Sylvia's Journal

The anti malaria pills I am taking leave a terrible metallic taste in my mouth. I thought at first that the taste came from the whipped cream I have been eating in the evening after I discovered that it is really good with the amaretto chocolate (in powder form) that Axel brought back from Costa Rica. But then I realized it is of course the malarone. [or ‘macaroni’ as my spell checkers suggests]. One more day and I should be out of malaria danger. I am glad I don’t have to keep taking the pills for months on end, which I did when I travelled to West Africa a lot.

So far not a word from Ghana so I am remaining in that space of suspense – will they, will they not accept my proposal? When you communicate per email with high level officials in Africa (who have nearly all yahoo mailboxes) it is hard to gauge whether they got your mail or the mailbox is full. I once asked a senior official in Senegal why they use private mailboxes as official email addresses and the response was that they can’t rely on the government regularly paying its bills to an internet provider. There is no indignation or any sense that this is unacceptable and they don’t seem to think of themselves as part of this disembodied ‘government thing.’

In the meantime I am sucked up at work in our annual ritual of work planning. I participate because I have to but I have little energy or enthusiasm for it as the activities I am associated with in the plan don’t usually match what I end up doing. The plan does provide an illusion of control over our agenda and some coherence to the activities of a cast of thousands. It also tells our accountants how much it would cost if we did what we say we would. And, most importantly, we have to provide our client (the US government) with this plan; part of a chain of requirements that goes all the way up to the higher echelons in the US government. It’s our ‘government thing.’

But since I am not an accountant, and many of my assignments come out of the blue anyways, for me the work planning benefit is not obvious. In fact, sometimes the few things that were planned long in advance end up being postponed or cancelled altogether. I have never in my career at MSH consulted the plan to answer the question, “what should I be doing next?’

Right now ‘next’ is a trip to Kabul, in a few weeks – potentially closely followed by a trip to Ethiopia, but that will reveal itself later.