May in Nigeria

The elections did not go quite as smoothly as hoped, although they were the most quiet and fair elections ever seen here.

The problems started upon the announcement that the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, had won the presidency. Goodluck is a Christian from the south. His main rival, General Buhari, is a Muslim from the north. As the results were announced, Buhari made allegations of rigging of the elections, and things went bad in the north. It did not last long, but it was pretty violent. Some buildings were burnt, some people were killed, and as a result curfews and travel restrictions were put in place. By the time that gubernatorial elections took place the next week, though, things had calmed down.

One of the places which got pretty hot was Kano, where we usually fly in our expatriates going to the 2 northern projects. This airport pretty much shut down starting Easter weekend for about 10 days. So we “stockpiled” people here in Abuja for a while. Finally, we HAD to get some people in and out of those projects. I spent quite a bit of time changing flights to another airport quite a bit farther. That was on a long weekend again, so my staff was not at work – it was just me and our travel agent, who did a marvellous job. In the end, everyone got where they needed to go when they needed to be there (after 1, 2, or 3 changes in schedule).

This situation made for an Easter weekend with a full house – around 10 or 11 people. I made Easter dinner, and it was pretty good – chicken, beef, salad, cooked vegetables and dessert. We finished with a panettone, an Italian bread/cake. Here’s the recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/panettone-i/. Well, it was sort of a panettone, because I had to do quite a few substitutions and I had just enough flour to complete the thing. It was pretty good though.

Last Sunday, I was invited by a couple of the waiters in the bar near the house to visit their village. The village is in Abuja, but it is a settlement with small ramshackle houses which will probably be torn down when the city planners ever get to that area. It was a lot of fun. They took me to their local bar, where I think I bought beers for the whole village. I got home later in the afternoon, promptly fell into my bed and didn’t get up until the next morning.

The past 2 days we have had an intense meeting here with all our project coordinators, to plan our actions for the next 6 months. It is always interesting to go through this exercise, and this time was no exception. It also made for a lot of people in the house again – 10 to 12 people for about 3 days. We now have a month to prepare this info for the worldwide planning session in Paris. The biggest discussion was concerning the Port Harcourt trauma center, our oldest and biggest project in Nigeria. They do around 20 orthopedic interventions (broken bones for the lay audience) a day. These are due to gunshots, machete wounds, traffic accidents, etc. We are severely space-limited in this project, and there are very few options to expand, as we are located in a very dense intercity location. We have committed to at 3 more years there (this is rare for our medical emergency organization), which gives us a small amount of leeway in financial commitment. And we have 4 options for expansion, but we really need a lot more info before the Paris meeting to make a cohesive recommendation. It will be a busy month.

I leave here in a couple of hours to go to our Jahun project for a couple of weeks. This is the women’s’ emergency obstetrics project. I fly into Kano this evening (the airport which was shut down a couple of weeks ago for violence), spend the night there, and then one of their drivers picks me up early the next morning to drive to Jahun. The project coordinator there, a very experienced nurse from Malawi, has just left for an MSF training course in Paris and I will be replacing her. This is my first time as an acting project coordinator. I hope I don’t screw up too much. The project coordinator is the person head of the project and must manage the project itself, the security situation, relations with the community, squabbles between the staff, and the relations with the ministry of health in whose hospital we carry out our program. The administrator is also gone for my first week there, so I will be doing her job too, as well as my own. We’re having fun now!