Step 4. Know the dirt.

Wow- what a crazy week. This week I went to the traveling trade show with friends, taught my first high school STI workshop, set up 3 more workshops (woot!) and almost lost it on a drop in client. People with addictions have a few needy tenancies. One of the is that they often latch on to whomever is nice to them, and then feel very rejected when that person can't do what they want. One of the clients asked me to do something that I didn't have time for. I said I couldn't help her, and she asked, quite whiny, “why can't you?” Blame it on short nights, or her sleeping in our office for 3 days, coughing and complaining all over, but I almost asked “well, why can't you not be a crack addict?” It was at that point in the day that I excused myself from the front desk and went to work somewhere else.

So I am working new modules, writing grant applications, and teaching kids about chlamydia. Lots of stuff is going on all the time. One of our few constants here, however, is the dirt.

Fort Mac is a boom town, 100%. The municipality is working to expand infrastructure. The roads are clogged and filled with potholes. The only bridge in and out of town is being replaced. Two more lanes are being added to the highway. And there are new buildings going up all over! Not just residential, either- warehouses, stores, and industrial facilities are in the works everywhere. That is why there is dirt in the air.

It really is in the air. I wish I could get a picture that captured the hazy glow of the particulates in the sunlight. The fine brown dirt that makes up the soil here -fluvial sediment (no bigs, I studied geography)- actually floats in the air around town. The streets look dirty all the time. In fact, instead of normal street sweepers, this town has pressure washing trucks that drive around and hose off the streets. The cars are constantly covered with dirt, and people just don't care anymore. You see a lot of vehicles that are covered in brown, save for license plate, which they was off. I get it, too. Why wash a car when it will be dirty again tomorrow?

The brown blends in nicely with the now brown skyline. The leaves turned yellow and fell off the trees in the course of one week. The above scene is no more. Now we have brown naked trees, a brown river, and brown brown roads. The cars are mostly brown, and many of the building have developed a fine coat of seasonal brown. The occasional rain or hail storm blend it up nicely into a pervasive mud.

Driving around town would be a little boys dream. There are amazing pieces of machinery! There are trucks like I have never seen. Gary and Liz took me on a drive the other day to see the Syncrude factory. The vehicles out in the fields shoveling dirt were larger than the house I live in. And they are all working on a beautiful canvas of brown.

And let's not forget the olfactory sensation of dirt! The ground here has oil in it- we know this. But I hadn't really thought about that till I moved here. There is oil in the dirt. Sometimes, after it really rains, the oil comes up to the topsoil and runs out of the ground. It is a testament to the resilience of nature that trees and grass grow in a soil that is sweating out petroleum. Sudden changes in weather do something to it, and the town has stunk like oil for a few days.

There is also the dirt of the office. That client, who was sleeping in the sitting area of the office, was coughing all over. She has Hep C, and probably pneumatic TB. The office is very very cramped, with 9 new staff coming on in the last 5 weeks. There is one sink and a half sized fridge. We have to take turns eating lunch so there is room to sit! Thrown in street people, drug users, and the needle exchange, and you have an environment rife with infectious body fluids. I have actually started relying on my old nemesis, antibacterial hand lotion. Sometimes I really wish I didn't know what I did about communicable disease. It's not like I am at risk of catching anything deadly (even Hep C is hard to get unless you are trying), but it does make me feel a little dirty at times.