Merry Christmas

I returned Wednesday from Zanzibar. It was a wonderful break. I didn’t do much this time – only a trip to the Prison Island (which never served as a prison),some snorkelling and a beach party. Zanzibar is an island province off the coast of Tanzania. Originally, it was part of the Sultanate of Oman and Zanzibar. It has been governed by the Portuguese, Germans, and English at various times. Just after it’s independence in the 60’s, it joined with Tanzanika to form the country Tanzania. It’s really a nice place, with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I spent most of my time in Stonetown, the largest town, and on the northern tip at Nungwi and Kendwa.

Most of my time was spent with some people I met last year who live and work there. We walked around, drank some beers, talked a lot, and generally enjoyed ourselves. It was pleasant and got my mind off Congo.

Now I’m back and it is hectic. We have 22 expats leaving this month, and 27 arriving! This planning is taking a lot of my time. There are also quite a few changes in the programs.

Fortunately, Laurence from Paris did some great work to advance our salary study. I must finalize it and make a tour to announce the changes in both the salary and function scales. And Anne, the person who will be picking up the finances, arrived Wednesday. This is going to change my life!

This will be the 4th year that I spend Christmas on mission and I love it. We are all away from home, but with each other. This year we should be around 13 at the house for the event. I think that I bought enough gifts in Zanzibar for everyone. If not, I will find some things here – being a primarily Christian country, the shops are already decorated for Christmas. And I will probably go crazy fixing food as I did the other years. It is relatively quiet in Congo for the moment. I hope that it remains like this so that we can enjoy the holidays. I really am an old child!

Time for a Break

Since my last posting, MSF-France in Congo has changed a bit – we now work under the Emergency Department rather than under a regular management scheme. In practice, this gives us some resources we wouldn’t have otherwise – a management team in Paris experienced in handling emergencies, medical and logistics stocks already pre-positioned in Nairobi, and a pool of expatriates with emergency experience who can help us out here.

I was already having trouble doing everything I had to do before the conflicts broke out in September. Since then, it has been even worse. A colleague from Paris arrived a week ago to help advance some of the larger tasks (pay scale review, job function review, 2009 budget preparation, etc). I am really grateful. And we have also decided to cut my job into two positions - I will handle the human resources, and someone is coming in another week to take over the finance (budget and accounting). This should help a lot. I felt that I could take either one of the posts, but they have a harder time finding someone to handle HR than finance, so I took that one.
We are supposed to take a break every 3 months. I have now been here 4 months. So I am leaving tomorrow for a week in Zanzibar (again). I am looking forward to the rest, and I am pleased that my colleague from Paris can replace me for that time. When I come back, there will be a lot of changes in our team. The person for finance should arrive a day before me, our new head of mission arrives tomorrow, our medical coordinator leaves around the 16th of December, and our logistics coordinator leaves around the 20th of December. I will be the oldest member of the coordination team!