The Guest House in NE Syria

There’s a reason that my CV doesn’t have the long section towards the bottom called “publications” because although I have written a million articles, blog posts, and reflection papers in my head, I rarely slow down long enough to get them on paper. True to form, I dove into our work in Syria and also continued to (try to) maintain the million teacups spinning that is my day job, the best I could. Good internet, which enabled me to at least try to keep up, didn’t help my cause in trying to find time to sit down and write more blog entries, reflecting on our experience in Syria. So let me try to catch you up, as I kill time on the airplane home.

Me out on a run. Thanks to Clare who joined me the last few days and kept me going! 

The guest house in Syria- or in most emergency operations- is a curious thing. I sometimes think I did my career a disservice by not taking a few emergency posts early on in my career and doing hardship gigs like this, because of what a pivitol experience it can be for people (both positive and negative, to be honest). Have you seen the movie Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot? Great movie- work hard, play hard, mostly single expats in really crazy circumstances. Not that we saw any of that shenanigans on our trip. Instead my career trajectory came about with it’s own unique seredipity, starting with my own nicely furnished two-bedroom apartment in a good neigbhorhood of Dakar, working for an INGO doing development programs, far from any conflict or hardship.

In Derik, our organization has I think 3 guest houses total, but at the time we were there, most everyone was in the one we were staying in. This is where all the expatriates live- in security risk situations it enables us to manage security carefully by keeping everyone in one place, and many times there just aren’t a lot of housing options available. It’s also more cost effective. The guest house we stayed in was a large house, divided into several sections, as if it was built for a large, extended Syrian family each with their own living sections, and one big shared kitchen, one big living and dining room.  I think there were 6 bedrooms upstairs, divided into two sections, each with one shared bathroom, plus 3 more rooms downstairs beyond where the living room is, and a shared bathroom on that floor. 9 bedrooms total.

So first let’s point out, everyone’s not only working and living together 24-7, but they’re also sharing a bathroom. And it seems to be a bit random who ends up in which room, especially since they travel so much to other field offices- we have 5 offices (also with guest houses) in various locations around North East Syria that they travel around to for work, and plus they get R&R (rest and relaxation leave for hardship posts) every 12 weeks I think. When they are gone, they leave their rooms mostly packed up, so that it can be cleaned and turned over for other colleagues to use while in town.

The accomodations are pretty basic, but I have to admit after a few days it grew on me and seemed almost homey. There was electricity, including heater/air conditioners in each room, but it was pretty inconsistent, so each guest house has a massive generator that kicks on almost immediately when the power goes out and keeps everything running. The good news is that I learned the internet connection could bridge the power-generator transition somehow. The bad news is that it seemed like there was always a huge lawn mower in your ear. The bathrooms had hot water every day- this huge, old tank that just constantly made a steam-engine like noise and never, ever failed to deliver steaming hot water, thank goodness. That is NOT always a given in many emergency response guest houses.

My room for the week

Our shared bathroom (shower included!)

The beloved hot water heater!! 

In my case, I was in a section shared by 2 male staff, both of whom happened to be Pakistani, and since the bathroom was set up where the shower head was just sort of out there in a fully tiled room (which soaks every inch of the bathroom), I couldn’t really bring my clothes in with me, and had to super carefully peek out the door in my towel and race down the hall, praying neither of them came out while I booked it to my room. THAT would have been awkward! I think they really just learn to be respectful of each other in such close quarters. The head of the whole region, Barbara, is based in Derik and lives in that house too.  She’d get up early and stumble downstairs half awake to the kitchen every morning first thing and make herself coffee, and I ran into her a few times when I was up to go for a run. I kept thinking how I could not imagine my office mates seeing me every day right when I’d rolled out of bed still in my pyjamas. And Barbara is a tough cookie- a French woman who runs a tight ship, gets shit done and doesn’t mess around doing it (I super love her btw). Somehow you develop a new level of respect for your colleagues when you see them still rubbing sleep out of their eyes in the morning and then belting out orders at you later in the day.

These are the office generators- our house just had one of these. 

The guest house has a nice lady who cleans it every day, and makes sure rooms were turned over if new guests were coming in, almost like a bed and breakfast. When we arrived the first day, she’d saved us food from lunch, and after she gave us a tour of the house, insisted we sit and eat something.  They have a cook who makes a huge meal every lunchtime, and if staff don’t have time to come for lunch (it’s just a block or two from the office) they usually just heat up the meal for dinner. Everyone chips $20/week for meals, plus the cook stocks the house with staples, fruits, and other snacks. For breakfast and dinner otherwise, and on weekends, they’re own their own. One weekend night when we were there, a fun colleague named Carine, who was on a 6-month loan assignment from our Beiruit office, cooked this huge meal for all of us, and we had fun keeping her company in the kitchen then having a big group meal together. Another night, we all hung out in the big living room, half working/half telling stories and shooting the shit, and then ordered out a huge meal, family style, to share. There are a couple of restaurants in Derik, and they pretty much all serve the same food, and luckily they are very willing to prepare your food for take out if you’ll come and get it. One of the “perks” of the guest house is an on-call driver in the evening that they can use if they need to go shopping or somewhere, and they can also send him to go pick up take out. We won’t talk about the time they sent the driver out for a case of beer. :)

Guest house kitchen. 

Added these photos of the downstairs bathroom because I just thought the world should see the crazy snowman tile that COVERED the entire bathroom, floor to ceiling, inside and out. Random. 

I’ll end with a story of the kerosene heater in my room. It was cold and rainy when we were there, and got really damp and chilly at night. We were warned that the wall unit for heat/ac might easily overpower the electrical grid and kick the power out, so I figured i’d instead have them light this old fashioned kerosene heater that was in my bedroom, along with every other room. It was kind of quaint looking and seemed really warm. You really only needed it to heat the room before going to bed, and then the heavy blankets on the bed were probably fine. So I had the house security guard come up and light the heater for me the first night, then promptly jumped on a conference call. As the call started, I noticed there was no heat coming out of the heater, and so I “turned it up” a little, essentially turning a knob that released  a bit more kerosene into the internal fire burning. That seemed to do the trick- the fire flared a bit more and the room started to warm up. Except towards the end of the hour-long call, I noticed a loud dripping sound, and turned to look to see the pan on the bottom of the heater almost totally filled up with pure kerosene, about to spill over onto the carpet and horribly stinking up my room. It occured to me it was also a massive fire hazard. I flew down the stairs and yelled and waved to the Kurdish-speaking guard and also the driver who was hanging out with him, and they got the message to rush upstairs to my room. They turned off the heat and took care of emptying out the kerosene, though my room reeked for the rest of the weekend, even as I cracked the window and let the cold air in to let the smell out. They later told me that my heater was somehow broken, so after that I stuck to the electrical wall heater unit, and tried to keep it to a minimum.

That brown stuff around the bottom- yeah, pure kerosene that all spilled out.  The orange in the middle? Nice hot fire!!