First budget revision finished

I just finished my first budget revision. It was a nightmare. I slept 2 hours the night before sending it to Paris, and that’s one solid week of work. We’ll see what feedback I get and what needs to be changed.

The whole team here will soon be changing. Our short-term Head of Mission and Logistics Coordinator will both be leaving before the end of October. The Medical Coordinator and Human Resources Coordinator, both of who have been here for 9 months, also leave during October. That leaves me and the pharmacist (who is taking 2 weeks of vacation in October!). I take over the human resources, along with finance. A Canadian should arrive to fill in for the Medical Coordinator for 6 weeks. The new Head of Mission arrives at the beginning of November. No Log Coordinator in view. Besides, I am sending my finance assistant to another site to fill in for someone on vacation there. AND the finance assistant in Khartoum, who we sent to Paris for training, has disappeared into thin air. She may have decided to live there. We’re having fun now!

I’ll do as much as I can do, but I’m really looking forward to a time when a complete team is in place. I should still be moving to Nyala in South Darfur (El Geneina, where I am now is in the state of West Darfur) at the beginning of November, but I’m skeptical. All our projects for the moment are in West Darfur. The idea is to have some management in South Darfur to negotiate with the local officials for us to set up some new projects there. There seems to be a real need, but I am afraid that we will really start screwing up if we try to add more projects while we are so short-staffed in coordination.
Apparently, the security picture is not pretty at this time. We got a phone call today from the Head of Mission saying that he is making a plan for staff reduction (partial evacuation). For us, this means reduction of expats and national staff hired elsewhere than where they are working. I’m not yet sure what sites are implicated in this plan, but my bets are on Nyala (where I should be moving) and Niertiti. To be continued……………