Temporary Insanity

Habari,

Finally I am heading back to the continent of Africa.  I'm writing this entry from the London Heathrow airport.  I have a five hour layover before I head to Johannesburg, South Africa.   I have been in the US since December 17th and I've adapted far too much to the comforts of home.  With the exception of sleeping during normal sleep hours and working during normal work hours that is.  You see, somebody had the crazy idea that I could work on Nairobi time during my extended stay.  Crazy!!

First of all, Nairobi is eight hours ahead of the east coast.  That means, in order to do a normal 9 to 5 work day, I would have to work from 1am until 9am.  Well, I thought that was just crazy so I settled on 11pm to 7am.  Still crazy...I know.  The first couple of days were horrible!  I felt like I was losing my mind. Although I had every intention of logging off at 7am sharp, somebody or some crisis always caused me to work until 8 or 9 in the morning. SMH.

After a while things got better, but I was going to sleep right after work and sleeping most of the day.  Sometimes when I would get up, it would be dark again.  WTH.  My days started to run together and I started to lose track of them.  The thing is, I would have already worked the day in Nairobi, but when I was done the day was just starting at home.  This wasn't a problem until I had to do something on eastern standard time, like go to the doctor or meet a friend for lunch.  For those of you that I didn't get to see during this trip, I'm pleading temporary insanity.  Forgive me.

My body would completely rebel on me by falling asleep for hours when I was suppose to just catch a short nap before going out.  Or,  I would jump out of the car and go on about my business while the car is still running. LOL.  I will apologize to my girl Tammie in public for doing that twice while she was visiting.  I'm sure she didn't feel comfortable getting in the car with me driving after witnessing that mishap.  

My short term memory was shot during this experiment and my work days took an interesting turn between the hours of 4 and 5am.  I became either a total crab or I would break into hysterical laughter at the corniest joke.  My patience changed from: 

1, "oh that's okay everybody messes up every now and then,
2, "no worries, at least you are learning,"
3 "okay maybe we have a problem, let's work on that."

to:

1, "why are you coming to me with this nonsense, you should know this already!"

Needless to say I'm sure I took some years off of my life during this five week experiment or at least shortened a few telomeres. LOL.  The good news is I'm heading back to the continent.  I'm still not going back to Nairobi yet, but at least I'm only an hour behind in Johannesburg.  Hopefully I will get back to some sort of normal routine in a short period of time.  I'm sure my colleagues, employees and manager will be happy when I do.  

So, tune in next week when I hope to be writing from Nairobi once again.  It should be interesting because I feel like I have to make the adjustment all over again.  The Starbucks withdrawal has already started!! Pray for me!

Asante sana,

Della Rochelle
Copyright (c) 2012 by Della Rochelle Williams