firsts + lasts

I have been counting down all my “lasts” in Malongo these past couple of days. So here’s to my last Sunday, and even more exciting – my FIRST time to leave camp! Everyone who lives here on camp works 7 days a week, and is only allowed to leave for special circumstances that require approval/security/etc. The Italian company I am working with on my project only works 6 days with Sunday as their off day. They live in a compound out in Cabinda city, and don’t hesitate to rub in the fact that they all get to relax at the beach on Sundays. After enough whining, they put together a lunch for this afternoon and invited me to come out and join! One of the folks on my team is Catalonian (region in Spain, below) and will be making lobster paella. When I went to Spain last summer I spent some time in Barcelona, which is part of the Catalonia region. I had my first taste of paella and was blown away, so I’m expecting a delicious lunch today! Don’t worry Mom/Dad/Nana/Papa/Ma/Pa, I got approval and will have a driver and security, plus Tomas and Phil.

Right when I got here, I made all of my team members take the Myers Briggs personality test as a team building activity. The test is just a series of simple questions that are tallied up and the result is a 4-letter combination that focuses on attributes of personalities: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/iNtuting, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving. Long story short, every person on my site leadership team of 15 people was either an ESTJ or an ISTJ – except for me. My 4-letter combination is ENFP – Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. I failed to mention that I was attempting to explain all of this personality jargon to a very diverse group of folks (Italian, Portuguese, Catalonian, and Angolan). So I searched the internet for material to help explain all of this information and found the matrix below that shows one phrase interpreted by each of the 16-letter combination type personalities.

Note: click HERE if you want to read more about the Myers Briggs personality types...

As you can see, ENFP’s are easily distracted which gets me to the point of why I’m explaining all of this anyway….I really get a kick out of all the animals/flowers/views/random stuff there is to look at around here and I don’t have any problem letting everyone know when there is something awesome to look at (this usually includes monkeys). This past week, I had a group of folks come to my office to give me a TON of photos that they had taken over the past few weeks of things around camp so I’ve picked some of my favorites to post!

oh HEY! just hanging out...

I have no idea what this is, but I want it in my backyard.

Caught him eating a banana! (I did not feed the animals)

Birds looking for snacks outside the Tank Farm

African deer in camp

Ok, this next series of photos is AWESOME! There is a banana tree right outside our office, and one of the guys here took a picture of it every day as it began to produce fruit. It's something I've never seen before, and I think it's pretty amazing! I left out some of the days where it didn't change much, but you get the picture...

I’ll be America-bound Thursday afternoon, leaving camp around 13:30 (7:30 Texas time) and I will touch down in Houston around 7 Friday morning – right at 24 hours of travel time. I’d say my first trip exceeded my expectations, solely due to the wonderful people that I have met here in Africa. I could do without the spiders, but I guess I’ll come back :)

31 days down, 4 to go! xoxo

Boa Noite Malongo