Sylvia's Journal

This what Thursday was like: After an early morning meeting with the acting minister to which I was summoned the night before by one of her staff, I returned to the office at about 9:00 AM. I was in for a surprise. All day I experienced, albeit only a fraction, of what it is to be a Finance and Operations director.

Like a lave stream pieces of paper that required signatures oozed around me, wherever I went. Everywhere there were people with pieces of paper in their hands that needed signatures (all of them now). I signed things that I didn’t even knew existed. This experience has given me a new appreciation of what it takes to run a multi-million dollar project (and I only dealt with the small stuff).

The risk of course with me, a neophyte, to sign (which means authorize payments) is that people can slip in things that were denied by our previous Finance and Operations Director. I was warned about that and tried to sign everything after some due diligence. But one can only do so much due diligence when the pile of paper starts to get close to 10 centimetres, and the incoming stream is relentless. My extra bad luck is that it is the end of the month (or rather the beginning of the new one). Imagine doing this day after day.

Luckily my Afghan finance and administration colleagues were patient with me and everyone took great pains to explain to me what I was signing. I have a long way to go to understand accounting terms.

I tried to get to a debriefing from one of our consultants who is returning home and who had a mid morning meeting at the ministry, but on my way to him not only did I meet more people with papers to be signed but also, something I should have remembered but forgot, three new staff members in my team who reported for duty, their first day (a moment of panic until they were safely placed in the hands of knowledgeable people).

Steve has clearly arrived in Pakistan and found a computer as there was another stream of emails about things he hadn’t gotten to, some rather daunting and complex contracting issues.

There was an informational interview about a job we are trying to fill (I had forgotten I had made the appointment, thinking Thursday afternoons are usually quiet) and there she was suddenly in the middle of my attempt to write a fair and even handed first draft of our investigation report in the hope of speeding up the process so that the people involved in this messy case can get on with their lives.

And then there was the email from the incoming Finance and Operations Director about his reporting to work on July 6 (yeah!!!) and that he needed a letter for his wife about his employment in Kabul so she can get a visa. That too needed to be done urgently as we are closed (now) for a three-day weekend.

Amidst all this frenzy, we had to report to one of the ministries that controls (yup) NGOs like us with the material they had requested. We had not been able to provide all the documents and send a staff member with an envelope with about 60% of the requested information to show that at least we had not entirely ignored their deadline of today.

And then it was suddenly 5 PM and I collapsed, quite literally.