Relief-Work

So I have neglected to write an update for a very long time. Here’s a tiny update to give you a taste of things to come in the next few weeks. I got back from Morocco and settled into my home away from home in Switzerland. I met Marina, a former coworker from MSF who I met in Liberia. We traveled around Switzerland seeing old friends of hers. I practiced some Italian, went cross country skiing, and spent quite a while sick as a dog from a stupid cold I got in Ticino. ...

This photo essay shows pictures of several Liberian civil servants. The picture of the governor of River Gee brought back memories. I met village chiefs in offices like this to talk about how MSF could work with the community.

It has been a long time since I wrote last, so here is a tiny update. I am doing the handover to the new November 2 right now. It is a very strange thing to have him here and be able to literally count the days. Also now I have to pay particular attention to issues of respect, authority, control, and so on. I need my staff to see that this is an orderly transition and that I trust and have confidence in the new guy so that they do too. It is a different set of things to think about, but not too hard to figure out. ...

One of our cars is broken. The differential was making noise. In Liberian English, car parts can be “fine”, “not fine”, or “finished”. The mechanic took it apart this morning and found that one of the bearings in this differential is finished. It was interesting to see the insides of the differential, and I spent a while poking at it on the workbench, and having the mechanic explain the finer points to me (“This can spin, but those don’t so they have dicks and not bearings. Dicks, yes, dicks. Discs? No, dicks. And these, they can’t spoil too easy. You put different spacers in like so when these are not too fine, but you can’t file the spacers yourself, you have to get them from Toyota.”) ...

We were really busy here in October because of the need to plan 2007’s activities. We had to make a Plan of Action, then we had to make the budget. The whole process was eye opening into how MSF plans its activities, and working on the budget was sometimes boring drudge work, but sometimes it was really interesting. I understand the MSF budget system much better now, and in the future I will be able to quickly see what work was envisioned by the previous people when I get to a new project. I put in a bunch of nifty things that I think the next log/admin will appreciate, including major repairs to the radios and some replacement equipment for stuff we have worn out. ...

I just had the most profound sense of peace wash over me… not of the spiritual variety, but of the logistical. I was out checking up on the carpenters to make sure they understood my instructions right and were building the right stuff today. I held the plank for the guy as he was sawing out the handle for the drawer he is making. I puzzled for a while about the two pieces he was making, trying to figure out how he’d make a handle out of them. Then it dawned on me, “I don’t know what he’s going to make, but I’m sure it will be fine.” ...

Just a quick note to tell you all that I had a great birthday here in Nimba. The day went much better than could be expected, starting with the surprise arrival of the chief mechanic who fixed three cars today. It was not really a surprise, but it sort of felt like it, because he arrived on Saturday when I wasn’t around, and then came in to work on Monday morning and started waving his magic wrench around like a fairy sprinkling motor oil and fixing cars. ...

This week was a regular work week for me, but a couple days were shaved off it while I was in transit back to Nimba. It has been nice to get back to the normal schedule of Nimba life. None of the normal annoyances really bugged me because I was happy to be back “home”. I started looking forward to the second half of my time here and realized that because I took my break a little late, the second half is actually only 7 weeks or so. And it was a strange feeling indeed to imagine that that won’t be enough time to get everything done. When I got here, the 6 months seemed like an eternity, but once I figured out how to keep the trains running on time I realized how little time there is for new work. And how few months to get it done in. ...

I am back in Nimba now, back with my adopted family here. The work is hard (even just one day has already presented a terrifying array of problems), but I am really happy to be back with the team and in my “own” bed. I brought back a new expat from Monrovia with me. Pierre is a Frenchman, an architect who worked in San Francisco for several years, and returned to France, then quit his job to work on real problems, instead of the somewhat unreal ones that architecture offered. He said that it annoyed him that people designed buildings that they do not know how to make. I don’t know yet if he knows how to make buildings, but I really like him and I think he will do well. His job is to build the replacement building for the pole and plastic sheeting hospital that I am supposed to keep limping along. ...

Just a quick note to tell you all that I am still alive. Things have not been super busy, but I haven’t felt too much like writing. This week a logistics helper came from Monrovia and completed a renovation of the building that used to be our food store into a new office building. After we finish moving out of the office this week, we will have more bedrooms for both the new expat arriving soon, and for guests. Right now, there are no rooms in the inn. I kept the rehabilitation plans really simple in order to get them done fast. I had planned to leave the wood trim unpainted and only whitewash the walls. But it turned out that we had some white paint left over from the health post renovation at Lepula. So I gave the team that paint to use. Then they complained that you can’t paint the walls white and the trim white. Fashion nazis! So we dug around some more and found some Jade Green paint that was also incorrectly bought for Lepula. Ministry of Health standard for health posts in Liberia is whitewashed walls with Forest Green trim, so the Jade Green was right out. I gave them that to mix with the white. The result is a shade of green that reminds me of the United States Forest Service every time I see it. Everyone really likes the new office because of the green windows and doors. They are pretty snazzy, actually. ...