The end is rapidly approaching! My replacement for part of the program should arrive here in Maradi on the 23rd of April. Another replacement for the rest of my work should arrive on the 28th. And I should leave Maradi on May 4th via a 10 hour drive to Niamey, flying out of Niger the same evening around midnight, and arriving in Paris in the early morning of the 5th. My debriefing in Paris will be Monday the 7th, and I should get back to Marcieux on the 8th. None of this is confirmed, of course, but that's the plan.
I'm not going to Agadez, because I don't see how I will have the time. But I will certainly be arranging my farewell party here.
See you soon.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
April Update
The warm season is starting here. Every day, it gets up to around 40°C (around 105°F). But Friday (Good Friday), we had rain; with thunder and lightning and everything! That’s the first time I had seen rain since early October.
March was a tough month for my work. Caroline, the other admin expat, left the 12th, and she had been taking care of the paperwork for the layoff plan. That left me with the end of her work of finishing off the old program, and my own work of getting the new program started.
Abdoulaye, one of the assistant admins, moved from accounting to human resources to take over a vacancy. That meant full retraining on what is need to do the work contracts, how to work with the labor office, what’s needed and when to get the payslips ready, etc.
And with the new program, we had to merge two personnel data bases, something our software was not meant to do. We got a new version of the software, which immediately obliterated all of the data AND our backup. The people in Paris were very helpful in bug fixes, but working over a log distance with less-than- optimum internet access made it a slow process. We finally arrived at installing a version which worked and most of the data, but it was a real struggle. We ended the month with lots of errors in the pay and a 74 euro surplus in the cash we transferred for the pay. That’s a pretty big error.
At the same time, our new program is turning out to be larger than expected. So we’re reviewing budgets and staffing, and will probably be interviewing and rehiring 20-25 people within the next couple of weeks.
We just had a mini General Assembly this weekend. It was basically a motivational meeting to get the staff to feel like part of a humanitarian organization rather than just employees of a large organization. It was a good two day meeting, but the organization of it was an added burden.
And I’m now working with my third field coordinator since I arrived, and my third capitol administrator. Fortunately, they’ve all been good.
I stayed on a couple of months more than originally planned to put this new program in order on the admin side before handing it over to someone else. It’s a good thing that I planned large on time. I should be leaving about a month from now, and it will take all of that to have something clean to hand over.
In all, the last two months have been pretty tiring. I went to bed last night at 6:00 pm (just after the wrap-up of the mini General Assembly) and got up at 8:00 this morning. That did me a world of good.
My last month here will be spent finishing up the last layoffs (Although we will be rehiring, what we need now are nurses and nurses aids. We have opted for a nutrition program which uses less bulky supplements than in the past, so we are closing down several warehouses and thus laying-off some more guardians.), cleaning up several loose ends, documenting what’s been done and what still needs to be done, evaluating my staff and planning for their future, participating in our blanket feeding program (small item: we’re distributing an alimentary supplement to all the 60,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 3 years in our district for 6 months to prevent severe malnutrition before the harvest comes in).
But it’s not all work! I also hope to take off 2 days to visit Agadez, a desert city, to relax for a weekend. And I’ll have to organize my going away party.
March was a tough month for my work. Caroline, the other admin expat, left the 12th, and she had been taking care of the paperwork for the layoff plan. That left me with the end of her work of finishing off the old program, and my own work of getting the new program started.
Abdoulaye, one of the assistant admins, moved from accounting to human resources to take over a vacancy. That meant full retraining on what is need to do the work contracts, how to work with the labor office, what’s needed and when to get the payslips ready, etc.
And with the new program, we had to merge two personnel data bases, something our software was not meant to do. We got a new version of the software, which immediately obliterated all of the data AND our backup. The people in Paris were very helpful in bug fixes, but working over a log distance with less-than- optimum internet access made it a slow process. We finally arrived at installing a version which worked and most of the data, but it was a real struggle. We ended the month with lots of errors in the pay and a 74 euro surplus in the cash we transferred for the pay. That’s a pretty big error.
At the same time, our new program is turning out to be larger than expected. So we’re reviewing budgets and staffing, and will probably be interviewing and rehiring 20-25 people within the next couple of weeks.
We just had a mini General Assembly this weekend. It was basically a motivational meeting to get the staff to feel like part of a humanitarian organization rather than just employees of a large organization. It was a good two day meeting, but the organization of it was an added burden.
And I’m now working with my third field coordinator since I arrived, and my third capitol administrator. Fortunately, they’ve all been good.
I stayed on a couple of months more than originally planned to put this new program in order on the admin side before handing it over to someone else. It’s a good thing that I planned large on time. I should be leaving about a month from now, and it will take all of that to have something clean to hand over.
In all, the last two months have been pretty tiring. I went to bed last night at 6:00 pm (just after the wrap-up of the mini General Assembly) and got up at 8:00 this morning. That did me a world of good.
My last month here will be spent finishing up the last layoffs (Although we will be rehiring, what we need now are nurses and nurses aids. We have opted for a nutrition program which uses less bulky supplements than in the past, so we are closing down several warehouses and thus laying-off some more guardians.), cleaning up several loose ends, documenting what’s been done and what still needs to be done, evaluating my staff and planning for their future, participating in our blanket feeding program (small item: we’re distributing an alimentary supplement to all the 60,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 3 years in our district for 6 months to prevent severe malnutrition before the harvest comes in).
But it’s not all work! I also hope to take off 2 days to visit Agadez, a desert city, to relax for a weekend. And I’ll have to organize my going away party.
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