End-of-March Posting

I’m starting my last month. It doesn’t at all seem like 8 months have passed since I arrived. But I am getting tired more often.

This promises to be a very busy month. Our Head of Mission just came back from an exploration in the eastern portion of South Darfur. It is an area that was ravaged by rebel/government fighting in 2007, during what should have been the planting season. They have no food, little water, very little health care and few humanitarian actors to aid them. We have found around 45% of the kids under 5 to be in the “danger” levels of malnutrition. And the next harvest won’t be until October.

So we are planning to go into the local rural hospital in Adila to run the pediatric ward and a therapeutic feeding center. Along with this, we will have 2 or 3 outlying outpatient therapeutic feeding centers, to help those who can take their treatment at home and to find the ones who need to come to the hospital. We expect to treat about 10 000 children under 5 (the age group most likely to die from complications brought about by malnutrition). This will be a short-term project, starting mid-April up through the end of October. This is the kind of project that we do very well.

If all goes well (this is a very big “if”), we could have government approval Sunday or Monday. In that case, I will probably go to the area next week to start the recruiting process – we will need about 70 staff.

At the same time, we are starting a targeted supplemental feeding program in Zalingei, where we already work in the district hospital. This program is aimed at preventing severe malnutrition by distributing a therapeutic supplement to all the children between 6 months and 3 years in the area (15000) for 6 months. It is an experimental program, based on what we did in Niger last year, to prove to other humanitarian groups and governments that malnutrition can be prevented at a small cost which is later compensated by a healthier population (more productive with less health-care expenses).

We have also begun a 3-month vaccination program with 8 antigens in the Jebel Marra area (partially government controlled, partially rebel controlled).

All of this will be going on along with our normal programs (which are no less worthy – running 1 hospital and 3 outpatient clinics by ourselves, and working with the health ministry in the aforementioned Zalingei district hospital, all of which are treating internally displaced populations), while all my administrative staff is changing or taking vacation! And my replacement will be arriving mid-month. I will need to prepare my handover with him before he arrives, then start working on my end-of-mission reports and evaluations of my staff during the time that he is taking over.

As always, this is the time when I start asking myself if I accomplished anything during my stay here. Certainly, just keeping things running is an accomplishment, but there have been administrators before me (we are in Darfur since late 2003) and there will be others after. I would like to think that I put some systems into place which will be continue to be useful after I leave, but when one starts looking back, it’s not always easy to find the added value. This will be my theme of reflection while preparing my end-of-mission report.

March Posting

I just got word today that the work on my apartment is finished. I will have a place to live when I return to Lyon! The guy who did all the work sent pictures, and it looks great. It’s all oak, dark beige tile, light beige marble and stainless steel/chrome. I will still need to arrange the inside of the big closet, brush the old beamed ceiling, sand and finish the plaster, and paint, but I enjoy that. Besides, it is so small that it should go pretty rapidly. And the only ceilings to paint are in the bathroom and kitchen.

I will be leaving here at the beginning of May. My replacement has already been in contact. It’s another American, who has been with MSF about the same amount of time that I have. He arrives around mid-April, so we should have a couple of weeks of handover, then he can take a quick tour of the projects (about a week) before I go.

In the meantime, I will be busy. My financial assistant is moving to Khartoum to work with MSF there. He will be replaced by someone from one of our other sites, but I will need to do some training. My human resources assistant is finally moving here from our old coordination site in El Geneina (plus I loaned him to the Khartoum office for the last month) next week and we will have to get him installed. And my transit assistant will be taking some long-postponed vacation time after training his new short-term replacement.

I am trying to get some additional procedures in place before I go. The human resources side is getting into shape. I go to Bulbul Abu Jazou to recruit some staff on Monday. I have just put into place a system for financial analysis, which should help me keep better track of our expenses. It will also help me with the quarterly budget revision, which should be done before the end of March. Then I will need to do the personnel evaluations for my staff and prepare my handover reports and end-of-mission reports.

I hope to stay in France 3-4 months this time, to finish up the apartment, get back for a short visit to Indiana, and RELAX A BIT. But you never know with MSF – it’s better to stay flexible.