What is 'normal'?

When I collapse at the end of each day I’m usually thinking something along the lines of, “Well that was another odd day”. Odd is becoming the norm. Take today for example. This morning, over breakfast, the boys at the guesthouse locked the gates on a dog and stoned it to death despite my screaming protests. Shortly after arriving at the office an organisation we’ve been trying to join on a field trip for several weeks turned up at the door and indignantly said “Are you ready? We’re waiting for you.” Apparently I am expected to be a clairvoyant and have staff ready at the drop of a hat. The humanitarian coordination meeting, which is normally a fairly sedate affair, turned militant with the UN leading calls for all agencies to boycott meetings with the District “until they take their responsibilities seriously”. Then a deaf, mute and illiterate man appeared at the office collecting money for another deaf man who had a heart problem requiring treatment, and we tried for a good half hour to have a conversation in gestures and guesswork. Over lunch two staff from UNHCR, who I’m hosting at the moment because of the shortage of office space here, hunted down and killed a rat with a stick in the office. Then I spent an hour interviewing two policemen who I’m supposed to recruit as guards, one of whom only had one eye whilst the other one stank of alcohol. And when I sat down with my Programme Coordinator to discuss her day and ask her what a government counterpart she had met with was ‘like’ she responds saying, “Ah she is fat, very fat”, before I clarify that I was referring to her personality and competence.