Happy 2012

Happy New Year!

Ok I am a bit late. I am still just as bad at keeping this thing up to date. It has been 2 months!

I travelled a lot in December. I was back in France the first week of December. The idea was to renew my residence visa, which expires 29 February 2012. And when I got back to France, and had stood in line in the freezing cold for 1 ½ hours, they told me that I could not renew my visa before the last months of validity (totally different from what the person told me in the French embassy here in Nigeria). But they also told me that since I have a long term visa (10 years) I could renew it up to 3 months after expiration. That is good news, because my work here in Nigeria is not finished. We are still in the process of a huge human resources policy review, I feel that I must be here to explain the results to the staff and make any changes for the implementation. I am the only one who is still here when we started the thing, and knows the history of the project. So now I know that I can finish. That is great

But if I had known I could not renew my visa, I would have gone somewhere warm, like Ghana. I hate cold! At least, I was able to change my dead water heater and a couple other small maintenance projects in the condo. And my trip home was during the time of the Festival of Lights in Lyon. This is a very Lyonnaise festival, and it has grown in amplitude in the last 20 years. It started I think in the late 18th century to thank the Virgin Mary for the fact that the last big plague passed over Lyon. The archiveque at the time asked people to put candles in their windows as a sign of thanks. This still happens, but now, there are splendid light-and-sounds shows also. It now goes over 3 days. It was great.

While I was there, there was also the chocolate conference. Yummy.

So I was able to bring back to Nigeria many decorations, gifts and French Christmas food. Of course I ruined myself. What the hell.

I must tell you. I had a surprise Christmas gift from my wonderful friend from HP Martha, and her sister who she was visiting in Turkey. They made a donation to MSF in my name! Wow.

I spent Christmas in Abuja with our team here. We have a wonderful meal – I was not the only one who had thought of food. We had a cheap gift exchange for which we had exchanged Secret Santa names. And I had brought gifts for everyone also. It was fun.

Then, for New Year’s, I was in the project up north in Kazaure. This is the project that we are closing at the end of February, for operational reasons. The team there is wonderful, and there are some great cooks. We ate like pigs, and drank like that also. Apparently, the logistician had to carry me to my room, and my ass hurt like hell for 3 days, because I fell somewhere. The admin the next day apologized, because she said (she doesn’t know how) but she made one cocktail for me of gin, tequila and whisky – that’s all. Oops


The beginning of the year has been intense. The government announced the total cancellation of the gasoline subsidy, which doubled the price of this fuel. Obviously, that made everything else goes up – public transportation, food prices, nearly everything. (Some weird things also – the price of fuel went up by 100% but the price of public transportation sometimes went up 150-200%???) A general strike was declared to start on the 8 January, and it went on for 8 days. Internal airports shut down even before that, so I had to spend a lot of time arranging for car movements between the capital and the projects for expats arriving or departing. It actually went pretty well

So the strike is over, but there has recently been some violence in the city into which we fly expats for the 2 northern projects. This again has made my life a bit more difficult
But the government here is very reactive, so I think that things will go well next week.

We also have a new head of mission since end of December, as well as a lot of other changes. This of course means changes in operating procedures, and sometimes directions. I worked with the guy also in Congo, so I know how he works. He is great, and does things that are necessary, but he wants everything done in the first month of his arrival. I am tired – I have been here since November 2010. But I still am so happy to be with this organization.

I have asked to change functions for my next mission. I have been doing administration now for 7 years. I feel good in the post now, and want to expand into other things. The next time, I would love to leave coordination and go back to the projects as project coordinator. For the moment my old head of mission, and also the new one support me in this request! I will of course do whatever MSF needs at the time. We have so many problems to find people that I don’t want to be difficult. As long as I can continue to grow and learn new things.