World Health Organization

I've joined the World Health Organization. I am the 'Information Officer' for the Health Cluster, which brings health NGOs working in Afghanistan and the Afghan Ministry of Public Health together. (I think.)

It's STILL not the type of management position I'm trying to return to but it looks interesting.

As the Presidential and Provincial Council elections approach we're bracing for threatened 'complex attacks' on our compound. This means that a first vehicle born suicide bomb might smash the compound entrance and then other attackers will run in shooting before detonating their suicide vests. Our building is within a big (and now targeted) compound but we're adding a thick steel front door and windows will be bricked over. Yesterday we were told that when we hear the initial bomb (and apparently we "WILL hear it" - the Taliban won't come with less than 500Kg of explosives) we should lock our door and hide under our desks. Apparently there will be no time to rush to the bunker.

Also related to the election, we are advocating for the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan to reverse its decision to use health facilities (and schools) for polling. We are concerned that politicizing health facilities jeopardizes their neutrality and the perception and reality that they are safe places. Furthermore, if there is violence on election day the health facilities must be available, not involved.

In between jobs

I spent part of my valuable free time between jobs visiting Puli Khumri in Baghlan province.

I'd had a bad time at my previous job and I hoped that visiting one of our actual projects would make me feel better about the fifteen months I'd devoted.




This is the Women's Garden wall Puli Khumri. The wall is great and the garden (which we did not develop) is lovely. The all-important donor plaque is deteriorating which is deliciously ironic. We claimed that this project generated over 100,000 (half the town's population) of our 129,000 female beneficiaries in our second year.

(In this picture I'm wearing a genuine Schuh's Saloon T-shirt.)

Whew!

I terminated at ARD on June 20 to our mutual relief. I hope I'll never work for another for-profit organization in a developing country again.

Monitoring the monitoring

"After discussing the challenges and obstacles of sector monitoring it was agreed that the monitoring team should be re-established and instructed to monitor the development projects of the sector and prepare the monitoring report as soon as possible." - anonymous Community Development Specialist in Province X, Afghanistan

Lots of "Goals and Objectives"

I'm starting a series of posts (mostly rants - here is the first) about the English language (which I will never master) which I call The Queen's English. I would like to share this snippet from a long submission I have to edit:

[SWOT means "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats". DC means "Development Coordinator".]

"The DC facilitated the social protection sector consultation meeting, the objective of the meeting was analyzing the SWOT and to set the Goals and objectives of the sector for the next five years. After the SWOT analysis, the techniques for setting the goal and objective were explained for the participants and the participants had a group discussion on setting goals and objectives for the next five years. As a result the goal for the social protection sector identified by the participants. And was an acceptable achievement to the participants.

The DC facilitated the agriculture and rural development sector consultation meeting, the objective was analyzing the SWOT of the sector and setting up Goals and objectives of the sector for the next five years. The SWOT analysis carried out and for the each component of the analysis. After the SWOT analysis the techniques for setting the goal and objective explained for the participants and participants have been divided in to two groups and they discussed on goals for the next five years. As a result the goal for the agriculture and rural development sector was identified by the participants and agreed."

Yikes. Dealing with stuff like this is what I seem to have to do most of the time, while I'd rather be DOING stuff... (like setting goals and objectives).

The fun of my job

Twice a month I have to gather and edit contributions to my organization's 'bi-weekly report'. [I would rather not talk right now about the proper frequency of a 'bi-weekly' report.]

I often have to interpret and distill input like this:

"The Development Coordinator facilitated the NGO coordination meeting held on 5th May 2008, the international, national and local NGOs including [....] and line government entities attended the meeting. The issues of coordination among government and NGO organizations and their activities has been discussed in the meeting and decided to improve the level of coordination among government and NGOs organizations based in [....Province]."

I don't know whether to despair about the writing or the apparent lack of achievement at the meeting - but either way I change the text to something like this:

May 5: The Development Coordinator facilitated the NGO coordination meeting at which NGO and governments’ plans for 2008 were reviewed.

Strangely, the longer I delay blogging because I'm so far behind, the farther behind I get!

SO MUCH has happened since I last posted. That was a quick note to ensure friends that I hadn't been near the bomb attack on the Sarina Hotel in Kabul. In fact I need to relate a few even earlier things. So gather around my flip chart and we'll brainstorm on the following:

I got back from holidays about a month ago and having now been a motionless night (this is my criterion for listing countries) in Turkey, Romania and Seribia I have updated my list of countries visited.

The holiday really made me realize that my job was not making me feel interested or personally developed and after a few days back at work I resigned. My contract required a month's notice and I gave seven weeks - however Equal Access responded that I should leave at the end of January (three weeks later).

That was while I was in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. On the way back through a heavy storm while we were putting chains on our car wheels at a checkpoint the policeman let me fire his Kalashnikov rifle. It was the first time I'd ever fired a gun and it will probably be the last but it was quite a thrill. There was much less recoil than I expected and much much more noise.

Evenings were turned to job hunting and over the last few weeks I've had various tentative offers and enquiries but nothing is definite yet. I hope to go back to Afghanistan because of the important work that has to be done and because of special friends. I miss playing Ultimate Frisbee - there are very informal pick-up games that were the high point of my week.

I came home on February 2 and 3 - on a marathon journey that really made me feel my age. After a short (but of course delayed) flight from Kabul to Delhi I had a 13 hour layover in the transit lounge. Thankfully I met a very interesting medical student who helped pass the time. Then I had a cramped 15 hour flight from Delhi to Newark with no entertainment system or reading light. Then, rather surprisingly I had an 11 hour wait in Newark for my flight to Ottawa. The best part of the trip was seeing Dad and the second best part was having Customs tell me that I did not need to pay duty on the photography equipment I was carrying. (Honesty is the best policy.)

I still hope to post more holiday and Afgahnistan photos...