The holidays are over and Congo is still relatively peaceful.
We enjoyed a very nice Christmas at the house. A couple of new arrivals had brought some comté and beaufort cheeses, so we had a mega cheese fondu the evening of the 24th. It was delicious! I had expressly made some purchases in Zanzibar, so everyone had a gift – there were 13 of us. We even had a simulation Christmas tree (a branch of a local plant with a few Christmas ornaments on it. Alcohol is pretty easy to find here (as compared to my last posting in Sudan) so we were all pretty blasted by the end of the evening. Some of the faces the next morning were not very pretty.
The 27th we had our end of the year party with the staff – we are 79 employees in total here in Goma and some brought their families. The national staff did the organization of the party and it was a real success considering it rained most of the afternoon: good food, moderate drinking (this time), a lot of dancing to Congolese music and great conversation. It is really nice to talk with everyone outside of the work environment. We have hired some new staff lately and it gave me the opportunity to get to know them better.
On New Year ’s Eve, after a LONG aperitif, the expats split into 2 groups. One group went to a party organized by one of the other International Non-Governmental Organizations. The rest of us went out to an Indian restaurant – a big part of the UN forces is Indian, so there is one such restaurant here in Goma. The service was slow, the electricity cut out for quite a while (pretty typical here) and the food was great. It was nice to be out of the house.
I don’t want you to think that all we do is party! In fact the rest of the time during the holidays was the same as always. I start work around 7:15am and finish around 8:00pm.
Christmas eve, we were in a coordination meeting until around 7:00pm, so we were pretty rushed to prepare the fondu. The end of the year staff party started at 2:00pm, but I was working until 3:30pm. New Year’s Eve was the same thing again.
Working as we do, small comfort considerations sometimes become big issues. A couple of months ago, we rented a second expat house. With changes in the team and technical visits from Paris, we are between 8 and 18 expats at a time, and there was a moment when there were 4 of us (including me) sleeping on the floor in the living room.
(This photo is from the front balcony of the second house – we are in a nice place. It’s a fishing boat on Lake Kivu, taken this morning) But we want long-term staff, relocated local staff and visitors in each of the houses. We also want to eat together – meals are the only time of the day that we are all together. We had been eating in the first house, but yesterday we moved the kitchen to the second house. The newer house is much closer to the office, which makes it easy to walk there for lunch - we have a limited car pool, and waiting for one to take you to lunch is often a problem. These kinds of changes can be fairly traumatic, but it worked pretty well. The cook, his helper and the logistics staff did a great job, and we had dinner in the new house last night, easily finishing early enough so that the people in the first house were able to go home by car well before the 11:00pm curfew.
As I said earlier, things are relatively calm for the moment. But there is some instability in the leadership of the major rebel group right now, which makes us a bit nervous. We have decided to keep a couple of short-term projects open, in case the conflict picks up again.
My biggest work for the moment is following the movements of the expats. We have a lot of expat resources available to us being under the emergency desk, but they are short-term postings. Each movement means working with Paris to see when the person will arrive or leave, scheduling the cars to pick them up or take them to the airport in Rwanda and the plane for Uganda, making sure that the have the visas they need for Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and France (for the African expats), getting them through the briefings here in Goma, and then getting them to their respective projects in the field. In November we had 65 expat movements (in and out). This week alone we have 12.
I am also finishing up my proposition for changes in the salary and job function scales. I have to finish up today, because it will be presented tomorrow in Paris.
We enjoyed a very nice Christmas at the house. A couple of new arrivals had brought some comté and beaufort cheeses, so we had a mega cheese fondu the evening of the 24th. It was delicious! I had expressly made some purchases in Zanzibar, so everyone had a gift – there were 13 of us. We even had a simulation Christmas tree (a branch of a local plant with a few Christmas ornaments on it. Alcohol is pretty easy to find here (as compared to my last posting in Sudan) so we were all pretty blasted by the end of the evening. Some of the faces the next morning were not very pretty.The 27th we had our end of the year party with the staff – we are 79 employees in total here in Goma and some brought their families. The national staff did the organization of the party and it was a real success considering it rained most of the afternoon: good food, moderate drinking (this time), a lot of dancing to Congolese music and great conversation. It is really nice to talk with everyone outside of the work environment. We have hired some new staff lately and it gave me the opportunity to get to know them better.On New Year ’s Eve, after a LONG aperitif, the expats split into 2 groups. One group went to a party organized by one of the other International Non-Governmental Organizations. The rest of us went out to an Indian restaurant – a big part of the UN forces is Indian, so there is one such restaurant here in Goma. The service was slow, the electricity cut out for quite a while (pretty typical here) and the food was great. It was nice to be out of the house.
I don’t want you to think that all we do is party! In fact the rest of the time during the holidays was the same as always. I start work around 7:15am and finish around 8:00pm.
Christmas eve, we were in a coordination meeting until around 7:00pm, so we were pretty rushed to prepare the fondu. The end of the year staff party started at 2:00pm, but I was working until 3:30pm. New Year’s Eve was the same thing again.
Working as we do, small comfort considerations sometimes become big issues. A couple of months ago, we rented a second expat house. With changes in the team and technical visits from Paris, we are between 8 and 18 expats at a time, and there was a moment when there were 4 of us (including me) sleeping on the floor in the living room.
(This photo is from the front balcony of the second house – we are in a nice place. It’s a fishing boat on Lake Kivu, taken this morning) But we want long-term staff, relocated local staff and visitors in each of the houses. We also want to eat together – meals are the only time of the day that we are all together. We had been eating in the first house, but yesterday we moved the kitchen to the second house. The newer house is much closer to the office, which makes it easy to walk there for lunch - we have a limited car pool, and waiting for one to take you to lunch is often a problem. These kinds of changes can be fairly traumatic, but it worked pretty well. The cook, his helper and the logistics staff did a great job, and we had dinner in the new house last night, easily finishing early enough so that the people in the first house were able to go home by car well before the 11:00pm curfew.As I said earlier, things are relatively calm for the moment. But there is some instability in the leadership of the major rebel group right now, which makes us a bit nervous. We have decided to keep a couple of short-term projects open, in case the conflict picks up again.
My biggest work for the moment is following the movements of the expats. We have a lot of expat resources available to us being under the emergency desk, but they are short-term postings. Each movement means working with Paris to see when the person will arrive or leave, scheduling the cars to pick them up or take them to the airport in Rwanda and the plane for Uganda, making sure that the have the visas they need for Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and France (for the African expats), getting them through the briefings here in Goma, and then getting them to their respective projects in the field. In November we had 65 expat movements (in and out). This week alone we have 12.
I am also finishing up my proposition for changes in the salary and job function scales. I have to finish up today, because it will be presented tomorrow in Paris.
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