June in Nigeria

It’s June and the elections in Nigeria are over. Hallelujah! No more weekends blocked at home, and a calm atmosphere.

My trip to Jigawa state went well. It is always good to be out of coordination in the projects to get back in touch with what we really do. I spent most of my time in Jahun, where we have our women’s emergency obstetrics project. I watched another fistula operation, which is always fascinating – each rupture is different and requires a special solution. Dr Said, the Nigerian surgeon who does these repairs, is really good and he loves an audience.

Jahun is one of the places in which we had some tensions the day of the announcement of Goodluck Jonathan as the new president. Since, it has been tough to get the people from different regions on the team to trust each other. So we had a general staff meeting with our MSF staff and the public health staff to try to iron out some issues. The director of the hospital and the head nurse, both from the public health system, participated in the meeting, and they were really a big help. I wish all of our collaborations with the public health system were as good as this one. Overall, I think we made some progress.

I also visited the tax board in the state capital of Dutse with our tax consultant. We explained our method of calculating withholding taxes, and worked out what we owed them from last year. It was a successful meeting.

While I was there, we had some human resources problems in our other Jigawa state project in Kazaure. This is a nutrition program, treating children who have no other complications than malnutrition at home with a special weight-gain product which was developed especially for this. But some of the kids have other problems and must be hospitalized while undergoing treatment. It was in this in-patient department where our problems came up. I made a 1 day trip up there to help the admin re-establish order. She had already done most of the work – I was only there to back her up in front of the staff and confirm what she had already said. I think we solved a lot of problems, and the staff appreciated our efforts.

So overall, I spent a lot of time in the car while in Jigawa, and got to see a lot more territory than expected.

Remember that I have a new deputy to help me out on the finance side of my work? Well, I don’t anymore! There has been a new outbreak of cholera in Haiti, and MSF had a hard time finding an experienced administrator for this emergency project. So I graciously (grrrrrrrr) accepted that she go there for a month while they try to find someone more permanent.

Emily is not the only one gone from our coordination team. The MSF France Mise-a-Plat (it basically means putting back to the basics) is going on now in Paris. This happens twice a year. Each country presents their program: objectives, method of implementation, results, directions, and needs. The directions are determined for the immediate and long term future. Our Head of Mission and our Medical Director are there for that meeting. The Medical Coordinator is leaving us soon after his return to continue his studies, and his replacement will be arriving at the end of this month. Our Assistant Medical Director will be leaving Tuesday to be the Nigerian staff representative to the MSF France General Assembly. Our Logistics Coordinator will be leaving on Tuesday also, because the immigration department refused to renew his stay visa for the 3rd time. We have scrambled to find a replacement for him, and this person will hopefully arrive at the beginning of next week. And our Deputy Logistics Coordinator will be finishing at the end of the month. With my deputy gone also, the Supply Logistician and I are feeling kind of lonely.

At the same time I am revising the budget for our mission in Nigeria. This is a rather huge task, looking at our expenditures since the beginning of the year and trying to decide if we need to adjust the budget requirements or not. And we have to build in provisions for the directional changes decided since the beginning of the year, including those from the meeting in Paris. I got a lot done yesterday, and I SHOULD be working on it right now, but I am having a hard time getting motivated today.

I had dinner at the house of another organization Thursday evening – Action Against Hunger. The lady who is the country administrator for them used to work for MSF France before switching over, and we have been in contact for quite a few things. Thursday evening was a working dinner. We got quite a bit accomplished, and then she, I and another lady in their house had a delicious dinner (their cook is even better than ours!), with a few beers and a couple of bottles of chilled white wine. It was a good evening.

I have recently become very attached to a person I met on the internet. He is a guy from Morocco, and we have been speaking together a lot in the evenings and on weekends. He will probably be joining me in Lyon when I return at the beginning of next year, and we will see where it goes from there. Being a confirmed single person, I am a little apprehensive about this, but I am also excited by the prospect. Stay tuned……….