The irony of a flat tire

These first 2 weeks of work have been  filled with briefings, briefings and, wait for it, more briefings. It's the Induction Training Programme to prepare us for the hardships, hazards and upheavals of the mission in the districts. We've had briefings on sexual exploitation and abuse, how to operate the HF and VHF radios, how to use a GPS, aviation safety, fire safety (where we were actually asked what is fire!!), self-awareness, electoral management, gender, contingency plan (which didn't actually have a contingency plan when 3 computers and two projectors wouldn't work to show the presentation!) and so forth and so on. It just so happens that yesterday we had a briefing about defensive driving to prepare us for the absolutely horrible conditions of the roads in this country.

[Let me make an aside here: one of the requirements for this mission is to be able to drive a 4x4, which implicitly means being able to drive at all! For those that know me, you know I LOVE to drive and I had a lot of fun driving the 4x4 in Laos in the middle of nowhere trying to get to waterfalls and other hard to reach places. I know that my skill will be put to the test in these Timorese roads, I don't mind that (although some of the photos of accidents shown actually turned my stomach!), but what I do mind is having my safety in the hands of someone that doesn't know how to drive in these roads let alone normal paved ones!]

To get back on track, yesterday we had a briefing on defensive driving and Friday we'll be let loose in the mud with the 4x4s to try out our skills. Yesterday we were also shown how to change a tire in the UN cars: we will be issued either a Prado or a Hillux Pick-up but in Dili we currently have minivans. It was pretty basic and I now know that the Hillux carries its spare tire under the car itself, how many of you knew that? :)

So, you guessed it, this morning, irony of all ironies, we got a flat tire! More like a slashed tire actually! The sewage openings here are very dangerous for tires because they actually come off of the pavement. My colleague T had the bad luck to park next to one of these openings, slashing our tire in the process. So, here we were, 8 of us, thinking we're gonna be late for our briefing so we better get started changing the damn tire. We found where the spare was, the only thing that was missing was the jack! There was NO jack! And it's a UN minivan issued to us by the UNV support unit! So we called the UN mechanic, they told us to wait by the car and they'd come to us to change the tire. T decides to stay so that the rest could go to the briefings. Now, will you believe me that it took the entire day for T to get the tire changed and we still have to go back to the transport unit tomorrow to get a new spare and a jack!? Why, you ask, it was only a tire! Bureaucracy, my friends, bureaucracy! It turns out you have to fill an incident report, oh no, that's not right, it's actually an accident report, have it authorized by the investigation unit, copied and then sent to the transport unit...
Let's just say T was a little frustrated, a little tired and a great deal disappointed! It just makes you think, if it's like this in Dili, how the heck will it be in the districts?! Imagine our car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, where is the support then!?

Oh well, at least it was just a flat tire!