September

I’ve now been back in Congo for a month, and I just finished reading and filing away the 1500 emails that arrived while I was gone, while keeping up with the new ones arriving even faster. That is really a relief!

We are in the process of closing down two of our programs. This is actually good news. It means that those areas are relatively more secure than before. But it also means that 170 people will be losing their jobs. I’m becoming quite an expert on the legal aspects of firing people in Congo. Call me terminator. Fortunately, we have a very good lawyer who is keeping me on the straight and narrow path.

At least these are total closures, not like in Niger where we reduced our activity and therefore had to decide which 350 people out of 770 had to go. That is a lot trickier. We will be able to place a handful of our key people in other programs, but not too many.

To get ready for the first program closure at the end of October, I am working on our pay-slip generation software, to correct some errors and make the final pay-slip easier to understand. We realised that we needed to do this in May, but the closures have made it a priority. It’s a pretty complicated task, but very interesting.

Once the two programs are shut down (probably by the end of the year) we will remain with two big programs plus our coordination here in Goma. And since the conflict in the Kivu region of Congo continues, we will probably need to open new programs in other areas. But getting back to a normal size should allow me more time to work on the big projects such as restructuring the salary scales, refining our policy for working with employees of the national health care system, changing our job function scale to fit an international MSF standard, developing model work contracts for new projects which allow us to change the orientation of the program as the context changes, and a few other projects.

I have also been working on some tools to help our transit person to make sure things don’t slip through the cracks for arrivals, departures, travel for breaks, and all other travel. We have at least 15 nationalities represented here, all with different visa requirements for Congo and Rwanda (all our flights are to Kigali, Rwanda and afterwards there is a 3 ½ hour car trip to the Congolese border, thus doubling the visa nightmare). And Congolese staff going to Europe for training courses or for expatriation to other countries must go (again from Kigali) to the French embassy in Kampala, Uganda to obtain a visa before leaving. It can get pretty complicated.

A lot of our coordination team have extended their contracts here: me (2 years), the financial coordinator (1 ½ years), the logistics coordinator (10 months) and the pharmacy manager (10 months). The head of mission, his deputy, the medical coordinator, and the psychologist have also extended their stays by 1-2 months. That is really good for the continuity of the mission. But the top 3 posts (head of mission, deputy head of mission and medical coordinator) will all be changing between the end of October and the middle of December. We will see what management style comes about with the change. The atmosphere is pretty intense for the moment, partially because we have some pretty strong personalities in the group, partially because the short-timers are trying to get all their objectives in place before leaving. And the objectives of some are in conflict with the objectives others!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my sexuality since returning from vacation. I am gay. (For those you who didn’t know, now you do.) And that is not something that we talk about in a big portion of Africa. The expatriates here know (and don’t care). But I don’t announce my sexuality to the national staff. Even if some have suspicions, I think they are more comfortable not really knowing. And I do not go looking for partners here. That could be dangerous, especially with my position as human resources coordinator (conflict of interest, abuse of power, etc). I don’t really have a huge sexual urge (breaks and time back in France give me sufficient opportunities), but it is kind of frustrating not having some “colleagues” around. Some evenings after work and before going home, I take advantage of the internet to connect with other gays, and it helps. I have “met” some really interesting and refreshing people, both gay and gay-friendly. Thanks to Mihai, Marcus, Alan, Ion, André, Masoud, Msingi, Josh, Pasha and Yannick. You have helped to keep me relatively sane.

Big news of the week: We now have city power in our house! Before, we were dependent on the generator which operated a couple of hours in the morning and from sunset at 6:00pm until 11:00pm. An electrician has arrived in our coordination team, and before heading off to the field, he is putting some things in place here. He found a way to connect us into the city power grid (legally, of course!). It’s not perfect. The power grid goes off for a while almost every evening, some of the lights and outlets are not on the same circuit and thus do not work, and I did get a pretty good shock in the bathroom the other day, but it is really an improvement. Nicolas is slowly getting the kinks out of the system, and we still have the generator when the grid goes out.

It’s Sunday, and I am not working as much as I usually do. It is nice to be in the office, though, when there are less people around. I can get a lot more done, especially on the long-term projects which require more concentration.