Starting my internship just now...

I'll begin by explaining the phrase "just now" to all you non South Africans. Here, "just now" means "eventually". Not "right now" like it does to the rest of the world. I'm not exaggerating - it literally means eventually, or sometimes never at all.

Anyway, I was supposed to start my internship at the International Center for Transitional Justice last week, on March 1. But then the guy giving me my assignments, Abdul, was traveling in Uganda. So then I had to wait until yesterday, Wednesday, to begin. Of course, I arrived and got myself a cup of tea and as soon as I put the kettle back down on the counter, the electricity went off. This happens rather frequently in Cape Town, as the power supply often does not meet the demand. Although I was able to meet with Abdul, I wasn't actually able to do any work. And today Abdul has been on the phone since I arrived. The good news is, this allows me to spend some time just hanging out on the internet, which I rarely get to do here. So it looks like I'll be doing work just now, when I'm done with this post.

Even better news is that my internship looks like it is going to be totally awesome. The ICTJ has 3 offices in Africa (the others are in Monrovia, Liberia and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo), but they are looking to make the Cape Town office the main office on the continent. They are going to be expanding their staff here, and the first person they want to hire is a gender adviser. Until they hire this person, I will get to do the job! For those of you who don't know, I study transitional justice, but my main focus is on incorporating a gender dimension in truth commissions and prosecutions of political criminals. So this gender work is actually pretty much my dream job. Abdul also mentioned that I might get to go to conferences from time to time and represent the ICTJ. One last thing that makes my internship awesome is that I discovered that a woman whose book I have read twice and used in my thesis last year also works at the ICTJ - in the Geneva office. I tried to explain to my roommates last night that I am working with so many famous people, but they didn't think that Priscilla Hayner is famous. Whatever. They're probably just jealous that they don't have an unpaid internship as cool as mine.