During my 3 weeks in
France, I did nothing but sleep, eat, sleep, drink, sleep. Did I mention sleep? I have worked harder in my life than in
Central African Republic, but I am no longer 40 or 50 years old (in fact, I just celebrated my 60th birthday! I am happy to still be breathing!). I was dead when I returned.
After 3 weeks, I returned
to Paris to work on the budget for the Central African Republic for 3 days, and
then I left for Uganda. I was here about
a year ago for a very short-term project – 3 weeks of preparing a kit for
setting up the administrative system in a new project. It turned out to be necessary – we opened 2
emergency missions since then in the country. This time I am here for 3 months – to fill
a gap between 2 longer-term people
Apart from their
Neanderthal attitude towards gays - they
just signed a new bill in February making homosexual acts punishable by life in
prison - Uganda is a rather developed central African republic – less so than
Kenya or Rwanda, but more than Tanzania and much more than the Congos or
Central African Republic. Last year,
many of the countries donating to Africa cut way back on their funding to
several African countries, including this one.
The signing of the new gay bill has put even more funding into jeopardy.
We have one regular
program here in the country, which has been running for 12 years. As an emergency relief organization, this is
pretty rare for us. The program is an
aids and tuberculosis program. We are in
the process of closing this project, handing it back to the Ugandan government,
with the funding of Sustain, who gets their money from USAID. The problem is that we have been planning
this handover with them for over a year; the deadline for us to leave is end of
April for the Aids program, and end of July for the TB program, including a
rather strong cohort of anti-drug resistant cases. Sustain’s money has still to be unblocked by
USAID! We are strongly worried about the
follow-up of our patients. But we
realize that if we stay, the problem will be the same in 1, 2, 3 months. We get out now and put pressure on USAID to
unblock the funds, or this will continue forever.
Our other program for the
moment is for around 60,000 South Sudanese refugees in the north of the
country. Yes, the youngest country in
the world is now (again) at war with itself.
We are running health centers in 5 camps. And
the conflict is foreseen to continue for several months. There will probably be a new camp in the near
future. At the moment, there are around
300 new arrivals every day. The camps
are full of women and children – most of the men remain to take care of the
livestock and crops, as well as to fight.
The Ugandan government has
been relatively generous in setting up these camps – giving 30m x 30m to each
family, so that they can grow some crops to feed themselves. But for us, this means many different health
centers, so that they are in the proximity of the populations. Our headquarters are concerned about the costs relative to the number of refugees
– costs related to the construction of the centers, the staff needed to run
them, and the vehicles necessary to transport staff and patients between
different sites.
I have been fortunate to
be able to visit both projects within my first 2 weeks here. I have also been unfortunate enough to have
to revise the budget for the emergency project in my 2nd weekend
here. Headquarters were already giving
us grief about the costs, and my budget is about 20% higher than the last. Aieaieaie.
I will not be a popular man in headquarters.
And in the meantime, I am
not too popular with the Ugandan tax authorities either. Due to the reduction in western government
donations, they are scrambling to collect taxes from everyone in the country. We have been honest, but they are making new tax assessments on everyone, including us. I received 5
new ones in my first week here. We have
a good lawyer, but he is more specialized in labor law (also a need for us
here). We now need a tax consultant and
another administrator to work with him to document what we have paid against
what we should pay (not so easy) and negotiate a final settlement to put this
issue to bed. I thought this was going
to be an easy 3 months, but for the moment, it is not the case.
On the home front, the
capital of Uganda – Kampala - is a nice place to be. We are in an animated, safe area in the city,
with plenty of services, restaurants, etc.
I have a wonderful room with wifi and a balcony on which I can work on
the weekends. That is where I am writing
this post right now. Only problem – my
favorite bar has been shut down. It is a
Congolese bar just 300 meters from the office – lots of Congolese in this
country also. Apparently, they were shut
down because of excessive noise, which does not surprise me. So they are taking advantage of their
administrative closure to tear down everything and rebuild. Not good for their staff, who are without
work during that period. I celebrated my
birthday by having dinner with one of my favorite waiters from the place in a
small French restaurant just across from the former bar. He is hurting, with no source of income. It appears that the new place will open about
the time that I leave. Sniff L.
I am very happy that there
are a few international and national staff that I know from last year, and a
few international staff that I know from previous missions. I have dinner at the house tonight with one
very special friend from last year.
One very bad news. A good friend of mine who was the Project
Coordinator of the project which is closing died about a week before I arrived.
MSF did all they could to help him, but apparently it was too late – he had
been sick for a long time. He was only
around 40 years old. We all miss him
greatly. I wish his family the best in
this time of need.
When I finish here, I will
have finished 2 years of contract with the emergency department. I have been told that it is probably good to
stop there. Although I love working in this department, I agree. It is rather stressful. So after here, I hope to have 4-6 weeks of
vacation – travel to a country without work – as I have not done in a long
time. I was thinking to go to
Philippines to visit a friend there for part of that time. I want to continue the big MSF adventure, but
probably now in our regular programs as before, but outside of the administrative side and more as a project coordinator. We will see.
