I arrived in Paris Sunday the 29th of July to begin my briefings. The departure from France was Tuesday at 11:00pm, arriving in Khartoum Wednesday at 9:00pm where I had briefings again. I flew out to Nyala Sunday, from where I flew out again Tuesday afternoon for my destination, El Geneina. So it took one entire week to arrive from Paris here. I arrived just in time to do the closing of July’s accounts; I’m already in deep shit.
Our compound here is called “the prison”. It contains the office and the expat housing. We don’t leave very often; it’s not at all in the middle of town (where there is nothing to do anyway). The conditions are fairly primitive, but the team (there are 7 of us) is a good one.
The security of our operations in the field is precarious. We’re working on a pay plan that will allow us to have a minimum of cash at the sites, because some other organizations have been robbed several times. We don’t take the roads between sites; we go by UN helicopter flights. The camps exist since 2003, but conflicts continue to send in new refugees all the time. Their villages no longer existing, they are completely dependent on humanitarian organizations for all their needs: food, shelter, water and health care.
There are lots of holes in our organization chart; apparently it’s tough to find experienced people to come work here. And most of our coordination team are scheduled to leave at the end of September or in October. It’s probable that the Darfur coordination team will be split between El Geneina qnd Nyala, zith medical and head-of-mission in El Geneina, and logistics and finance (me) in Nyala. If that happens, it will happen in October. Nyala is the biggest city in Darfur. It’s also in South Darfur (El Geneina is in West Darfur, with all our current operational sites). MSF wants part of the coordination team there to negotiate with the local authorities, especially since we would like to set up a new site there. It’s also possible that my position will change from finance and human resources coordinator for Darfur to human resources coordinator for North Sudan (in Khartoum) and for Darfur. We’ll see.
It’s Friday, the weekly day off in the Muslim world. But I must get back to my accounting closings; I have 14 account books to close and I’ve never done this before. We’re having fun now!
