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.

November post

I have been very bad about keeping this blog updated. I apologize. I have let a lot of things slide, like family birthdays, since having lost my original email address to hackers. I will try to do better.

Things here continue to be busy. I have been out of Abuja a lot. Since my last posting, I have replaced the project coordinators in both Port Harcourt and Kazaure, each place for a week. So I have done this now in each of our 3 permanent projects. I am really thankful to my head of mission to have put this trust in me. This has really opened up new horizons for me. I find the work was very interesting, and I hope to move out of administration and into this post for my next mission, if the powers that be agree.

After this, I returned to Kazaure nutrition project to announce to the ministry of health and our own staff that that project would be closing (and our staff will thus be out of jobs) in early 2012. I have done this at least 5 times in MSF – we are an emergency organization – not a development organization. They were pretty much aware of this, so it was not really a surprise to them. I think that they were relieved that it has finally become official. Anyway the meeting went well, and we will now be doing what we can to help them find new jobs and keep them in our files for future interventions.

We have also been working very closely with the Nigerian Ministry of Health to contain a couple of cholera outbreaks. The cooperation went very well, and so we have completed our work in each of those interventions. We are now planning a vaccination campaign in another state to contain a small outbreak of a rather rare disease.

My human resources administration manager left near the end of September, so I am trying to cover her post. We have found her replacement, but he is working in another project, so I will not steal him until they have recruited his replacement and he has trained that person. And my dear deputy has finished her mission and returned to the States about a week ago. Her replacement arrives at the end of this week.

Of course, this all falls during the time for preparation of the 2012 budget! I just prepared the budget files for the field and got them all out on Friday evening, so that they have a week to work on them. This was especially difficult, because the communications software between here and the headquarters did not work! I had to re-install it 3 times. But finally after 5 hours of rather intense swearing (my team is now starting to talk as badly as I do – this is worrying!), it is working, with the poor internet connections that we have. Nigeria has some good connections, but MSF-France is a bit cheap concerning internet.

This is a big country for MSF-France. Our total budget is over 8.4 million euros, and we have around 650 employees including around 35 expatriates, local staff, some daily workers, and Ministry of Health employees for whom we give an incentive. We are receiving 50% funding on our Jahun emergency obstetrics program from EuropeAid. The rest comes from donators in France, U.S.A., Australia and Japan who give donations directly to MSF. Thanks to all of you!!!!!


Now, I must also prepare our budget for the coordination. This will be a bit of work, because we are splitting out our Emergency Team from the general coordination. Next Friday, when we (hopefully) receive the field work, we must control everything and consolidate it, then send it (via this software which I hope will continue to work) to headquarters.

I think I will be returning to France for a week in December, just after submitting our budgets. My residence visa there expires in February, and I may have to extend my time here until after that. So I plan on returning to start the process, then come back here with a temporary French residence visa, picking up my 10 year one when I return. I am not completely thrilled about returning to France in December. I haven’t experienced a winter in 6 years. I don’t even own a winter coat anymore. Plus my water heater died during my last trip. So that will be another thing to work on very quickly during that week. Until then, I will have to heat water on the stove and take bucket showers, like when I am in the field in some countries! I was really hoping to take my vacation in Benin, but what the hell. The good thing is that I will be able to buy lots of small gifts and French Christmas food (heavenly) to bring back with me. Aieaieaie, it is going to cost me dearly! But since I am a very large, old kid at heart, I am happy.

The reason that I might have to extend here is that we are doing a complete human resource policy review with the help of 2 people from Paris headquarters. Our implementation plan is very tight, and I cannot leave with a good conscience before having gone out to the projects to announce and implement the plan. Certain changes will be very good for the staff, but certain others will be more difficult to accept.

It is not difficult for me to extend here for a few weeks. This is a good country. Yes, there are problems, especially right now for security, but the government is handling it well, and the people here are wonderful. This is the most developed country that I have worked in yet. I have now been here 1 year! We will see where I go next, and in which position.

I go now. It is Sunday night. We have no cook on Sundays, so tonight we prepared barbeque with 3 different salads and a pineapple and watermelon fruit salad for desert. Yum-yum

Busy, busy, busy

Things haven’t stopped since I came back from my break.

A friend of mine visited me here in Abuja. He is Nigerian. His family lives in Lagos, but he is doing his studies in the Ukraine. He came up from Lagos to get renew his passport here. We had a great weekend together.

We are now preparing for our semi-annual “Mise a Plat”. This is a French expression pretty much meaning “Taking things back to the beginning”. It is where we look at the objectives we have for each country and each project, what this year’s objectives were and where we are, what have we accomplished, are the objectives the same for the next 6 months, and what resources do we need to obtain the new objectives. The project teams really put a lot of thought into their presentations, and we were impressed with the quality of work. Now, we will be consolidating the work to decide what we will ask for in Paris at the end of October for 2012.

In conjunction with this meeting here this weekend, we had 15 people in the house, including some visitors and people coming and going from their assignments. I was in charge of the physical arrangements: audiovisual, rooming, meals, and cooperation with the logisticians for the cars. All considered, this went pretty well. We managed to have a good meeting and some quality time together during and after the workday.

We are also recruiting for 3 posts in our coordination team. We have between 15 and 75 candidatures for each post – quite a bit of work to screen them and choose who we hire.

I also have a lawyer and a human resources specialist who just arrived, staying here for several months to do an in-depth review of our human resources policy. We have been waiting for this team for several months, and I am very happy that they have arrived. I know both of them, and I have great confidence that they will produce a good proposition for the future policies for our national staff.

At the same time, we have had someone from Paris to help us with a funding contract. We have the help of EuropeAid for our Jahun Emergency Obstetrics program. This is great. They are funding about 50% of the project. It is the first time we have worked with this organization, and as we do not have so many of these cooperations with donor institutions, we are in need of help to make sure we comply with their reporting specifications.

Also during the next 10 days, we are going into our last budget revision of the year, analyzing where we are in our projected expenditures and seeing if we need to make any changes to the budget through the end of the year.

Besides that, my deputy has done an outstanding job of working on a new form for our monthly cash requests from Paris, which incorporates a budget expenditure follow-up. She has just finished the work, to be incorporated this month for next months request.

Finally, I am leaving tonight to stand in for the project coordinator in our Kazaure Nutrition Project. He has just left for his home country for a week. I will enjoy working with the team there, while managing the other tasks from afar.

Never a dull moment!

Abuja Bomb

You may have heard. A bomb went off in the U.N. building here in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Friday 26 August at 10:20 in the morning. The building houses around 400 employees, and currently there are around 18 dead and at least 50 were injured.

We deplore the victims of this bombing, and our hearts go out the injured and the families of the victims.

The emergency services and hospitals of Abuja have responded very well to the situation. Our organization has donated some medical supplies and the time of a couple of nurses, but the Nigerian health system could easily manage without our assistance.

The U.N building is in the central area of Abuja. To reassure you, the MSF-France office and house are outside of this area, and none of our staff were affected by the incident.

The group claiming to be responsible for this suicide bombing, Boko Haram, has been active in Nigeria for a couple of years now. But up until this moment the group, which is demanding Sharia law in the north of the country, has targeted mainly military / police / drinking establishments. This is the first time they have attacked an international target. We are reviewing our security rules accordingly.

Again, my sincere condolences to the families of the victims of this tragedy.

Vacation in Lagos

I am currently on vacation in Lagos Nigeria. Usually we must take our vacation outside of the country, because this is not considered a restful place. The only situation where a vacation in the country is authorized is if we have no re-entry visa. This is my case for the moment – my passport is still in immigration for the processing of my residence visa.
I am happy to be here. Lagos is a huge, vibrant city – it recently surpassed Cairo as the largest city in Africa. I am staying in the hotel we use for transit passengers here. It is a small African hotel – a bit shabby – but inexpensive (45 dollars a night – the average hotel price here is 250 dollars!) with a very friendly staff. It is also relatively well situated in the city. It is in Ogudu, right on the central expressway which turns into the 3rd mainland bridge (at 5 km, the longest bridge in Africa), which crosses over into Lagos Island. Ogudu itself is a small area with a lot of small markets and shops, some local bars and quite a few fastfood places, as well as internet access (where I am now). There is even a good pizza place!
I have been trying to get around some, but not hurrying about it. One day, I went to the Lekki Conservation Area. It is basically a preserved swamp. It was donated by a couple of big oil companies and is just across the street from the huge Chevron complex in Lekki. It is surrounded by suburban sprawl, but once inside, you are lost in a jungle. There is a footpath meandering throughout it – a raised wooden walkway in the swamp part, and a sand path in the savannah part. Apparently, there are some crocodiles, exotic birds, etc, but all I saw were a few monkeys in the big treehouse. The entire walk takes about 1 hour, and it is a very peaceful experience.
The next day, I was a bit more urban. I went to Alowolo Road in Ikoyi, next to Lagos Island. This is the biggest road for shops, restaurants and bars. I had a good time just wandering around and seeing what is being offered for the rich in this city. I visited a wonderful art gallery with some incredible contemporary African art. And just across the road is the “Jazzhole”, a shop with CD’s, books, coffee shop and concert hall. It was great. And in the same area is a HUGE market, with small stalls selling everything you could think of.
After a while I went into the Protea hotel for a drink. This is a prestige South African chain which has been cited as one of the first to bring down the hotel prices here. I enjoyed my time sitting in the luxurious lounge, drinking a Star beer and looking out over the water at one of the biggest yachts I have ever seen.
I love good food, and I had earlier spotted a restaurant called Chardonnay. I splurged and I am happy I did. I ordered prawns in a white wine, cream and garlic sauce. Calling what was on my plate prawns is like calling Moby Dick a fish – they were huge. There were two of them, but that was definitely enough, and it was so good. My meal of prawns, potatoes, apple crumble, 2 glasses of a crisp white wine and a bottle of water cost around 75 dollars. But it was very good, in a very classy atmosphere, and with a wonderful staff. (OK, maybe I have lived in France too long and picked some bad habits.)
Today I wentto Onikan in Lagos Island. This is really the center of the city, with the National Museum, the city stadium, the Camus cultural center, and a large shopping mall with a great grocery store named Goodies. The National Museum had a temporary exhibition concerning Nigerian lace and embroidery, most of the raw lace coming from Austria, and most of the African printed cloth coming from the Netherlands or England, purely for export to Africa. The permanent collection included some interesting stones carved with faces, from the Port Harcourt area.
Although it may not sound it, I am also relaxing a lot. I was very tired, and my last 2 days before leaving, I had to visit one of our projects to resolve some nasty staff problems. We ended up dealing with it, but it was pretty strenuous. With my siteseeing, I have also been averaging 10-12 hours of sleep a day, and had a great deal of time reading. I am starting to feel human again.
I fly back to Abuja tomorrow evening, Tuesday 2 August. On Wednesday 3 August I have a couple of specialists from Paris arriving who will be with us for a couple of months to overhaul our internal regulations, function scale, salary scale, and an overall audit of the HR set-up. So I will be thrown immediately into the grinder. But now I feel up to it.

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……….

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!

Middle of the Elections

The elections are now going on here in Nigeria, although there has been a change in schedule. They are really making an effort to have clean elections here for the first time. They are doing everything to avoid the rampant corruption in all the previous elections (thugs stealing ballot boxes, buying of votes, etc.). The first weekend of votes did not get off to a stellar start – voting materials did not make it to all the polling stations in time. So they made the courageous (and not easy) decision to postpone for 1 week. National assembly elections were pushed back to Saturday 9 April, presidential elections are today the 16th, and state and governor elections will be on Tuesday, the 26th of April, after Easter weekend. So far, so good. Last week’s elections went relatively calmly – only 1 bomb thrown into a polling station the night before the national assembly elections (killing 9 volonteers). And this morning a bomb was thrown at a polling station in the northeast – it missed the polling station and no one was killed, although a few shops were destroyed. I hope it stays this quiet and that Nigeria has clean elections. Everyone here really hopes so!

I had a VERY busy couple of days at the beginning of the month. I must always order money from Paris at the beginning of each month for our needs. And once every 3 months I must update our annual budget with the real expenses made so far and any changes in the programs since the last revision. This time, the results of both of these time-consuming events had to be sent to headquarters on the same day. Thanks to the great work by our field admins, the cash request was done in time, and the quality of the work was good. As for the budget revision, our admins in Jahun (hurray Kristin!) and Kazaure (hurray Cindy!) did an outstanding job. Unfortunately, the Port Harcourt budget needed a lot of work before I could consolidate it with all the others, so I was a day late sending it off.

Along with this, headquarters has just changed the system for budget consolidation. It is a database product from IBM in which I have a local database on my computer. The central database for all the mission budgets is in Paris. Once my budgets are ready, I must synchronize my database with the database in Paris. All fine and good when you have a great internet connection, but that is not the case here. The system we usually use is not compatible with the new software. I managed to find a system which IS compatible just the Friday before I needed to synchronize. Then on Monday when I sent off most of the info, it took 5 hours of connection to get everything sent off! It kept cutting out after some of the info went off, so I had to start over again several times. I was really relieved when everything was sent. Then on Tuesday when I sent off my final revisions, the connection only took about 1 hour. Ahhhhhhhhh.

In the end, it worked out well. I sent off almost everything on Monday, so that our financial controller could look it over before presenting it on Thursday. He got the rest on Tuesday. And on Thursday, all the revisions were accepted by the powers that be!

My new deputy Emily will be arriving here the 3rd or 4th of May. We will have some meetings with the project coordinators on the 5th and 6th of May to plan directions/changes for the 2nd half of the year, so this will give her a good opportunity to get a good sense of our programs. Then, the evening of the 6th I will fly up to Jahun to replace the project coordinator there while that person goes to Paris for a training course. I am looking forward to it – there are a lot of things I need to do which are related to that project. (By the way, here is a recent article which explains what we do in that project: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/nigeria/110325/clinic-fistula-women?page=0%2C0%2C0%2C4. It explains our work very well, and it is well written – a positive article concerning a women’s health problem and how it can be helped.) I have some human resource issues that need to be resolved, I will be replacing the field admin while she is on break, I will be visiting the state tax office with our tax consultant to explain our new method of tax calculations, and I need to get to know the national staff assistant admin better – all at the same time of managing the project. I am REALLY glad that Emily will be here to replace me in Abuja while I am gone. I will need to travel to Port Harcourt also, but that will probably be later.

Let me now make a publicity announcement for a new website developed by a friend of mine: http://www.getmedias.com/. He has worked REALLY hard on this site to make something that people all over the world can use to download films, music, lyrics, software, games, etc. I am impressed – he learned most of the stuff he needed to develop the site on his own. And it is free. If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see a face and an address that everyone reading this already knows. Thanks, Denis! And thanks for this site.

During the elections, the country borders are closed from Friday through Saturday, there are no flights in or out of the country on Saturday, and there are even no car movements from 8:00am to 6:00pm on the voting days, to make sure people do not drive around to vote in multiple places. (The independent election committee AND the government have taken this reform very seriously!) People are supposed to register within walking distance of their homes. That means that our cook and housecleaner cannot come to work. Last Saturday, I did the meal. But tonight we are going to a restaurant/bar within walking distance. They have great catfish, grilled in foil with a very spicy mixture of tomatoes, onions, plantain and spices. I love it. A couple of 60cl Star beers helps to extinguish the fire while eating it, although it burns me a new a-hole the next morning when it leaves my system. Just wanted to share this with you. (The devil made me write it.)

Next week is a LONGGGGGGGGG weekend. In Nigeria, both Good Friday and the Monday after Easter are holidays. Add to that the state election day of Tuesday 26th of April. Seriously, I will be happy when the elections are over, because my group is responsible for the international and domestic movements of the expatriates and national staff. Of course, the day of the elections nothing moves either in the airport or even on the roads. Plus, the evening before and the morning after, the airports are a disaster – high level officials must return to their polling places and then come back to the capital, tying up the airports with their private flights to and from. We have done all we can to avoid flights at this time which is really not easy – when you have surgeons and anesthetists coming in for a 3 week stay (and in total we have 4 of these teams), you take them when you can get them. Yesterday (Friday) we had one guy returning from training in Europe, and another guy returning from Lagos for a freight clearance (a donation of therapeutic food for undernourished children from the Clinton Foundation). They were both delayed by several hours. We had the same problem last week with a lady leaving Jahun to return home to Port Harcourt after replacing an expatriate surgical nurse who became ill during her stay here and had to return to Austria. We usually have at least 2 international arrivals/departures EVERY DAY. You can imagine what 3 days of no travel can do to our schedules.

Anyway, I will enjoy the long weekend next weekend. Happy Easter to everyone.

Back from France

March has flown by.

Our new Head of Mission has arrived. I have already worked with her and it is good that we will continue with this mission in good hands.

And headquarters has agreed to split my post! I will be the Coordinator of Finances and Human Resources, with a Deputy. The lady who will be my deputy has just finished an emergency project here and will come back at the beginning of May. I will do mainly human resources and coordination of the budget, and she will concentrate on accounting and other financial issues. Of course, we will replace each other when travelling in the field. This is a big load off my shoulders, and I can work on some long term projects now.

Long term residence visas for Nigeria are only issued in one’s country of residence. So I had to return to France in the middle of March for this procedure. I arrived in Lyon on Sunday 13 March, and took a train to Paris the same night. Monday I ran all over Paris getting all the papers necessary for the visa, and took a train back again to Lyon Monday evening. Then I had a week at my place on break, before returning to Paris the next Monday to pick up the passport with the visa again, flying back to Nigeria on Tuesday 22 March. Now the final steps in obtaining this visa will be done here, and it will be VERY long.

The week at home, after 4 months in Nigeria, was nice, although I had a few adventures. My water heater broke during the week. I am glad it happened while I was there so I could at least shut it down to avoid damage. But I did not have time to buy and install a new one, so 3 days of very cold showers from a bucket reminded me of being out on mission. And one night while dancing in a club, my glasses flew off my head and were crushed underfoot before I could retrieve them. Finally, my last day in Paris, my shoes exploded (I have already repaired them at least 5 times) and I had just enough time to buy a new pair before the stores closed.

Otherwise, it was nice. I slept a lot. I ate a lot of French cheese and drank quite a bit of wine. I saw a few friends. And I treated myself to a 90 minute massage – heaven.

I’ve been back a week, and the work rhythm continues at its usually hectic pace. At least I don’t have time to get bored. We have had a LOT of people coming through the house, as we have just ended a measles outbreak surveillance program.

I am working less on the weekends here – I work from the house on Saturdays, and work very little on Sundays. Of course, I still prepare the Sunday evening meals for the people in the house, since on Sundays we don’t have a cook. It is nice to have some more time on the weekends, but I still have no time to attack the big, interesting projects. That will change with the arrival of the deputy.

The next 3 weekends are election weekends in Nigeria. April 2 is for the National Assembly. April 9 is for the president. April 16 is for state offices. Everyone must stay in their own neighborhoods on these Saturdays, only moving about to vote, so it will probably be pretty quiet. At least we hope so.

February

Last weekend, we had a going away party for our head of mission and our supply logistician. It was my first going away party in Nigeria, and it was just as good as the other countries. Africans know how to party – great food, great music, great dancing. Our office cleaner – his name is Thankgod – spent the whole day in preparation. They had purchased a goat and slaughtered it the very morning. He served all of us in the office what they call pepper soup at noon. This is the intestines in a spicy soup, although he was gentle on us, knowing that the expatriates in the team cannot support TOO much spice. It was great. And all afternoon, he did the barbeque for the evening.

This country is wonderful. One of the most interesting things is the mix of religions. In the south, it is 90% Christian. In the north, it is 90% Muslim. In the middle it is very mixed, the percentage depending on how north or how south. So you get names like Thankgod, or Love, or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Then you get Abdul-Azeez, Zainab, Salisu, Mohammed, and Adamu. Normally everyone lives in peace. But for the moment there are a few flare-ups. It is often attributed to religious conflicts, but that is too simple. These conflicts can come from a combination of religious, political, economic, tribal and MONETARY influences, all together. Have no doubt about it – this is a developed country based on the American capitalistic system.

This week I have had two people here from headquarters.

One, Soumia, is the person who is responsible for the accounting and budget software. We have implemented a new system for work on the budget which is based on a local and plus a centralized database. Basically, I have all my budget data in a database on my computer. From time to time, I synchronize with the central database in Paris to upload my revised data and retrieve centralized parameters from that one. I had installed the software on my system, but I made a few errors in the configuration (oops) so it was not working. Thankfully Soumia had already planned a trip in Africa, and she corrected the error. But it still did not work! So we went to a cybercafé to try another connection – voila, it worked. So now we will have to find a new internet supplier, at least for my work. I will need to talk with the Spanish and Dutch sections of MSF who are also here working with such software, to see what systems they are using. It was really a relief to get this going – the next budget revision is at the end of March, and it would have been impossible to do without this new software.

The other visitor is a finance support person, a Ugandan with the lovely name of Emmarine, who goes all over the world to fill gaps or work on special projects. She spent 5 years in south Sudan so she is obviously a tough lady, but she is always smiling. She is a great lady, and has given us some good help already. She will be going into the field with my accounting manager on Monday.

We had crises this week with a couple of our expatriates. An anaesthetist in Port Harcourt has been supporting back problems for a number of days, and it finally got too bad – he had to leave early. The other one is more serious. Our operating theatre nurse in Jahun had some serious heart problems on Wednesday morning. We were able to fly her back here Wednesday afternoon and we took her to the clinic we use for our national staff. We then contacted our international medical evacuation company, who worked with the clinic and spoke with her over the phone. Our medical coordinator, Dr. Chris, did all the work on this, really making my job a lot easier. She has had no more incidents since the first one, and she feels comfortable flying back by herself to Vienna, leaving here this evening. It really gave us all a scare. Besides, she is a little younger than me, so I need to prepare myself for this sort of thing.

I have just been informed that things are not so good for MSF-France on the east side of Democratic Republic of Congo, where I just finished 2 years. They have had 7 rather violent security incidents in the last 4 months. It has become so bad that we are abandoning our projects there, although 2 high-level people from Paris will be going shortly to discuss the situation with government officials to see what can be done to insure our safety in case we return. This breaks my heart. Congo is a wonderful place and our projects (like all of our projects in the world) are really helping the people in need.

Here in Nigeria, we are greatly relieved. We have had a number of people finishing their missions, and there were no replacements for them, especially the coordination positions – project coordinators and the head of mission. Our New York office has done a great job of finding replacements for all these posts at the last minute! I have already worked with the incoming head of mission while I was in Congo. She is great. And all the new project coordinators also seem good. We attract good people, but it is more and more difficult to find people willing to do long missions – 6 months or more. For these key posts, this continuity is essential.

The dry cold season has just ended. Cold means that in the north it can be down to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit – 10 degrees Celsius in the mornings (in Jahun, I even slept with a blanket!), although it is still hot in the afternoons. The first rainy season should start about now. We had a fantastic thunderstorm about 10 days ago. They say after this short rainy season it will get HOT, getting up to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit most days – 35 degrees Celsius. Then there is a longer rainy season (still hot), then dry hot, then the cold season again. It’s about the same as when I was in Niger.

I will probably be returning to France around the middle of March for around a week, to get my Nigerian residence visa (I am now on a business visa, and the residence visa must be issued by the Nigerian embassy in the country of residence) and to take my break while waiting for the visa processing. It will be good to be in my place again for a while.

Anyway, it is the weekend. This morning I took a 2 ½ hour walk in the neighbourhood. It was good. I stopped into a local market to buy some dates, got some money out of the ONLY ATM we are allowed to use (because of scams), and bought some great bread from a new bakery near the house. It was great but HOT – I was sweating pretty profusely when I got back around 11:00am. I have worked some this afternoon (Saturday) and will probably work a bit tomorrow, but not too much. The rest of the day will be dedicated to naps, films, a book and preparing dinner for the house. We are 6 tomorrow – being the capital, we always have people coming and going from the projects as they begin, end or go on their break. The photo here is our house. It is as good as the house in Congo.

January in the field

First off, I want to say hello to one of my readers – Cindy’s mom. I am happy to know that someone out there is following me. Cindy says hi from Kazaure.

Yes, I just returned from another 2 weeks in the field. I was accompanying my human resources officer from New York, and one of the reasons for the visit was to explain that there would be no net pay increase in 2011 – not one of the most fun things to do. In fact, we had to recalibrate our income tax calculations to be in accordance with the tax laws, and to make sure this did not eat into their net incomes, we were obliged to increase their gross salaries quite a bit. This increase already took out a big bite of our budget, and the MSF-France budget committee did not deem it necessary to add on again to their net. No one is very happy. But we did commit to doing a thorough study of the entire salary scale during this year to have a sound proposition for 2012.

While I was in the field, I was able to observe a fistula operation in our emergency obstetrics program in Jahun. A fistula is a tear in the walls between one or more membranes in the woman’s pelvic area, often caused by a long, difficult child birth. In this case, a 50-something-year-old woman’s urethra had disappeared because of such a child birth. That means that there was urine leakage in her vagina. I watched the surgeon actually create a new urethra, snipping the skin of her vagina around the opening into the bladder, then sewing it up into a tube. It was fascinating. Nigeria is one of the few countries which has a successful program for this type of problem, and the program in the Jahun hospital is the only one in the world in which MSF-France participates.

On a lighter note, in Kazaure I was able to see our ambulatory nutrition program soccer team beat the pants off the ministry of health team! It was a Sunday afternoon in a dust storm, but it was a lot of fun for everyone.

I also went to the Jigawa state capital, Dutse, with our administrator to visit the health commissioner and the tax office, as well as to buy some logistics material and some “white people” food for the expats in a big grocery store there. While there, I got my first taste of authentic Nigerian staples – pounded yams with a pumpkin seed (aguzi) and tomato sauce. It was delicious and VERY filling.

My flight back to Abuja was cancelled, so I made the trip back by car yesterday, one day later than planned. We left Jahun at 8:30 am and arrived at the office at 5:45 pm. It was what we call a “kiss” movement – one car is sent from each site, we meet in the middle (hence the cars “kiss”) and each car returns to its home site. In this way, each driver and car is home for the evening. In this case, the car coming from Abuja was delayed, so we waited for a little over an hour at the half-way point. There was a big outdoor market where we were waiting, so I was able to do some serious people-watching.

Most times we travel by air, so I really enjoyed being able to see the countryside this time. There are some places where huge rocks appear to have been spit out by the earth and have tumbled back onto each other. And there are other places where really huge bare rock formations have been pushed up through the surface by seismic eruptions.

Nigeria has the best road system I have seen in Africa. There are very good highways, and the building of them continues. There are an incredible number of car cadavers along these highways, though. Once a car is totalled in an accident, it stays where it is. Of course, all usable pieces are scrounged quickly, giving these cars the look of a skeleton. It makes a pretty good advertisement for safe driving, but the message seems to be lost on the Nigerian drivers.

I just received a Christmas package! As my recruitment into MSF was done through the satellite office in Lyon France, I am still associated with them. (In September before coming here, I did a presentation in Lyon to a meeting for hopeful recruits.) Each year, the volunteers in this office put together a box for each of their expatriates in the field, including sausage, coffee, tea, chestnut spread, French sauces, candy, Christmas decorations, and music on a CD. That really warms the heart. Of course, if we don’t share with people from other satellite offices, we risk our lives. To all of you in the Lyon office - thank you, thank you, thank you.

It's Christmas

I had a great Christmas, like always on mission . But this year, I think I have never been so late in planning and preparing it. I went to a crafts market not far from our office on the 23 Dec to buy around 15 small gifts. I wrapped all of them the same night in photos from magazines. The same evening I went to buy some spices and other ¨white people¨ food products in a place in town called Park ‘n Shop. The evening of the 24th I met William, our head of mission; Chris, our medical coordinator; and Wodage, our supply logistician after work for a beer in a hotel just next to the office. Afterwards, we ate at home with William (his wife and daughter are out of the country for the holidays). Then Wodage and I took what was left to eat to the house guards and we stayed talking with them for about ½ an hour. They were very happy and us too. Before going to sleep, I put out the gifts for everyone in the house, as if Santa Clause passed

The 25th, we were invited to our medical coordinator’s house for dinner. There were 7 of us. I made a chocolate cake and an apple pie in the morning and we brought these with us. The food, drink and conversation were all good. Chris and his wife also have a 3 month old son, and he added to the entertainment.

My predecessor in this job, Nathalia, is leaving today. She has been working really hard to finish up some things before leaving. I appreciate that. I have been doing the day to day tasks in the job for a little over 2 weeks now, and it was good to have her here to answer questions. Now I will be on my own.

It looks like we will be doing a measles vaccination campaign, vaccinating 1,200,000 children between 6 months and 15 years in 2 northern states. With 30 vaccination teams we can do this in about 30 days. It is a huge effort. We will need about 630 people, 70 cars, the vaccines themselves and generators, refrigerators, and freezers to keep the vaccines cold. We plan on a month of preparation, a month of vaccination and a month to wrap up. It will be exciting.

And my financial controller and human resources officer from our office in New York will be arriving soon. They arrive the 6 January and will be visiting all our programs here. I will be accompanying them on these visits. So I will be very, very busy.

November in Nigeria

I arrived in Nigeria about 10 days ago. I got into Abuja the evening of 10 November. Up until the 1980’s, the capital of Nigeria was Lagos. But as that city is already huge, overcrowded, and located in the southwest corner of the country, it was decided to create a new capital (like Canberra Australia or Brazilia, Brazil) in the center of the country. So Abuja is a very new city with good roads and a construction explosion everywhere. This is where I will be based for the next year. All of the expatriates coming into Nigeria pass through here. Since we have 2 surgical programs in the country there is a huge turnover – surgeons and anesthetists typically go on missions during their vacations and thus only stay between 2 and 6 weeks. As a consequence, our house is HUGE – it kind of looks like a mansion from the outside, although the details of the interior are pretty simple. It is a duplex, with our Head of Mission, his wife and daughter in one house, and 4 permanent staff in the other, with people passing through and other visitors spread through the other rooms in both houses.

I stayed 1 day in Abuja and then flew south to Port Harcourt. There is a new administrator in this program and, as the person whom I am replacing in Abuja doesn’t leave before mid-December, I came down to help her get started before starting my own work. I will be here until the 27 November. For me, this is great. I get to see and understand our biggest program in the country before getting into the coordination work.

The main activity in Port Harcourt is surgery, and I spent 2-3 hours in the operating theatre yesterday, watching them repair a bad leg injury. I was right next to the head of the guy being operated on. He was under a spinal tap, so he was conscious – I even talked to him a couple of times. At the same time, I could see his leg, open about 8 inches with the skin and muscles spread apart about 5 inches in the middle to expose the bones. (He, of course, could not see this because of a curtain cutting off his vision of the operation.) The 2 orthopedic surgeons had a tough time setting the bone back into place because it had already started to heal in the wrong position. Then they put 4 screws into the bone and sewed back 4 layers of muscle, fat tissue and skin. I wasn’t sure how I would react to seeing the open wound and all the blood. At the beginning, I had to sit down on my stool a couple of times because I felt faint. But after about 30 minutes I was used to it. By the time they got to using the power drill for the screw holes I had no problems at all.

Port Harcourt is a very lively city, more so than Abuja. We have a limited area in which we can circulate in the city, but there are still some things we can do on the weekends. Last Sunday here was phenomenal. Sunday morning one of the surgeons made pancakes for the 14 people in the house. Then we were invited to lunch in a swanky chinese restaurant by the owner. After returning to the house, I went with the new Field Coordinator to explore the walking routes we are allowed to take. The limit of one of the routes brought us to a hotel/restaurant were we had a beer by the pool, returning home as required when on foot before sunset, around 6:30pm. Then most of us went out to an outside bar close to the house which has a live band every Sunday evening. The music was great and I danced all evening.

After returning to Abuja I will have a couple of days for a meeting between the current finance and human resources coordinator, a person doing some special human resources projects and me to get the conclusions of the human resources projects before that person leaves on the 30 November. Then I will tour our remaining 2 permanent projects in the north of the country before really starting my handover with my predecessor. Around the middle of December, Nathalia will leave and I will officially be in charge of finances and human resources. For the moment, I am on a contract here for 1 year, but I cannot really see myself returning to a very cold Europe in November – I will probably extend until March or April 2012 if all goes well.

Nigeria

I just received confirmation for my next assignment with MSF. I am going to Nigeria. At first I will go to Port Harcourt to coach a new field administrator there. Afterwards, I will be going to the capital city of Abuja to be the finance and human resources coordinator. This should be a 1 year assignment.
Our operation in Nigeria is run by the New York office. The people from there are currently in France for some meetings, so I go to Paris Wednesday to have my briefings with them, returning to Lyon Friday evening. I will leave for Nigeria from Lyon on the 10th of November.

I have already received a ton of reports about our work in Nigeria. We have 3 projects – a surgical program in Port Harcourt, a women’s health program in Jahun, and a nutrition program in Kasaure. It is nearly the same size as our Congo operation. Like Congo, there are also emergency programs when the need arises, usually associated with an epidemic of some kind. I will be doing finance as well as human resources, so it will be pretty challenging. And the great thing is that this is an English-speaking program. That means my reports will be much easier and faster to write. My written French has greatly improved since starting with MSF, but English is still a lot easier.

It is a very good thing that I am leaving soon, because I have spent nearly everything I had saved up, and then some, during my 2 ½ months in France. It has been a good stay, but expensive. Also, I am happy to be leaving before winter really sets in. I haven’t had a winter in 5 years, and I am already freezing here.

October

The details of my future are a bit in limbo for the moment. I do not yet know to which country I will be going with MSF, nor when I will be leaving. It will probably be SOMETIME in November, and the destination will probably be Nigeria, South Sudan or Haiti. I hope they let me know 2-3 weeks ahead of time. And I hope that the departure is not too far into the future, because I have been spending money out the wazoo and it won’t hold out too much longer than the end of November. (We are on short-term contracts. When not working – zero income.)
One of my expenditures has been on a new chandelier for the apartment. The one here when I arrived was really horrible. So I found this one. Don’t worry – it is a fake. A real crystal chandelier like this one would costs thousands of dollars. This one is completely plastic.
I also spent quite a bit on the Lyon bi-annuel dance festival. I went to several dance shows – 2 from Brazil, 1 from Algeria, 2 from New York (same dance troup but different shows), plus the parade. Each show was mainly modern dance, of which I know very little. But they were all beautiful. There is a South African dance troup coming here in November, but I since I am not sure to be here, I am reluctant to buy the ticket now.
I am not sure when my Tanzanian friend Nende is coming to live in my place either, or whether his wife Alma is coming at the same time or later. Ndende is probably coming before the end of this month, but no date has been fixed yet.
Other than all of this, I am meeting some interesting people in Lyon. One day, on 2 different occasions the same day in the middle of Lyon, I ran into old customers from the bar in Aix-les-Bains! That was pretty strange. One of them lives here now, and he has introduced me to some really nice people.
Other than that, I am doing pretty well meeting people on my own. My sex life took a big jump a few weeks ago for about 10 days. After 2 years of abstinence in Congo, that helped clean out the pipes. Now we are pretty much back to normal. Alas
Yesterday morning, at the outdoor market on the banks of the Saone river in the middle of Lyon, I ran into the mother of my old friend and partner in the bar, Paul. She is looking great – she is over 70 – and in great form. I haven’t had any news from Paul for about 2 years, but she hasn’t had any news in 4 years! And I thought I was a bad correspondent!
Next weekend, I go to see a couple from the bar in Aix-les-Bains also. I really love these two people and their 2 children, so it will be nice to see them again.
I have also met a few people on the internet. One is a Nigerian guy living in the Ukraine – yes, pretty strange. We spend quite a bit of time on Skype. And this afternoon, I got a call on Skype from a good friend and MSF colleague, a Japanese guy we call Toto, with whom I worked in Darfur and Congo. He is now in the north of France on a logistics training course. If I go to South Sudan, I might find him there.
I need to work a bit more, however. I need to organize my work from Congo for future missions, but I am waiting for bad weather. When it is beautiful outside, I don’t have the heart to stay inside in front of the computer, and we have had really good weather since I have returned. That should change this coming week, so I hope to get a bit more done. I must get organized before leaving again!

September in Lyon

Wow. I just realized that I haven’t posted since the beginning of July.
I went to Kinshasa the 8 August, to prepare for and close down the MSF-France representation office there. There was a lot to do, including firing the 9 people left in that office. They worked the last week, knowing that they would soon be finished, and with the new tenants, MSF-Spain moving into the house at the same time. It was not really comfortable, but it went pretty well. I am proud of the staff to have been motivated right up to the end. I paid all the final payments Friday the 13th (great omen), then paid a LOT of daily workers the same day. In all, I paid out well over $ 100,000 that day. Then the next night we had a closure party in a bar/restaurant not far from the office. It started out pretty subdued, but after a couple of beers, the atmosphere lightened up and we had a lot of fun. A couple of the oldest employees even came in the following Monday and Tuesday to wrap things up. They didn’t have to do that, and I was overjoyed to see their loyalty. Of course they ARE hoping to get jobs in the new MSF-Spain office.
I got back to Goma the day before my replacement arrived for a short week of handover. He’s a great guy. He came with his companion who will work with us as a psychologist. She’s great too. I feel that I have left things in good hands. He has already worked in human resources in Congo for MSF-Switzerland, so he knows the labor law of the country and the way things work.
My going away party was Saturday the 21 August, and it was great. We had it at the house in which I live, and there were a lot of people (as always in Congo when there is free beer). We had most of the staff from Goma, staff from our bank, my favorite waiter in a small shop, and a few friends I know from outside of work. At the end, around 1:30am, I had to break up a fight between to guardians – it reminded of when I had my bar in Aix-les-Bains!
I left Goma Tuesday the 24 August in the morning, because I had some last minute work to do in Kigali, Rwanda. I got everything done that I needed to, and I also had time to visit the Genocide Museum. It is very interesting, but not really a very happy place. When you already have the blues about leaving after 2 years, it is not the best place to go.
I arrived in Paris the morning of 25 August, and all my debriefings were the 26 August, so I made the rounds of the headquarters to say hello to the people I know. After 5 years, there are a lot of them, but it is amazing also the amount of turnover. I am starting to feel like a dinosaur.
I arrived in Lyon Thursday night the 26 August. It is great to be back in my own place. Being so small, the great thing is that you can clean it completely in one afternoon. Since being back, I have arranged some more storage in the kitchen area and painted the window frame.
I also had news that a friend from Zanzibar, Tanzania is in Spain. He got married to a Spanish woman in Zanzibar and came up with her. But right now they are both living in her parent’s place in Madrid, and it is not easy. I have invited them both to live in my place for the winter, since I am never here, and they will probably take me up on it. If they arrive while I am still here, it will be VERY tight, but Ndende is a good friend, and I would be very happy to help him and his wife Alma
Lyon has a dance festival every 2 years, and it is happening right now. I went to the parade Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and the parade was great! It is a huge event. Tuesday, I went to a presentation by the Ailey dance troup from New York. It is modern dance, and it was really incredible. I have tickets to 2 more events before the festival ends at the beginning of October.
And this weekend it the annual “Heritage Days” in France. That is a weekend where a lot of national treasures open their doors to the public. I plan on visiting quite a few.
Yesterday was a day of information at the Lyon branch of MSF for people wishing to be volunteers with MSF. I was invited as keynote speaker to talk about my experiences in the field, and then to answer questions with others. For me it was interesting – I still remember how it was for me at that meeting more than 5 years ago, hoping to work with MSF. It went very well, and the questions were interesting and pertinent.
The person who came from headquarters for this meeting is the woman who is responsible for my next assignment. I have asked to be in a pool of flying human resources officers. She told me that, for the moment, they have one person, and they will need another, but probably not right away. In the meantime she has LOTS of possibilities for me: South Sudan, Nigeria or Haïti; one or the other for 6-9 months beginning in November. (I hope my money holds out – I didn’t put a lot aside during my stay in Congo). Any one of these would be great for me – especially Haïti. The emergency is over, but it is still a very interesting project.
So I am on vacation, lots of things are happening in Lyon, I will probably helping a friend in his pursuit of happiness with his new wife, and I have an assured future with Doctors Without Borders. All is good with the world.

Independence Day in Congo

Wednesday the 30th of June was the 50th anniversary of Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence from the Belgians. Since the political climate is a bit tense now (now, before, after, forever), most of the international non governmental organizations took security precautions for their international staff.
Some even shipped their staff off to neighbouring countries. We stayed here, but were confined to the houses. So we did a barbeque! It was nice. And at the end of the day, there were no real security problems associated with the commemoration.

The people I have been replacing are in place now, so I am back to doing one job – my own. This is a relief! But our head of mission wants to get several projects in shape before some of our group finish leaves, so things are hopping. It is true that someone new coming in will lose momentum with the handover and lack of insight WHY we are doing these things. I am involved in several of these projects so there is no rest for the weary. We are in a big recruiting process for Congolese doctors and medical specialists (surgeons, gynocologists, and anaesthetists). We are also recruiting a cleaner for the central pharmacy (140 candidatures for 1 job!). We have negotiations going for our agreement on how we work with the Ministry of Health staff in two hospitals (one risks to be a very tough round of negotiations). I will need to go to Kinshasa to shut down our office there right before leaving. All this, plus trying to finish up several other human resource policies in less than 2 months.

But in the meantime, I am trying to reduce my hours to avoid burn out. I leave work most Saturdays around 5:00 pm now, and I only work a couple of hours on Sundays. I realized that I had to do this after returning from my Uganda break. I really had a hard time getting re-motivated after that. And replacing the other 2 people didn’t help. Now that those positions are filled again, I am less in the day-to-day stuff and more into the long-term projects. It is not any easier, but a lot more fulfilling. I am happy to be back on these things, and hope that I can finish a maximum of them before leaving.

So today the program is attending to my personal mail,
posting to my blog, walking into town 1 hour each way) to buy stuff to prepare dinner tonight (we are 8 in our house this evening), stop in a bar to have a beer or two (Primus, the beer of Congo!) with a coupld of friends name Pierrre (Peter) and Jean de Dieu (John of God), and maybe watch a film or two on my computer before turning into bed. Ahhhhhhhh. Relaxation.

You know you are a humanitarian worker when......

The following is translated from a French Facebook entry, with one or two phrases added by me. Anyone who has ever worked for a humanitarian organization will find it extremely accurate.

You know that you are a humanitarian worker when:

• Unlike your friends who have normal lives, you don’t have a wife/husband, children, or house, and when you return home, you sleep in your parent’s place.
• You have a university degree, you manage a team of at least 10 people and a multi-million dollar budget in a civil war situation, but you earn a minimum wage.
• You earn a minimum wage, but you have a cook, a house keeper and a chauffeur 24 hours a day.
• You enjoy sending verbal missiles at your colleagues from other non-governmental organizations.
• For you, Save the Children is called Save the Chicken, World Vision is World Illusion, and MSF is MFS (pronounce emefess – in french Et Mes Fesses - translates to: And My Ass!)
• You don’t like people from the United Nations, but once you have a beer in your hand, all white guys (Mzungus) are your friends, especially when the presence of females is limited.
• You are always criticizing the United Nations, but secretly, you would love to work for them to triple your salary.
• When you return home, your friends and family all ask the same question, “So how was it?” hoping that you can summarize 1 year of mission in 3 minutes, because after 3 minutes, they are no longer with you.
• You tell your acquaintances that you work in the humanitarian field, and they respond “Ok but what’s your job?”
• Upon returning home and looking for work at the unemployment office, you put in a listing under “southern coordination” and you explain to the work counsellor that he/she would be better off not wasting a lot of time on you. Anyway, you don’t fit into any of their categories!
• When you return home, you love making the round of your friends, but when you realize what their every-day lives are like, you wish to return quickly on mission.
• You really laugh when young street marketers stop you in the street and ask you “Have you ever heard of Action Against Hunger?”
• You would love to work in Latin America or Asia, but you always find yourself in Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, or Sudan.
• You understand mysterious phrases such as:
o The watsan always sends his sitrep to the HoM before leaving on R&R. (The water/sanitation guy always sends his situation report to the head of mission before leaving on break.)
o The nut and food sec want to use Plumpy Nut to combat kwash in under-5s in MdM’s CNT. (The nutrition and food security group want to use Plumpy Nut (a weight-gain product) to combat kwashorkors (one type of malnutrition) in children under 5 years of age in Médecins du Monde’s (Doctors of the World) therapeutic nutrition center.)
o The logs at Sol are working on NFI kits and shelters for the DAH proposal in RDC. (The logisticians at Solidarity are working on non-food item kits and shelters for the DAH proposal in the Democratic Republic of Congo.)
o Kilo Juliette for November Yankee, the situation is Oscar Kilo. (Kiwanja project (KJ) calling Nyanzale project (NY), the situation is OK.)
• The weekend, either you work, or you recuperate from an over-alcoholised Friday night.
• You shave at most 2 times a week and you have forgotten how to tie a tie.
• You always have a VHF radio and 3 different telephone chips with you.
• After having destroyed 3 blackberrys in six months, you buy a Nokia at $20 …. with the little flashlight on top and the black and white screen… which lasts 2 years.
• You have an IBM Lenovo laptop; ugly but indestructible.
• You have an external disc drive full of films, television series, music and nothing pertaining to work.
• You know that Relief Web is not a geographical site.
• For you, malaria is just a bad flue that everyone passes around.
• Nutella and/or Jiffy peanut butter become luxury items that you would do anything to have, at any price.
• A reinforced Toyota Landcruiser is what you call a car.
• A 30 hour bus trip (including a Jackie Chan film) on non-existent roads seems as normal to you as a New York – Washington plane shuttle does to others.
• You hop on a plane like others get into their cars.
• Entire villages in Africa call you by your first name, but you don’t even know the name of the person who lives across from you at home.
• All your friends are called Kasereka or Abdoul.
• Seeing men armed to their teeth on every street corner seems completely normal.
• You watch the news on TV and tell yourself that you have a job for life.

Back from Uganda

My break in Uganda went really well. I arrived at the Entebbe airport Tuesday around noon. Since le boat to the Ssese Islands wasn’t leaving until the next day, I visited the animal orphanage that afternoon. I also wanted to visit Entebbe’s botanical garden. While walking there I struck up a conversation with a guy, and it turns out that he works there. So he went with me and gave me a great tour. In the middle of the gardens is a rain forest, and it is in this rain forest that the original Tarzan film was made! The gardens are right on the banks of Lake Victoria. They are beautiful and very interesting.

After that, I went looking for a bookshop. I didn’t find one, but another shop owner LOANED me two great books! The people in Uganda must be the friendliest people that I have ever met. That night, I ate in a Chinese restaurant. Goma, where I am in Congo, must be the only big city in the world which doesn’t have a Chinese restaurant, so I really enjoyed that meal.

Wednesday morning I took it pretty easy, and caught the ferry in the early afternoon to go to the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria. (Yes, I finally decided to go there rather than return to Lake Bunyonyi.) I stayed in a pleasant lakeside campgrounds on Bugala Island. The food was great! The following morning, I decided to take a long walk - it turned out to be a 6 hours. That did me a great deal of good, but I also got a pretty good sunburn. I didn’t see a lot of animals – just some vervet monkeys and some beautiful birds and butterflies. For the rest of the time, my program was reading, talking with people, eating, drinking beer and sleeping. I was rather tired, and this part of my break really restored me.

Saturday morning I took the ferry back to Entebbe and continued to Kampala (after returning the books to their owner – he then gave me another one), about an hour away. There I met up with a really great guy, Timothy, who took care of me for the rest of my trip. We decided to go directly to his town, Mbarara (I had passed through there 5 years ago when going on my first mission with MSF). We took the evening bus, but the driver was a bit too crazy. We got off at the first stop, Masaka, and went to a club. There we met two other people who decided to continue on with us to Mbarara the next day. Like I said, the Ugandans are really friendly people!

Sunday, Timothy hired a motorbike, to take me to visit his home village. It was about 70 kilometers away. I met the whole family and a lot of the villagers. They don’t get many white people out there, and they seemed pretty impressed that I had come out to see them. While we were visiting, a big rainstorm occurred. Timothy’s uncle offered to put us up for the night, but we really had to get back to Mbarara where we had left the guys from Masaka. The ride back on a motorbike on mud roads in the dark was quite an experience. But Timothy pulled it off really well. That night, we all went to a bar and had a great time.

Monday we took the bus back to Kampala (this is a 5 hour journey not including the wait in the bus for it to fill up). I left Timothy to his occupations that afternoon. That night we went out again to a club and had another good night.

Tuesday, he took me into town again, to catch a motorbike out to the airport in Entebbe. The arrangements for buses, mini-buses and motorbikes are fairly complicated, and I really appreciated his help. I got back to the office in Goma around 4h15 pm, and I was already in a coordination meeting at 4h30! I also had 450 email messages waiting for me. I just got caught up with those today, so I am relieved.

In all, it was a really good time – 3 days of relaxation and 3 days of partying. I now have 3 months left in Congo before ending my mission. It’s going to fly!

Visit to the Capital

Although MSF-France’s headquarters for the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) are in Goma, capital of North Kivu on the east side of the country, the capital of the country is Kinshasa, on the west side. We have a representation office there, to deal with whatever needs to be done at the central governmental level, such as residence visas, lobbying central ministries, importation licences, and renewal of our authorization to work here. Unfortunately, we have a huge lack of experienced expatriates at this time, due to a lack of recruitment a few years ago and several emergencies throughout the world requiring our interventions right now, so we have no one running this office. Our solution is that each of us in coordination goes there for about a week at a time on a rotating basis, to take care of business. My turn was last week.

Although I have been in Congo now for 20 months, this was my first trip to Kinshasa. It is really a capital! I was surprised – asphalt streets, big buildings, traffic jams, construction, and restaurants - everything good and bad associated with a capital. To make a comparison, in Goma, we only have 2 asphalt streets and a couple of ethnic restaurants.

I had a lot of things to do, so I didn’t much profit from the fun things. But I did go out Saturday evening with my counterpart from MSF-Holland, a beautiful Swedish woman named Ingrid, in a great Italian restaurant. And Sunday, I walked from our office/residence into the middle of town. I got robbed. A car pulled up next to me, and four big guys announced themselves as policemen and asked me to get into the car for a routine control. I was in the back seat between two of them. While the guy in front went through my backpack, the two guys behind on each side of me frisked me. When they decided all was well, they let me out of the car and took off. I quickly realised that the guy in front had stolen all of the money out of my wallet, including my $200 of “security money” which was hidden in a pocket, and also the money that I had hidden in my backpack. I lost about 600 dollars. That hurts!

On the work side, the visit was good. I met with the Director of Migration concerning expat visas, the Schengen House concerning visas to Europe for our national staff, the General Tax Direction concerning an investigation concerning out payment of income taxes for our staff, the other sections of MSF, the headquarters of our bank, our lawyer concerning several issues, and many, many others. I also interviewed a potential expatriate psychologist for our program, who turned out to be great for the job. Just before I left Goma for Kinshasa, it was decided to close this representation office – we are considering a more efficient way of representing us and the other sections of MSF in the capital – so I had the pleasure (ha!) of announcing this to the staff. This will be my 4th project closing since I have arrived in Congo, but it doesn’t make it easier. Anyway, the staff took it pretty well. They have heard rumours of this closure for more than a year, and the fact that it is now announced takes off the pressure. They have all been with MSF-France of several years, and they will get a pretty healthy layoff package.

I got back to Goma Tuesday afternoon, and things have been pretty intense since. We are recruiting a flying administrative assistant and a national staff psychologist. We are preparing for the semi-annual strategy meeting in Paris in June, and revising out budget for the year. All this, along with my other big projects keep me hopping.

And I leave this coming Tuesday for a week-long break in Uganda. We are supposed to take a break every 3 months. My last break was in January, and I really need this one. I will probably go to Lake Bunyonyi in the southwest corner of the country. I was there before in 2005 and it is great. It is a lake formed by volcanic flow, and there are 29 islands in this lake. I will do nothing but canoe, hike, read, eat, drink and sleep. And I will probably spend a day or two in Kampala before leaving.

I now have a little over 3 months before leaving the Congo. It is starting to seem very short, especially since I still have a lot to do. I know I can’t finish everything, but I would be great to finish at least 4 of my 7 big issues.