Field Experience...

I think I have finally understood why the International Organizations insist on having the so-called “Field Experience” when they hire people. Just three days in Beirut and oh man it has been such an eye-opener! The difference between “saying and actually doing it” had never been so clearer!

Never in my life, I have seen such rains, never. Beirut easily beats Cherapunji! The monstrous and roaring winds do not hesitate to show that they can go anywhere, whenever they want and that whole world belongs to them. God! They do it so powerfully as if they are angry with someone and retaliating… And rain that follows seems to be weeping continuously, hard, at such an audacious act of the winds. This parley between the wind and the rain freaks the life out of you. It reminds you of the bickering between a short-tempered brother and his mellow sister. Especially at night, like the domineering brother, the wind gets nastier and the rain cries harder!

It has been raining relentlessly for the past three days. Not so normal even by the Lebanese standards! This must be really a lesson of “adaptation to the environment”. Well though rain cannot be considered as an extreme condition, such rains certainly do. In an unknown city, where you barely speak the language (yes, I can’t speak Arabic, as yet!), where you don’t know the roads and have just the address, where you have to manage to not to get soaked in the evil rains and not to get blown away by the foul wind and also reach the office on time to sit there the whole day with your wet feet, is an experience you don’t get in your hometown! Such familiarity with these situations is what they must be expecting from us, the International Civil Servants. These incidences enrich your life to an extent that nothing else would ever compare to it. The rains have been so unpredictably strong that they made our Internet LAN wire carry the water on my table as if it was a water pipe, of course wrecking our Internet connection!

Apart from just the environmental conditions, I think even the cultural adaptation is a part of the “field experience”. Hearing the gunshots at night is apparently a very common phenomenon here. Playing with the guns and handguns is done to express joy too! For example, there could be guys bursting handguns or small bombs (?) on the occasion of marriage, birth, birthdays etc. Quite a cultural shock huh! When I discussed my astonishment with a friend, she assured me that if there was something really wrong and the “real” gunshots, we’ll be getting a message from the UN to avert us.

Of course, I am fully aware that only three days of stay isn’t sufficient to conclude anything and yet a lot more is to come. But it has already given me so much to think about that I can’t wait to welcome the next weeks with a grin on my face but a small knot in my heart!