This Week Requires Documentation

Many of my posts are day-in-the-life posts, which I write after a particularly crazy stretch of activity.  Sometimes I'm struck with the thought, "This is too crazy; I have to tell someone."  Sometimes those days are memorable, like when key personnel were on vacation, a team got stuck on the other side of the river as the ferry broke down, and a cholera outbreak was just announced in the western part of the country; or when riding along on a vaccination campaign.  Sometimes, they're not particularly memorable but distill the amount of activity of a project into one encapsulated story.

This week was an example of ludicrously high levels of activity, where I kept asking, "Is this a joke?  Candid camera? The Truman Show?  It's a test.  It's gotta be a test."

Some background: I'm the logistics referent at a project in South Sudan for MSF.  I coordinate the logistic activities (operations, maintenance, infrastructure, engineering, supply, this sort of thing) for a 200-bed hospital, including warehouse/pharmacy complex, office, and housing for 25 expats.  My team is divided into 3 branches (base, hospital, and supply).  We're 100 logistic staff, all together.  We have been short one manager for the past 5 months.  Sometimes that's a base manager, sometimes it's a hospital manager, sometimes it's a supply manager.  The team here has had to fill gaps for a long time, and since supervisors are responsible for keeping the day-to-day activities running, it falls to me to replace the managers.  After all, I'm here in pure support.  I do quality control, training, and coordination, but no actual management or tasks.  In my job as log ref, I don't actually do work, I like to say.

This week was the perfect storm of ridiculousness.  Last week was the visit of the Logistics Coordinator from the capital, and the Logistics Supervisor from headquarters.  It's a big visit, so I was preoccupied with them.  There is no hospital log at the moment, so I was covering that position, plus doing my job, plus hosting those two.  Needless to say, this took a lot of energy, and the team was tired from a big visit, plus pulling more weight than usual.  We also had my going-away party on Saturday, since I'm leaving (inchallah) in another couple of weeks, which was another load on our department.

Monday starts with dismantling tents and recovering from the party, but quickly escalates.  The AC technician flying in from Juba, for his quarterly maintenance of the project's air conditioners.  Also, a flying radio technician arrives from Paris, to do inventory and evaluation of the project.  He doesn't speak any English, and I don't know what his objectives are.  I learned about him from the movement plan, rather than getting briefed on why he's coming.  I don't know what to do with him, and only the Supply Log and I can speak French in the whole department.

Tuesday ups the ante, because the Supply Log leaves for vacation.  Vacation was planned a long time ago, and he is dragged kicking and screaming (metaphorically) onto the plane.  He knows it's a ridiculous week, and he doesn't want to leave us alone.  He has to go anyway.

Also leaving on Tuesday is the biomedical/electrical technician, to make his quarterly visit to a sister project.  He was taking care of the AC technician, so in absence of the biomed electrician, and the hospital log, I'm the one to follow the AC technician.

So we're left with only one French speaker (me), minus a biomed focal point, with a couple of technicians running around, poking into corners.  Then two more visitors arrive.  The country mechanic, from the sister project, arrives to install the gear box on the vehicle that's out of commission.  We had received the gear box from the capital the week before, and have been renting a car to cover for the out-of-commission vehicle.  Also arriving with the country mechanic is the generator technician, from the company supplying our generators.

I forgot to mention that one of the hospital's generators stopped producing electricity a week ago, so we've been running without backup for a week.  We did a marathon wiring session on Friday afternoon, involving 4 electricians working side-by-side for an hour, to get the old MoH generator hooked up as a temporary backup.  Monday, the only working generator ran out of fuel (because I didn't keep track of the fuel consumption and forgot to check that morning; did I mention I'm a bit overloaded?), so we fired up the MoH generator, only to find that phase 3 doesn't output any power.  Also, it keeps tripping its breaker because it's too small to support the whole hospital.

So at least the technician is here to look into that, but since the biomed/electrician has just left, again it falls to me to follow the repairs.  Maybe the country mechanic can help a bit too.

There are no flights on Wednesday, so I can't lose any more people, or gain any more repairmen who need to be followed.  But instead fuel arrives, and they get impounded in customs, with the government trying to extort money.  I'm in the middle of negotiations to sell an unused generator, so the project coordinator takes over and talks with customs.  A full morning of negotiations later, the fuel is released.  It takes me an hour to get the counters calibrated and fueling started, then I recruit the first person I see (a medical consultant here for a week to help with data collection and analysis) to supervise the end of the pumping.  After a rapid induction into the order of Log, I leave her to supervise.  I hurry to the hospital with the other tanker, to unload the fuel there.  I explain the amounts of fuel to go in which 3 tanks, writing the numbers in the dust on the tanks.  I'm glad I learned arabic numerals.  I call a watchman to supervise the fueling, since I have to go to a monthly meeting of all sanitation officers, since I'm the acting Log Hospital.

Thursday was the most ridiculous day of them all, with the famed arrival of the cargo plane.  In the morning, the AC technician did a whirlwind tour just before leaving to the airport, where I typed his report for him in a last-minute blitz of documentation.  Due to a miscommunication, he didn't know he was supposed to remount a compressor, but the compressor mount we had installed was in the wrong place.  We frantically searched for a welder, but had to stop the work just as the welder got started, in order for the technician to catch the plane.  The near miss was very disheartening, since the work was completed 30 minutes after his departure, and we could have had it all sorted if there was someone here following the technician.

We had been discussing for weeks the arrival of a huge shipment of medical material.  We had been tracking it from its arrival in Nairobi to its sporadic journey by refrigerated truck overland to Juba, through customs and checkpoints, to arrive at Juba airport.  The orginal plan was for it to arrive on the 21st.  Then it was pushed to the 24th.  Then we heard on the 24th that it was coming on Thursday.  With the signing of the peace agreement in Juba on Wednesday, we almost cancelled the whole thing, since the airport was closed and we couldn't get our trucks in.  We finally got word on Wednesday night that we were on for Thursday afternoon.  This meant that our offload time collapsed from 5 hours to less than 2 hours.

The Log Supply was devastated that he was going to miss the plane.  So was I.  Without him, it fell to me to organize the offloading and transporting of 13 tonnes of medical cargo.  He had already done all of the preparation, of clearing the space in the warehouse to temporarily store the drugs, of finding and negotiating with the truck drivers, of estimating daily worker needs, of planning the work flow.  I just had to step in and execute, and the logistics team here surged into the gap.  We had trucks, we had workers, we had pallets, we had water, and luckily, we had good weather.

The plane landed at 2:14pm.  When the engine stopped and the doors opened, the captain asked me if he could take off at 4pm.  We did the math and determined 4:30pm was the drop-dead maximum needed to leave Aweil.  We agreed we'd try to have them gone at 4pm.  A mere hour and a half after the first truck will pull up to the cargo door.

What followed was a gleeful execution of a large-scale logistical plan, reminding me why I do my job, why I love it, and how much fun it can be.  It was exhausting, but invigorating.  Twenty loaders formed constantly fluctuating lines to various vehicles, stacking boxes, throwing medications, and calling to each other with observations and jokes.  With two trucks having to come back after they unloaded at the pharmacy, we stripped the Antonov-12 of 13 tonnes of medical cargo in 90 minutes.  A stressful last-minute explanation of MSF policy led to 100 disappointed people who wanted to hitch a ride on the plane back to Juba, but we got the Antonov airborne at 4:08pm.

That was only half the story, with landing fee negotiations followed by a fierce rainstorm, followed by the final unloading of the backlogged trucks at the warehouse.  We had over 30 loaders at that point, but it still took longer to unload than load, since we had to stack boxes in piles that at least made a cursory nod to safety.  With the warehouse reorganized, cleaned, stacked, and stuffed, we finished just shy of 7pm.  We'll pay tomorrow.

Friday ended a week with a gearbox not repaired, a generator disassembled and waiting on a part from Juba, a car rental extended, several contracts for final rehabilitation at the hospital signed, materials lacking for the two new sleeping huts we are building in the compound, and a running hospital.  The radio referent left, with much kerfuffle of not having his ticket and not speaking English.  The generator technician promised to come back in a week or two to fix the generator, but he helped to repair the current backup.  At the end of the day, I did a final walkthrough with the electrician on contract for some small repairs, since no one else was available to follow him.  I frantically got the signed release of payment in to the administration just at the 5pm deadline.  Success!

The week had ended, and we had cleaned all compounds, completed supply and purchasing, and kept the hospital (mostly) running.  There were countless small HR questions, meetings, negotiations, emails, and little crises that were solved or smoothed over in the course of a normal working day.  We had 4 visiting technicians running around, tracked by a 5-person team covering 8 positions.  It was the craziest confluence of events leading up to the most desperately busy week of normal operation I have heard of.  There was no emergency, no crisis, but everything seemed to happen this week.  Everything that needed to happen over the course of a month, or even a quarter, seemed to be distilled into one quintessential MSF week.

Now my replacement arrives on Monday, and I can start the handover process.  Inchallah.

Talking Politics

I have a staff meeting with all the managers and supervisors on my team every Friday.  We talk about everyone's activities, the project's activities, and strategize about upcoming events or issues.  Sometimes, we get off topic, either before the meeting as we're waiting for everyone to arrive, or during.

We have talked about cows, and the Dinka tradition of dowries for wives, traditionally paid in cows to the father of the bride.  We talked about the legal minimum of cows, about what happens if someone cannot pay, about eloping, and about women 'buying' men instead of the other way around.  It was a general conversation filled with laughter and cultural sharing.  They found our questions just as ridiculous as our answers, and we all had a good time learning from each other.

This past week, a discussion of opening the new malnutrition ward prompted a discussion of market state, after the economy collapsed in April of this year.  My staff asked me why the US dollar was so strong, and why prices were rising so much.  I'm just a logistician for a humanitarian aid organization, but all of a sudden, I was an ambassador from the developed world, asked to explain the current global financial state to my team.

Umm, you ask a very good question.  It's a long answer.

I explained that South Sudan is a rich nation.  It has oil, which is a very hot commodity.  But they cannot get their oil to the market, since the existing pipeline dates from a unified Sudan, taking the oil from the south of the old nation through to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea.  Now these days, the pipeline is through an aggressive neighboring country, who is sort-of-kind-of at war with South Sudan.  The only way to get South Sudan's abundant oil to the market is to send it through Sudan's expensive-to-use pipeline.  This is because Sudan is now a poor nation, with most of its oil reserves stripped away when South Sudan became independent.  They're terrified of losing all of their income, so they jack up the prices on the use of the pipeline, since they've cornered the market as the only way to get oil out of the country.  South Sudan doesn't even have a refinery in the country.

I draw a comparison.  I tell my staff, you have so much sorghum in Aweil.  You want to get your sorghum to Juba or to Kampala, and you take the Wau road.  But Wau becomes a different country, and they're not friendly.  All of a sudden, the road through Wau is very expensive.  How do you get your sorghum (of which you have plenty but you cannot grind it so you can't eat it) to the markets in Juba and Kampala?

They say to take another road, so we discuss the Pipeline proposed through Kenya, to be built in 2016.  The project was cancelled soon after it was announced.

I explain to them Bashir's position, the leader in Sudan.  If I were him, I would be terrified of losing money, because then he doesn't have an army, then he doesn't have a presidency, and he's facing charges of war crimes from the international criminal court, so he doesn't want to be ousted or exiled.  But he's just seen his whole country's oil revenue disappear in the last 4 years.  Thank goodness he has that pipeline, but then all of a sudden Kenya will collaborate and build a pipeline from their side.  This is not good.

So Bashir will do everything he can to prolong a destabilizing civil war in South Sudan, so no one can think about negotiating for a pipeline, even if it means significantly reducing both country's incomes as the oil production drops (oil fields are being fought over by both sides, which makes oil production hard; apparently workers don't like to extract oil while in the middle of a battlefield).

Everyone is nodding around the circle, and I ask them, because I honestly have no idea, what to do about the situation.  What can they do, as intelligent and capable citizens of South Sudan.

They start telling me of how you can be arrested if you speak out against the government.  How the press is not free.  How you cannot enter into government unless appointed.  I jot down quick sound bites.  "You cannot go to the media.  You will be arrested, and sometimes you will just die."  The frankness of their discussion is unnerving.

"If you see a dog and they [the government] say cat, say 'OK, cat' and go on your way.  Just go, or else they can arrest you."

"Let every family find a small place like that one and work hard and put some food inside.  Then whatever happens, let it come.  You will have your food and you will save your family.  You cannot sleep.  You must work and put something away."

I ask if one of them might not be able to change anything.  What's the future?  They say it's families.  The children of those in charge will be in charge.  There's nothing for them.  I ask them, do they talk with the children of the leaders, so that when they are in charge things will change?  This seems like the best option, but they explain to me that the children are being educated in other countries.  In Nairobi or Kampala.  The one benefit to the economic crisis, they tell me, is that the ministers cannot afford to keep their children in school in these other countries, so all the children are coming back to be educated in South Sudanese schools.  My team explains that maybe the quality of the schooling will increase when the leaders' own children will rely on it.

The conversation turns to the intellectual class, and my team urges me to change my nationality.  They say I could be in parliament here.  They say, "Let you come to be in South Sudan.  There are many women in government.  The governor here before was a woman.  There are 4 sitting heads of state in Africa who are women.  You would get many cows."  As dowry, since talk of a woman always seems to go back to her price.  Another team member offers "You would get 100 cows maybe."  This is outrageously high in Dinka culture.  Someone else chimes in "200, even."  Now I know they're joking, and we turn back to other things.

We continue the meeting talking about the details of the malnutrition ward we will open on Monday, and the possibility of another malaria ward to open soon.