The Sphere Effect

Freaky wot?!!

Just opened up my emails and there was an email from MSF saying ‘Congratulations, you have been accepted into MSF’. Hoorah!

Was so overcome that I burst into tears at work and embarrassed myself, but all is good now. Not sure who to tell first, and not really sure how mum and dad will take it. They are away in Victoria at the moment, so will wait a couple of days to talk to them.

Goodness me, now I have to think about what I’m going to do. I now have to let them know when I am available, and a month before I go, they will start looking for placements for me. I will not know where I am going until just before I leave. Scarey stuff!

Need to do some more thinking….

Haven’t heard anything back from MSF yet. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Find myself coming home every day to see if there is a letter waiting.

Kath did remind before my interview that I guess it doesn’t really matter whether I am accepted or not. If God wants me to go, then I will go. If it’s not in his plan for me, then he will close the door. I can live with that.

But it would be nice to know.

One thing the lady mentioned in my interview that I am a bit concerned about, is that the contracts are 9-12 months with MSF, and it’s difficult to go home in the middle of them. If I go away with MSF in September, that means that I can’t go home for Christmas, and I will miss Mum’s birthday which I really want to be home for.

What to do….

I also wonder if I will be able to transfer to the Australian branch of MSF and use Australia as my base of operations instead of UK. Guess I should stop theorising and wait to see if I get in.

Sigh….

Well, anyone who knows me well, knows I’m a bit precious about Easter. It is to me the most important weekend in the year and I was desparate to somehow have a very special Easter in England.

So I had a good chat with my friend Kath (that I met in France) and we decided to hire a car and to drive up to York.

Well! What a drama! We went to pick up the car on the Easter Thursday night. The idea was that we were going to leave at 4.30am on Good Friday morning, in order to get up to York by 11am to see an Easter Play that was being done in the York Minster Cathedral.

When we got into our car at Victoria Station we said a little prayer for Angels to surround our car, and then set off for a church service at Holy Trinity Brompton. The church service was nice (but a little average) but the very exciting thing is that when we got back in the car we managed to stall it in the parking lot, and nearly didn’t get it started again. Then I looked down at the odometer and realised it had only done 13 miles. They had given us a BRAND NEW Ford Focus. Excitement plus!!.. except that all the lights on the dashboard started flashing and we couldn’t get the stereo working. UH OH! NOT GOOD.

Took it back to Kath’s house in Acton Town, and after I turned it off, I tried to restart it. Dead as a doornail. We called the AA and he came out to have a look. Apparently the alternator (whatever that is) was completely dead - and the car would have to be returned. By this time it was 11pm, just 5 and a half hours before we were to leave.

Hertz told us that we should arrange for the car to be recoved, and then go to the Heathrow depot where they would issue us a new car. The AA man arranged for a recovered and then drove us to Heathrow. When we go there, we were told we couldn’t have a new car until the old car was brought in, which was going to take 6 HOURS because we were no longer with the vehicle. ARGHHH.

So Mr AA Man drove us back to Kath’s house (40 mins drive) so we could wait with the car, because apparently it would be a shorter wait of 2 hours. We lay down and got some sleep thinking that at any moment the AA would arrive. They never did, but we got some good sleep until 4.30am when the alarm went off. Very worried we called AA who had lost our booking. Then they finally said they were sending someone around. Then we called Hertz who told us they had run out of cars. We had been relatively calm up to this point, but now we were starting to get a bit grumpy. What else could possibly go wrong? We finally talked to a supervisor at Hertz who found a car for us.

Then we go into the tow truck with our car on the back. On the way to the airport, the cable fell off the back of the tow truck and got run over, which mean that the tow truck man couldn’t get the car off. We sat on the edge of the road for half an hour while he grunted and swore. By this time we were giggling hysterically, as there really wasn’t too much more that could go wrong. I was convinced that we were being held up so that we wouldn’t be in some horrific accident somewhere, after all, we had asked God to protect us hadn’t we?

Anyway we finally got our new (slightly older) Ford Focus at about 7am, and merrily made our way up to York. I would just like to say that there was absolutely NO traffic anywhere on the roads. Everyone else had been too scared to drive on the Monday morning and so had driven on the Thursday evening - apparently there had been terrible traffic the night before.

We made it to York in short order and saw a fantastic passion play in Yorkminster. We spent the rest of that day resting after our traumatic ordeal, but got to see a bit more of the city the next day.

This is Kath standing outside Yorkminster (we got the artistic effect of looking through the trees).

In the afternoon we went for a drive through the Yorkshire Dales and looked at some old ruined abbeys.

We visited St Michael of the Belfry church on the Easter Sunday morning which was absolutely lovely, and made our way home in the afternoon after having Roast Dinner with Yorkshire pudding, which is of course something you must do in York.

And the end of our car story? Well we didn’t have much money to begin with. When we took the car back in and told them our story with much laughter, they were so impressed with our loveliness and our terrible story, that they gave us the whole car hire for FREE! How good is that??? God looks after his own!! And kept us cheerful for the whole way through!

Wow - had a very interesting day today. Ended up taking half the day off and went to have my interview with Medecins sans Frontiere (she told me they never say it the long way - it’s always MSF - so that’s how it will be for me now as well).

Firstly I had to sit a horrible test for an hour. I should probably explain that I have applied for the general position of Logistician with MSF. A Logistician is the person who goes with the doctors and nurses, and basically organises them. Logistician’s are responsible for the following tasks: transport, warehousing, purchasing of food and medications, needs assessments, IT, fleet management, office management, finances, oh the list goes on and on.

So anyway I had to sit this test to see if I have enough skills to be considered to work with MSF. The test had five parts, 13 question in each part. I had to achieve at least 8 correct questions in a part to be deemed competent in that area. And I had to gain a competency in at least 3 areas.

Well the first part was in Mechanics. Ba bong!! Totally flunked it! I know NOTHING about cars! What is a carburhettor (sp?) engine anyway? Then the next one was in Electrical! Totally flunked it again!! Very bad. Fortunately the last three areas were in Information and Communications Technology (passed with flying colours fortunately), Supply Chain Management (another one of my fortes) and then miscellaneous, which I just scraped in on.

So after being deemed competent, we sat down for an interview for about an hour and a half. Fascinating conversation. Felt very nervous and shakey (which could have something to do with the few drinks I had last night (that’s another story - somehow ended up at my bosses house on the other other end of the city - sleeping on his couch… I digress).

I had to tell all of the reasons why I wanted to work in the Humanitarian Sector which I think went well, until the inevitable question - will you work in conflict areas, and if not, why not. I had to explain that I had made a promise to my folks not to put myself in extremely dangerous situations. She said that was fine, but that it would reduce my opportunities.

All in all, I feel fairly confident about it all. Now it’s all about waiting to find out what happens. She said that I should hear within the next three weeks. Sometimes I’m not sure if I will be happier with a yes or a no answer….