(Click for a huge version suitable for printing and fridge posting.) Wrapping things up here in Geneva. I’m staying the night with Sima and Steve, and they are dropping me off at the airport tomorrow morning at 7 am. I fly through Brussels, Dakar, and then I arrive at Roberts Field outside of Monrovia about 6 pm. I’ll send an update from MSF’s office in Monrovia in the next couple of days. ...

I am currently in Geneva for my briefings. I’ve been having fun in the evenings with friends from the old days at Bunyip in Montreal, Steve and Sima. During the day, I go around meeting people and getting verbal briefings, and doing self-study with various materials. Yesterday my biggest problem was that I was overwhelmed with reference material and couldn’t figure out what to look at. So far I’ve had a “general advice” briefing from Kath in New York, a meeting with the PR guys in New York (they are getting these updates; Hi Michelle and Michael!), a meeting about the political and program context in West Africa, a meeting about the purchasing system, and a briefing on how the IT and communications stuff works. My temporary office is in the logistics department, so I’m learning from them by osmosis, but I still need to make time to talk to some of the subject matter experts in detail, like how to maintain Nimba’s water system, what to know about the generators in use in Liberia, and how to maintain the fleet of vehicles. ...

During the last two weeks I’ve been pretty busy. I worked for a week at International Medical Corps in Santa Monica. During that time I spent a lot of time with a new mentor, Jon Thompson. He and his wife have worked in Liberia, and it was partly them that gave me the confidence to accept the posting with MSF. At the end of the week I visited old college friends in Los Angeles, then I drove back up to Redwood City (6 hours). I spent the afternoon and evening doing errands. The next day I drove to Roseburg (9 hours). I visited with family there. Mom made a great combination congratulations and bon voyage meal. The next morning I drove to Portland and commenced work on the Humaninet Simulation Day event. ...

I got my posting! And so the real adventure begins… the rest of this has just been academic. I’ll be working as a “log-admin” in an MSF-Switzerland project based on Saclepea, Nimba County, Liberia. The log part of my job is making sure things go smoothly so the programs keep running. The admin part of my job will be to handle paying salaries and keeping the books. My contract is for six months. ...

Sorry I haven’t sent out an update in a while. I’ve been visiting family and doing paperwork to get in the MSF system. I got my medical clearance from my doctor, extra eye glasses, etc. Kat the Dog and I traveled up to Oregon to see my parents and grandparents. A consulting job back in the Silicon Valley fell through, so Kat and I continued north to Seattle where we helped prepare my step-brother’s house to be sold. Good thing too, because he bought a new house while we were there! ...

I got the letter from MSF in New York today, and I have been entered into their pool of available volunteers! This is what I’ve been working towards for over a year, and I’m really happy! As well as the good kind of scared you get when ambitious tasks present themselves to you! The next step is an orientation in New York City, and the process of finding the right first posting for me. I’ll learn more about that process in the coming week, probably. Because the final decision on deploying me is out of their hands, the New York office can’t really guess when I’ll be deployed. However, the fact that I have very few limitations on the timeframe or location of my posting means I’ll be considered for more postings than some other first timers will be. ...

World66 is a nifty website, kind of a cross between Wikipedia and Lonely Planet. But the coolest thing they have is a map generator showing which countries you’ve visited:

Today I had my interview with MSF. It went pretty well, I think. I was well prepared, both for the interview and for the multiple choice test they give logisticians. In the interview I got a number of chances to explain how I think my past experiences will help me do the job. Molly asked me how I’d deal with the inevitable problems of close team living, and I had an answer that I think pleased her. ...

Just in time for my upcoming MSF interview, I’ve finished my WFR (pronounced “woofer”) certification. I don’t know if my interviewer will ask about first aid skills, but I can guarantee you that I’ll find a way to tell her! I’m really proud of this certification, not just because of the skills it gives me in case I need to provide emergency care for a colleague someplace remote, but because it shows I have taken the initiative to continue preparing myself for my chosen career. You wouldn’t think, while working with doctors and nurses, that you’d need to know medicine, but Jon told me a story from his MSF days that made me decide to get the WFR training. He found himself in a situation where he was the best hope half a dozen meningitis patients had to survive the next 24 hours… as he said, “it’s not supposed to work that way, but sometimes it does”. ...

I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been hanging around the Bay Area. I did a contract for my old boss at his new employer, and some other random undirected hanging out I can’t really remember. Oh, I think it involved postponing writing code by taking the dog to the dog park. I’ve also been working on the unread books from my bibliography, including some new ones I found. One is really gripping; it is a memoir of a Canadian nurse who worked for MSF for four years. So much of what she says is familiar to me after all my reading. ...