Oooops I did it again……

 OK troops it’s almost time to come in and get me before its too late.

I’m getting dangerously close to either being exposed or being expelled from the country.

It’s not my fault! I’ve told people often enough that I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing but  oh no people insist on sending me to high level meetings and giving me responsibilities. Fools.

I’m no longer just a danger to myself you know, this is getting serious.

On Thursday, the President declared an official state of national emergency with the Cholera Epidemic which has now reached over 10,000 cases with around 200 fatalities. http://www.examiner.com/article/west-silent-on-oil-rich-sierra-leone-cholera. Worse it’s suspected that it’s not yet hit the peak and at best guess, they are projecting that these number will more than triple.

So as the ‘health’ coordinator for the charity at the end of yesterday I was summoned by the Ministry of Health to attend a crisis meeting all day today.

So off I tootle, knowing full well that I had nothing to offer, but thought I’d better show willing, especially as I’m chasing them to give me back the money that they, err, ‘misallocated’.

But oh I couldn’t just keep my big mouth shut could I.

So this is what happened. All the people involved gave presentations on the (rather good) actions being taken. Obviously I didn’t quite understand most of it “bucket chlorination of wells” “sword and shield methodology” blah blah blah.

The problem came when I sort of noticed one small fact, that people with disabilities had of been missed off list of ‘vulnerable groups’ category.

Now in my defense I had a hangover (of course it’s Saturday morning, what else would I have??!!)

Second, I honestly believe that I have a little man living in my head who, without warning takes over my thoughts and speech processes. It could be voldermort, I’m not sure.

But what started as a simple innocent question as to why disabled people had been forgotten, came out as a full on accusative attack, followed by a rabble rousing sermon and ended up with a room full of top emergency and development humanitarian workers stunned into complete silence.

Even I was in shock. Especially as at the end of my little gremlins oration, and in response to the deathly silence in the room, the Ministry’s only response was “Wow!” “Well you think you’re doing OK, then suddenly this hits you”.

You see the gobby git in my head, suddenly started to do maths and throw out projections of his own about the % and numbers of people with disabilities who would probably contract the disease.

He then went on to describe in detail why disabled people where more vulnerable than the average population and then took turn to tell each and every Cholera response actor what they needed to do to prevent loss of life amongst this vulnerable group. Oh aye, he was well and truly on his soap box as he instructed Medicines Sans Frontiers and the District Medical Team that they needed to seriously rethink  the positioning of the emergency treatment units. He told the water and sanitation departments that they had to put more consideration into which wells they chlorinated. The people developing sensitization activities and materials were given a very stern warning about the things they needed to postulate over, and to the latrine guys, well he sort of shut up here as was clearly was completely out of his depth.

I only meant to ask a question and I ended up momentarily derailing the whole crisis response action in the country.

Ooops

Sorry about that.

Taxi for Jo………

So even though my ticket for my holiday back to the UK is now booked for the 20^th Sept, (yipeeeeeee) you could well being seeing me sooner than you think. And don’t rule out the fact it could be on the BBC – I’ll be the one with a pillow case on my head, handcuffed, being bundled into a police vehicle at Heathrow airport.

I think I’ll let the Ministry keep a few quid eh!!

xxx