than the actual name. If you have a correction for me, please let me know! So here, organised very roughly from slightly less interesting to more interesting, are 59 photos of the wildlife I encountered over six months in Côte d’Ivoire:

Wasps starting a new nest in our garage

Wasps starting a new nest in our garage

Wasps working on their nest in a health centre

Wasps working on their nest in a health centre

A spider 3 inches across, but very flat

A spider 3 inches across, but very flat

Cows outside the MSF Daloa office

Cows outside the MSF Daloa office

Cows on the Guiglo garbage heap

Cows on the Guiglo garbage heap

Land Cruiser fishing

Land Cruiser fishing

Centipede in Zokoguhue health centre

Centipede in Zokoguhue health centre

Weird leaf bug

Weird leaf bug

Big snail cruising on our terrace at night

Big snail cruising on our terrace at night

Leaf bug

Leaf bug

Leaf bug

Leaf bug

Praying mantis at Para health centre

Praying mantis at Para health centre

The mango beetle climbs out of my mango

The mango beetle climbs out of my mango

Yellow Power Rangers beetle

Yellow Power Rangers beetle

Rhino beetle

Rhino beetle

Rhino beetle on Daniel’s shirt

Rhino beetle on Daniel

Rhino beetles in a sac, to be sold as food

Rhino beetles in a sac, to be sold as food

Pretty little moth

Pretty little moth

Triangular moth

Triangular moth

Green fat moth

Green fat moth

Big brown moth

Big brown moth

Blue-eyed big brown moth

Blue-eyed big brown moth

Woodchip moth, side view

Woodchip moth, side view

Woodchip moth, top view

Woodchip moth, top view

Six inch maroon moth

Six inch maroon moth

Six inch brown moth

Six inch brown moth

Tiny mosquito moth

Tiny mosquito moth

House fly

House fly

House dragon fly

House dragon fly

Curious green fly

Curious green fly

Tiny fly with antennae

Tiny fly with antennae

House gecko

House gecko

Male agama lizard

Male agama lizard

Female agama lizard eating a grape

Female agama lizard eating a grape

Little lizard caught on a shoe

Little lizard caught on a shoe

Baby skink caught on my hand

Baby skink caught on my hand

Baby gecko caught on my arm

Baby gecko caught on my arm

Lizard on the window screen

Lizard on the window screen

Black skink sidewinding along the baseboard

Black skink sidewinding along the baseboard

A lizard’s final breaths

A lizard

A lizard’s final breaths

A lizard

Ornate monitor lizard

Ornate monitor lizard

Ornate monitor lizard

Ornate monitor lizard

Ornate monitor lizard

Ornate monitor lizard

Crocodiles in Tabou

Crocodiles in Tabou

Chameleon skin at a mystic’s shop in Daloa

Chameleon skin at a mystic

Leon the chameleon in Tabou

Leon the chameleon in Tabou

Leon the chameleon in Tabou

Leon the chameleon in Tabou

Vervet monkeys, Taï

Vervet monkeys, Taï

Diana monkey, Daloa

Diana monkey, Daloa

Astrophe, our pet cat, sleeping on a book in Tabou

Astrophe, our pet cat, sleeping on a book in Tabou

Astrophe sleeping in our bin of documents to be burned

Astrophe, our pet cat, sleeping in our bin of documents to be burned

Astrophe showing his wild side

Astrophe showing his wild side

Rainbow Shield Bug in Daloa

Rainbow Shield Bug in Daloa

Two flies taken hostage by ants

Two flies taken hostage by ants

Flies guarded by ants

Flies guarded by ants

Flies guarded by ants

Flies guarded by ants

Variegated grasshopper in Zoukpangbeu

Variegated grasshopper in Zoukpangbeu

Male forest elephant, near Sapia

Male forest elephant, near Sapia

Daloa and the Amazing Technicolor Shield Bug

On September 18th, while I was still living in Daloa, Côte d’Ivoire, I walked out into the backyard and spotted the prettiest little bug I’ve ever seen. In a couple days I’ll post a bunch of critter pictures from my six months in Côte d’Ivoire, but for now here’s the Technicolor Beetle Shield Bug (turns out it’s not a beetle, but a “true bug” called the Rainbow Shield Bug, Calidea dregii)

The prettiest bug I
The prettiest bug I
The prettiest bug I
The prettiest bug I
The prettiest bug I

Dozos, traditional hunters of Côte d’Ivoire

Among the many common but interesting sights here in Côte d’Ivoire, dozos are worth a blog post all of their own. Dozos are traditional hunters from the northern areas of Côte d’Ivoire, but they can easily be found further south as a result of the assistance they bring to the military. Dozos hunt with sling shots and (usually hand-made) rifles which are REALLY loud when fired. They wear a certain type of clothing that distinguishes them from non-dozos, onto which they sew charms (gris-gris). These charms, along with the hats they wear, are said to bring the dozos magical abilities. I’m told the most powerful dozos can make themselves invisible to their enemies.

Dozos near Daloa, Haut-Sassandra, Côte d'Ivoire

An important aspect of dozo culture is music; among every group of dozos there are several men skilled in song and instruments, who tell stories nnd share praise through song. Last weekend, a large crowd had gathered in a public square in Daloa to enjoy some singing and dancing dozos, a celebration for one of them who’d just been married.

Dozo singer in Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire
Dozo singer in Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

They were playing a pretty cool instrument, some sort of lute, and singing really quickly:

Dozo musician in Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

The little plush toy is the keychain for his motorcycle key, but most of the other little things sewn onto his shirt are charms:

Dozo singer with charms in Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire

Some dozo dancing with an FRCI soldier singing:

Dozo-à-moto:

Dozo on a motorcycle outside Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire