Happy New Year to you!
The Chinese variety that it. But does it matter, surely they’re all meant to be a time of reflection on the year past and bring hope and excitement for the new beginnings? Well that and another excuse to get hideously drunk and gorge oneself on food., Well as one of my friends is a bona-Fido Chinese woman it would have be rude not to join in!!
So as I still have a hangover at 9pm the night after, the night out, I’m definitely back in the swing of things here in Africa . To be honest these last 2 weeks have been pretty full on, not just with work but my social life! Out of the 14 nights I’ve been back, I’ve been out 9 of them. No wonder my stomach is having a mini protest, I’ve drank more this week than I drank in the 6 weeks I was in the UK
So I’m back and having new beginnings and round 2 in Africa . And today became the year of the snake. I’m not sure what that actually means. I do know I’m a rabbit, you know the shy retiring introverted sort (As if??!!), or maybe it refers to the other sort of rabbits….. ;-)
However the year of the snake appears to be uncovering a few slimy beasts from the rocks under which they hide. Well actually when I say rocks I really mean the Ministry of Health building, but it’s the same difference really.
Soon after I arrived back 10 of the top people at the ministry were suspended and had their passports confiscated for suspected mass corruption of millions of donated dollars meant for medicines.
And I’m talking serious peeps here, like oh, the Chief Medical Officer of the country, not just some bloke who has the petty cash tin.
And of course 2 of my contacts are amongst the 10 – so that’s my projects f***d this year then!! I’m imaging the report to the European Commission now:
Please report achievements against the below project objectives giving clear indicators of progress:
1) Development of sustainable health financing system for rehabilitation:
Jo: Not achieve. The chief finance officer was imprisoned in 2013 and was unavailable for meetings despite my formal requests for a visitors pass. Actually when he wasn’t in prison in 2012 he was also unavailable for meetings, probably as he was busy at the internet café transferring millions of dollars to an off shore account.
2) Development of national curriculum and education materials on disability prevention and early detection
Jo: Not achieved. The head educator officer has been unavailable due to taking a new role, acting as the fag to the chief finance officer
3) Implementation by the Ministry of the National Rehabilitation Policy:
Jo: Not achieved. Several visits were made to the Ministry to initiate this essential work eventually securing a meeting. Fortunately I realized after one hour that the lack of response from the Health Development Director in front of me was not if fact due to lack of motivation and commitment, as we saw throughout 2012. No, it was due to the fact that I was actually talking to a ball of tumbleweed which had blown into his palatial office. The mistake only became apparent when a nesting mouse emerged from what I thought was the gentlemans forehead.
I considered this meeting one of the most positive and constructive during my time with the project.
On a positive note the organization held a free raffle for all the staff over the Xmas period, which I thought was lovely of them. Yes it was a ‘faulty office equipment’ raffle. That’s correct, the organization dished out shit to people. The worst and most ironic was the illiterate cleaner who is so poor that she lives in the slums; she had the wonderful gift of a broken computer keyboard. WTF?!!!
Yep, so nothing much has changed then!! This is (still) Africa !!
Now where’s the Gaviscon, ah bugger that, where those pega packs, come to mama…….
xx
