28 November 2005

Back at work

Spent some three hours at work today, I am about to leave to go and have some sleep. Tired, but in a better mood. Colleagues' reactions were heartwarming and very supportive. My boss even thinks that I am paying the price for all the overtime I have worked in the past, before the Summer holiday. I am pretty sure that is not so, I came back extremely well rested in September, but I must admit this martyr status he's ascribing to me is almost irresistible! ;)

Also in a better mood because David, an old but very close friend, send me some of his latest. Thanks David, and my warmest greetings back to your family and parents too.

26 November 2005

Event density

It's almost midnight and I can't sleep. Had trouble falling asleep last night as well, and a number of nights before. This afternoon I rested but didn t sleep, even though I was tired enough. In spite of the one Lexomil I took, which PYL prescribed but which I try to avoid, is there yet another sleepless night looming?

We were struck this evening, already in bed, with sad news from Holland, or rather from Suriname, when word reached us that A.'s nani, her mother's mother, had passed away the day before yesterday, well into her eighties.

Another reason might be that my father would have turned 66 today. He died almost ten years ago, 9 April 1996, aged 56. I believe his untimely death, of a brain tumour, extended over a year and a half between hope and fear and with his personality affected, has been the most traumatic experience in the lives of all of his family members, and certainly in mine. It sure has dampened my own expectations as regards a long life. After almost ten years, you talk about it less, but he remains present, especially when you realise he hasn t known any of his now seven grandchildren.

When I met PYL yesterday he said he was convinced that my malaria attack had everything to do with continued lowered resistance over our recent concerns over M.'s surgery. I don't know, although that cold sore I made such a silly fuss about at the time was directly related to it. But in fact he must be right: we're still digesting those days, and we were probably naive in thinking that a week at the seaside in Cameroon would help us put the thing behind us. And now the realisation that my malaria was not so innocent has been added to it.

M.'s recent object of intense affection, Sharlene, is sleeping over today, but for a sad reason. Her mother had been courageously trying to set up a little commerce here and found out today that the container she had had filled up back in Europe with various stocks had arrived and been pillaged empty while still in customs here. Just a little fait divers.

Another fait divers I happened to hear today: a new local secretary in the office had been hiding under her bed with her family one night last week after heavily armed bandits had gone through her street in the quartiers robbing one house after the other. In her case only the door had been blown out by a salvo from a Kalashnikov, nobody got hurt.. There had been heavy shooting for two hours in the street, but police and the army showed up only hours later.

Honestly, I am not making this up. There is the general fact that events come in such density here, not only to us (just look at the freak event catalogue this blog is becoming) but to so many others. I think all this plus the malaria on top has made my nerves ends rawer, or am I just getting more sensitive these days? Sitting around all day doing the obligatory resting does not help a lot of course.

Even rereading Tom Wolfe's The bonfire of the vanities (can anybody tell me about a more masterful novel written in the last twenty years?) was almost too intensive, too rough on the nerves, which is also due to the man s awe-inspiring writing talents of course. I am now in much safer, balmier hands with The history of Tibetan Buddhism by the Dalai Lama, and believe it or not, I can actually feel a physical difference inside between reading one and the other!

Thanks for listening. The Lexomil seems to be kicking in finally. I ll try to go and sleep again.

25 November 2005

Amour

Just when I thought I could finally start serving you some lighter fare, another event raises its ugly head.

In fact it took place one evening already a week ago: on her way home our nanny, Amour, escaped an attempted rape by a drunk army officer well known in his quartier by fighting him off (kicking him where it hurt) and running. She was however badly beaten up by him with the back of a pistol, but the poor thing wouldn't tell A. at first about what had happened because I was laying ill.

Anyway, she has been amazingly courageous and has now filed a complaint with the Permanent Military Tribunal, set up mainly to please foreign donors because of the constant misbehaviour of the army, and it has actually punished army people every now and then. We ll see how long it lasts...

A. has gone with her and paid for her to get a decent medical check-up and a medical report to file with the complaint, but of course almost a week after the facts the swellings etcetera had abated. A. will also help her to get professional legal counsel. So we've found a way: I'll be a good boy and not trespass my professional boundaries, but of course my wife is free to render assistance to whomever she likes.....

I have been thinking about what Amour has been going through in the mere 15 months we have been here (this is not counting the fact that e.g. she gave birth to a daughter at the age of 14): a relative ( 'sister') died in her arms a few months ago apparently poisoned by a jealous rival over a man; she suffered a very heavy malaria attack, in hospital for days; her son (11) fell very ill but recovered; she was accused of theft of a piece of jewellery in our house by her colleagues, but we wouldn t believe it had been her so she stayed - theft never resolved; her now adolescent (15) daughter got almost kicked out of school for repeated absences, A. was wonderful and managed to talk some sense into the girl; her ex-husband pursued her once with an axe; she had to dump a new live-in boyfriend after he started beating her; her house got inundated a few months ago once during very heavy rains; she had to sleep on the street with her daughter and son after she was kicked out from her sister s house, all her stuff stolen; she has moved house at least four times with her children; her brother ended up in jail and received death threats. And now this attempted rape, and this was certainly not the first attempt, I think; she's still young, attractive and as such considered fair game, especially by the military.

And when you see her: she is serenity itself (that's why we didn't, couldn't hesitate the time she was in agony over her relative in jail), an angel for the children, especially R. Talk about a survivor... The fact that she's a single woman makes it extra hard for her in this country, but many married woman are not much better off, doing all the work for often unfaithful and often abusive partners. She commands a lot of respect, and that's probably why we tend to be more protective of her than of our other personnel (in total eight, of which four guards. I'll tell you more about the feudal household we re running here some other time...).

Boobs, and other titbits

The local Internet company we had a home subscription with, Lebanese guys, have given up on us completely now. After our home connection died many months ago (and with us learning in the meantime the meaning of the word 'demain' when used by an Africanised Lebanese...), they have over the past two days worked hard and tried to restore it, but 'the trees have grown too high' between our house and their central antenna. Right. I have Internet at work, but A.'s only option is to use one of the Internet cafés in town, which is extremely cumbersome. I feel very sorry for her, because it would make such a big difference for her to be able to go online from home.

Luckily her social life has been livening up considerably this year. She has befriended some 7 or 8 very nice young women, ranging in age from 25 to 35, who meet quite often, with or without their kids. Most of their partners know each other at least professionally as well (it's a small place here). Three of the women are African ladies with European partners, plus one Philippina, one Russian-Sudanese, and A. herself. Think again by the way when you hear seemingly innocent terms like 'ladies lunches' etcetera. Two days ago, during what must have been one of their livelier get-togethers, two of the African ladies (says A. ....) had for one reason or the other bared their upper bodies and were comparing boobs in front of the rest of the frantic lot! At 35, A. is the eldest of them all, but she also has the youngest husband, yours truly at 39, hah!

Clearly I still have enough time on my hands, with a new posting every day. Frustrating that I can't put the stuff online right away (and possibly have some of your feedback). I have been writing at home since I fell ill two weeks ago, and my only time out of the house have been those ill-fated and not very career enhancing two hours in the office last Friday and 45 minutes at a birthday drink last Saturday..

I think I am beginning to feel a little more energetic. This morning doctor PYL came to check on me and he was friendly but adamant: no, he didn't think I should go to that particular meeting at work tomorrow to be updated on current affairs, not even for an hour. As much as this reassures my inner Calvinist, this virtual house arrest is becoming uncomfortable. So I made a second attempt later on in the morning to bring up the subject with A., saying I only wanted to go and sneak into the office tonight, just to have a quick look at some private stuff, pay some bills online, publish this backlog of blog entries online, but she got even quite cross with me, which is rare and therefore not to be messed with...

A few hours later I found out they were right and I was wrong, again. The children's school is at some 200 meters away from our house, which is one of the good things about our life here. I walked down to pick up M. and T., my first such walk in two weeks. When I came back I was very tired, felt the need to lie down (slept 5 hours straight) and had experienced again problems with my equilibrium. I am also losing weight quite visibly, but for the time being I don't mind that at all. All in all, however, this malaria thing is clearly not over yet...

On a happier note, we received good news about M. s performance in class: there has recently been a clear change in his learning attitude (Sh...?) and he has started to work faster, paying better attention, in short, all that is so important to the French (I probably told you before that I find the French school system's philosophy lacking in attention for creativity, social interaction and personal development of the child. I still think M., who is not lacking in intelligence, is often bored in class.)) On the other hand T. 's attention span remains limited: it seems though that she's working with gusto on her own philosophy of social interaction (intensive and in particular at inconvenient moments) and play...

Pfff, whatever. In spite of the difficulties A. and I have recently been living through, we have three very happy, beautiful and thriving children running around here, and that counts for a hell of a lot...

23 November 2005

The meaning of life ... (oh yes, no more, no less)

(Do skip this one if you're not in the mood for pseudo-philosophical, personal blather.)

I am still at home, recuperating from the malaria that started on 12 November. I have now accepted that my body has been seriously suffering from the malaria and that I need a lot of rest. My inner Calvinist has been put to rest too, so I don't do any work, although I am thinking of popping in the next couple of days for an hour or so. Last week there have been days that I slept almost 20 hours, so clearly there's a physical need for rest that goes beyond my usual laziness.

With so much time on my hands now, I have had lots of time to think, and these thoughts have not been invariably happy. The doctor has made it very clear to me that this was not your usual malaria, but the nasty one that breaks through the brain barrier and kills a significant percentage (about one in ten) of people affected by it, especially children. We started the treatment just in time, a few hours later and I could have been in a coma. George Ng. was not so lucky, but then again his illness was infinitely more complicated (Aids, malaria and meningitis at the same time).

Not surprisingly, with also M.'s surgery still very fresh in our minds, morale is not great these days, especially A. has been scared senseless. At the same time, a cerebral malaria can happen anywhere in a malaria zone, so in most of Africa and Asia. I may have picked it up during our rainy week in Kribi-Cameroon.

I sure can't complain about my guardian angel. He did his job well for a third time, after earlier interventions in Turkey (some 10 years go, when I dove from a 7-meter high bridge into a river and came out alive 'only' with a neck injury) and a highway car incident in Belgium in 2001 that I could do absolutely nothing about but that normally should have killed me. The first two instances at least served a purpose: I have stopped diving head-first into any water any where, and I have lost all impulse to speed (even though I wasn't speeding at the time).

But what lesson to draw from this malaria attack and its aftermath? Leaving Africa is hardly an option: this is what I do as a career, as a living, and, almost paradoxically after the medical hardship we have lived through recently, I am doing it with increasing determination and motivation. We're trying to bring the country up to a level where the level of health care that I received is more accessible to more people, although I have few illusions in that respect.

There are a few lessons though on a more personal level that I am reflecting on for the umpteenth time. Everything's possible, and my life is clearly not hazard-free. My father and my father's father didn't get very old. I am 39, going on forty, statistically speaking over the hill. Can I say at this very moment that I have done what's right, for A. and the children, and the rest of the world? Most importantly: have I been a good father, and a good husband? Furthermore: have I been a good son, brother, friend, in-law, colleague, employer, citizen? What about the balance work-family life? Have I sufficiently exploited any talents I may have?

This is all thoroughly personal stuff, almost embarrassingly personal. Some of you will be quite ready to give me some clear and rather unflattering answers to a number of these questions. Anyway, this is what I meant at the beginning of the year in a letter to friends and family when I said that I felt a need for 'spiritual deepening'. Not an exercise of the incense burning and mantra singing kind, but some thorough thinking about the things that truly matter in life.

I have, as countless others, on and off throughout my adolescent and adult life been interested in these questions.(*) It's only now, after having lived through a number of things (almost ten years of marriage, losing my father, being a father of three, professional experiences, expatriation, etc.) and after having been exploring for about a year now what seems to be a promising tool (**), that I feel ready to go and reflect on these questions more in-depth, find some answers perhaps, and, who knows, start living by them some day.

(*) I don t think however that my studies in Philosophy had much to do with it: they were perhaps more motivated by the pleasure of intellectual muscle flexing, hence my interest for ancient philosophy and philosophy of language - I liked it because it was intellectually extremely challenging and just intrinsically very beautiful, but living the theory was never an issue for me. My interest in ethics is only now truly developing.

(**) I am talking about (Tibetan) Buddhism. To avoid the smell of esotericism that forces itself upon the reader when novices like myself mention the word I prefer for the moment to refer to it as a powerful intellectual tool to understand and give more sense to a number of things in life. What I have read so far makes a remarkable lot of sense and is intellectually fulfilling. My only, not so minor, hang-up with it is its belief in reincarnation, which I can't come to terms with and which logically should undermine the whole sense of the concept of karma. Strangely enough the logical gap I am thus creating does not bother me yet. Maybe I'll take this on some other time.

P.S. This blog is by now getting way more philosophical than I intended it to be. I wonder if I make any sense at all, or whether I should return to anecdotal stuff only, such as disgusting and/or scary tropical diseases that hit us, or juicy village gossip such as the UN Representative with 11 children back in Senegal who is now fathering a child with the 45-year old Minister of Trade of our country of posting? I will try to do a bit of all. It's just that we've had lots of things to digest recently which have been making my recent blog entries un peu lourds. And anyway, what can I do. You don't like it, you don't read it.

22 November 2005

M. in love

I had a great little conversation with M., our eldest, tonight when I put him to bed: he is in love. I am mighty proud that it is something he will discuss with me and A., even though it is a big secret (thanks for putting it online, Dad....). Her name is Sharlene, also a child of a mixed marriage (mother Cameroonian, father Belgian), and he is in love with her 'because of her pretty hair'. But I think I know what he likes in her too: she's quiet, sweet, and very well-behaved, and I've noticed before that that is almost invariably the type of girl that attracts him (I am pretty sure that things will be a little different with T. and R. ...) . She has been sleeping over for pyjama-parties a couple of times, and T. also gets along with her very well.

I remember M.'s little girl-friend Aldora, an Indian girl, at the English school in Brussels. They got along so extremely well. She was just such an incredibly nice little girl, pleasant, well behaved and all, that the tribal elder in me was ready to start talking camels and cattle and to arrange the marriage... I know that when the time comes and they bring home boyfriends and girlfriends for real I will have a hard time keeping my judgments to myself and to let them make their own choices and errors...

Yesterday, M.'s been handing out invitation cards at school for his 7th birthday party next week. He had to spy on her ('espioneren' in his ever more French-tainted Dutch) to get her one-on-one for a moment away from the prying eyes of his buddies and those of her girl friends to give her her personal invitation.

So sweet all this, just priceless....

21 November 2005

Cerebral malaria

As I said, the day George Ng. died, 12 November, I fell ill with a nasty case of malaria myself.

At first I didn't think much of the excruciating headache (and all the other joint aches) that went with the high fever (up to 41,3 C, never below 39 C). By Sunday I was however biting my pillow and holding back the tears, so maddening had the pain become. The doctor, PYL, who is a project manager in my section and whom we call by his initials, told me that the headache was not just a usual symptom, but that I had crossed the line to a cerebral malaria. The pain I felt were the red blood cells popping out the parasites in large numbers. We re now killing them with generous doses of Coartem, and it seems to work, the fever has gone, but I am still weak..

It was also the first time I had the typical malaria cold shiver experience: airco off, at least 30 C in the bedroom, two sets of pyjamas, 5 sheets and blankets on top of me and my teeth were clattering!

What worries me a little is that I can't walk straight at the moment, PYL says the malaria may have affected my sense of equilibrium. I sure hope this is temporary??

By merely tapping my chest (he couldn t make me cough because my head would have tumbled off, a red hot cauldron of pain) he also diagnosed a beginning .... pneumonia, in this country where the temperature never come below 24....... I've stopped asking questions. So I am taking more antibiotics, on top of the ones that had already been given over the past two months. What can I do, herbal medicine does not seem a viable option in this germ-infested country.....

Last Friday I thought I was well enough to go over to the office and check my e-mails. The results were not great: I was assured by all that I looked like a living corpse, and had to go home after less than two hours, exhausted. The few e-mails I wrote were in the most atrocious French that I had managed since my arrival here a year ago according to a trusted friend and colleague. Moreover, one e-mail, a reply to Headquarters, was apparently so bad-tempered and bordering on the abusive (usually they are only bad-tempered...) that it had to be overruled by my boss, as he most obligingly told me a few days later when he paid me a visit at home. The lesson is clear: I am now under strict instructions by doctor, boss and wife alike to do absolutely nothing and let my body and brains recuperate until further order.

Anyway, that's also the end of this family's little experiment with no preventative drugs (which are not harmless either) but treat as you go, as many people do here. This malaria attack was vicious, and with a lesser doctor than good old PYL , where would I have been.... (that French Embassy shit-for-brains comes to mind again...) We'll all go back on Savarin.

16 November 2005

A tribute to George Ng.

Here's yet another story about how people die here.

Last Saturday 12 November a beloved 46-year old local colleague of ours, George Ng., a technical assistant paid by us through a project but in the service of the government and the people of his native country, succumbed, after a week-long struggle, to the number-one cause of death here: AIDS.

(I had wanted to write about it earlier, but right on the day the day George died, I fell quite badly ill myself with a worse than expected case of malaria. Now that I am up on my feet again myself - though not much more than that, if I am to believe the doctor, I can say a bit more about it. Plenty of time all of a sudden too, since I am under official - and A.'s -instructions not to do a snippet of work until further order so as to recover fully from my bout of malaria.)

About George Ng. now: George was the coordinator of a project meant to support the National Authorising Officer (NAO), that is the Minister appointed by the government to coordinate all aid contacts with us and to sign on behalf of it regarding the aid we provide. If I wanted to be sarcastic I could say something about the fact that the NAO needs an extra support project to lead him through our labyrinthine procedures, but let s be kind and say that the support project is to help the NAO and his services with the financial volumes involved (remember: > 100 MEUR per five years) and the technical specificity of our projects that necessitate the extra help, which is true too. Moreover we re building local capacity and blablabla

After the May 2005 elections, ministerial posts had of course to be changed in an obscure musical chairs game of sincere willingness to reform and the good old jobs-for-the-boys routine. Anyway, the relatively competent and certainly very cooperative NAO we had went out, and in came a new one that has only been trouble for us ever since, blocking projects for trivial reasons etc. (sorry, can t elaborate on that now here, maybe the day he (or I) gets fired...). He also started to exert tremendous pressure, indeed harassment, on George - we suspected with the intention to replace him with one of his own pals, as Georges job is relatively well paid. And thus, within a matter of months , we saw George changing from a calm and reliable force into a nervous wreck.

The stress must then have unleashed the Aids virus in his blood, which in its turn may have triggered a cerebral malaria and a meningitis. Or at least these were the three illnesses he was diagnosed with in the week following his collapse on Sunday 6 November, just back from a government business flight from Cameroon. He s been clinging onto life for another week but died in coma on Saturday 12 November.

A tragedy in itself, certainly personally and at the family level: George was a devout Christian and a devoted husband and father, apparently so much so that he married two women (local legislation permits up to four), so one can imagine the legal mess that is going to ensue. A double family doomed to poverty, in spite of the fact that we, his colleagues, will make, have already made, a financial gesture. But also - and to me: most of all - what a bitter waste of talent in a country where high quality human resources are so scarce.

Our own doctor in the Delegation, PYL, who is a project manager in my section, was absolutely wonderful, and has been supervising his treatment until the last moment. But the doctors of the Community Hospital: shocking. It appeared that they knew all along that George Ng. was HIV positive, and yet the social stigma of Aids is apparently so great that even the doctors withheld this information for a long time from our PYL. This delayed the administration of antiretroviral drugs for almost a week and has certainly contributed to Ng.'s untimely death.

Mind you, we're presently building a 3 million euro centre for ambulatory HIV/Aids treatment on the grounds of this very same hospital. When even the local doctors give in to to social stigmatisation of Aids, one can imagine the magnitude of the work we have ahead of us. Or rather the work they have ahead of them.

06 November 2005

Karaoke

Lest you should think our life here consists only of medical urgencies and profound reflections on life, death, and the state of the nation, I should let you know that we do make sure to regularly let our hair down here.

As I am writing this, my voice is still raw and my head still hurting after a raucous night in a popular restaurant (one of the three worthy of the name). We came back at 2.30 this morning. I thought we had left all this behind us long ago, but fortunately not. The name of the game was karaoke. It was tremendous fun, even though the repertoire was overwhelmingly French, silly songs from the fifties onwards, with Johnny Halliday seemingly the hottest thing on offer. I did some singing myself too: Lou Bega, Frank Sinatra, and Born to be alive with a friend. After initial objections A. did not seem too embarrassed ;)

Over the last few months our social life has been getting ever better. A. and I now have a fun crowd of friends, many with small children, partly anglophone in a shared need to escape our francophone surroundings every now and then. We needed some time to settle down, but are now into giving regular dinner parties etc., which is easier here because we have this marvellous advantage of enough domestic help to make it doable. Life out here is like in a village. It can be a bit suffocating sometimes, but it suits us well for the moment and we are enjoying it.

04 November 2005

Moral dilemmas

Last Thursday something awful happened which laid bare the moral dilemmas of working under the Vienna Convention (diplomatic rights and obligations). It also reminded me of a similar dilemma about non-intervention I was confronted with personally a few weeks ago.

I should start by telling you that the charming young française who recently frustrated my budding management efforts is no longer the section's latest acquisition. The position of most junior member has now been taken by another young expert, a 26-year old French economist, a bit of a cowboy and as enthousiastic and wild as a young puppy dog, he's all over the place.

On Thursday we sent Puppy Dog on a one-day mission, his first here, into the bush together with representatives of two other donors, government representatives, and an army escort to inspect a project set up to reincorporate ex-combatants (from the numerous past civil conflicts here) into society again. Massive efforts to which my employer makes large financial contributions at a centralized level, whereas the project itself, in this and other ccountries in the region, is managed by another large donor.
As the convoy returned from the project late afternoon they tried to catch up on time lost during the day in order to be back in the capital before dark (security). Roads in this country are most of the time riddled with potholes and/or not asphalted at all. This particular road has however been renovated recently, so they were travelling at great speed, like 130 km/h. Very dangerous, as high grass and shrubs grow right at the sides of the road due to poor road maintenance.* Often people on the road, including small children, step back into roadside bush until cars have passed and then come out again, frequently to be hit by the next car that they hadn't heard coming. However, that was not what happened in this particular instance. As the convoy was racing back to the capital, with an army car up front, they followed a left curve in the road, cutting it for marginal time gains and thus driving at high speed on the left hand side of the road in a curve with no visibility on oncoming traffic. Sure enough, an oncoming rickety old pick-up truck with 6-7 people standing in the back suddenly emerged on that same left lane. The lead car of the convoy swung back to the right hand lane. So did the second car in the convoy, with Puppy Dog and the government's representative in it. Nevertheless the oncoming pick-up truck also had to make a rash manoeuvre to avoid a head-on collision. It is not clear whether the people in the truck panicked and jumped offf the truck at the sight of the second car coming on, or whether they were simply thrown off because of the wild swings the driver had to make not to hit the convoy. I presume the latter. The result seems to have been ghastly as 6-7 people hit the asphalt at a speed of about 80 km/h. The convoy stopped about half a mile further down the road. Government and army people took a long while to deliberate, then finally, after much urging by the people they were accompanying, decided to send back one army car to see what had happened. They came back to report on several severely wounded, included somebody's skull split open, and a little girl with one or several limbs torn off. (Believe me, this is as sickening for me to write as it is for you to read.)
Our new colleague turns out to be a amateur firefighter with a training in first aid. As the clock was ticking precious minutes away, he insisted several times and with increasing frustration that he be allowed to go back and assist the wounded. This was flatly refused by the government representative, who cited security reasons and the fact that the mission was already running late as it was.... These same security reasons didn't stop him, urged on by the foreign mission, from sending the complete armed ascort to go and pick up the wounded - thus leaving the misssion unprotected anyway - and drive them in the back of their pick-up trucks to a nearby countryside medical post. The foreign mission hasn't actually seen the wounded, but to tell by the nature of the injuries reported by the army (which the government guy almost immediately tried to talk down as mere 'scratches'), there is little doubt in my mind that some people involved in the accident are almost certainly not going to survive their ordeal. Medical facilities here, and especially those in the provinces, are terrible, see my story about M.'s surgery. Driving somebody with a fractured skull to hospital in the back of a pick-up truck will certainly not do him any good. And then the little girl, and the others with equally terrifying injuries, jesus.
Obviously Puppy Dog came back to the office seriously upset that evening , so I sat him down and we talked about it. Of course I can understand his deep frustration. I had to praise the self-restraint he had shown by respecting the fact that formally he was under the host government's orders at the time of the accident and by not following his basic instincts and running half a mile back to help. I am not even sure it would have made much of a difference given the terrible medical care the injured would receive afterwards, or at least that was what I told him.
But ... somehow it doesn't feel right. I must admit that I am not even sure how I would have reacted myself and whether his decision not to ignore the government's man's orders to stay put was really the right thing to do. Honestly, I don't know, and I guess that counts against me, professionally.

It reminded me of another incident, a few weeks ago, that had nothing to do with traffic but everything with the principle of non-intervention. I intervened in my quality as a diplomat, with the reticent approval of my superior, at a police station on behalf of our nanny's half-brother (more on African family relations some other time), a small time magouilleur as far as I can tell with hindsight, involved in a dispute over unpaid bills dating back a few years ago. While in custody, he had been threatened with imminent execution that day by a notorious local thug (an army man, and therefore untouchable), aided and abetted by the police station guards who had just let him walk into the prison. He had been sent/hired by the party to which the nanny's brother owed money in order to speed up the paying of the bills. I went there just to make the point that his case was 'followed' by us and that I merely wanted to ascertain that he was, and would remain, in good health. After some negotiations, including a long, polite but tense phone conversation with the commander of thye police station, I managed to see him, after the guardians had initially denied he was even there. He was OK, not terribly comfortable of course but he seemed, unlesss I am mistaken, somewhat less impressed with the situation than our nanny and her sister.
Apparently my intervention helped, as he has been treated correctly afterwards, although he is still in custody without formal charges etcetera as far as I know. With the wisdom of hindsight however, I probably reacted too impulsively and with insufficient knowledge about the case, rushing to action when I saw the terror on our nanny's face when she told me about the death threat. We just can't get involved in every individual case, and this one was a rather doubtful one at that. But should I have waited for a complete file to be compiled while a death threat was issued by somebody quite capable of following up on it? I guess from a human point of view my intervention will be judged by some (and certainly the nanny, who was deeply grateful for it) as the right thing to do, but this one is almost certain to count against me professionally. So be it.

So, some lessons learnt:
1. A human life isn't worth much here, as I had already started to realise before. Completely innocent people's lives have quite possibly been ended or else ruined. I am almost sure that the government and army will not do anything for them, although messages will be passed on our part in this respect.
2. Working in the framework of international agreements and conventions, like the Vienna convention can give rise to terrible moral dilemmas. I'm sure there are thousands of examples out there, much more painful than the ones cited here. For instance, on a completely different, vastly vastly more awful level, Romeo Dallaire's experiences as a UN general during the Rwandan genocide come to mind. It's all part of the game, and of the career path that I have chosen. But it's difficult and will require all the sound judgment that I can muster.


* It makes you think of our efforts to renovate roads in the capital and elsewhere in this country. Most people here walk for lack of means, and asphalted roads make for comfortable walking. Driving behaviour is terrible here, and the rehabilitation will almost certainly lead to more victims as any new stretch of asphalt leads people to drive recklessly fast. The price of progress, I guess...

01 November 2005

Back from a break

Not surprisingly, the last couple of weeks had worn us out to the extent that we thought we needed a long break. We returned yesterday early morning, three days earlier than planned.

We spent a long rainy week (rainy season in Central Africa!) in Kribi at the seaside in Cameroon last week. As always when you book when you want to get away from it all, you think any place will be better than where you are, and one tends to overestimate the duration one needs. That's a mistake. Just getting away from our country of posting was good, but without sunshine even Kribi had not much going for it, apart from great food (tons of fresh shrimp, ahh) and lots of time for and with the children. What saved this holiday was the fact that a colleague who has a similar positiopn to mine for the same employer in a neighbouring country was staying in the same hotel that week. I had only seen him once before, but we and our families turned out to get along very well and to have lots of things in common in terms of age, family size and aspirations, outlook on life, work and life experiences etcetera. A. and I also discovered that for all the hardships of our posting, there are definitely places that are much worse (like theirs).

A. and I have come back refreshed. We got the stress related to our medical adventures with M. out of our systems. Also nice is the more intensive bonding with the children which I experience during leave. Especially R., our youngest, is growing up fast, becoming ever more mischievous. He's incredibly good natured: at 19 months he didn't cry even once all week. In fact he almost never cries. He is happy, laughing, very sociable, and playing the joker all the time. Strong-willed like the other two. Amazing. He and T. are thriving here in Africa. So is M., but somewhat less so as he is not enjoying his French school too much.

I came back intellectually reinvigorated as well, ready to start (and having actually started) reading again on my latest field of ever increasing interest - the Buddhist outlook on life - which I hadn't studied much since we left for our Summer break in July. Also ready to take on a number of issues at work. I am a bit puzzled at how one week of utter lethargy at the seaside can have such an energizing effect. OK I was tired but not that tired, was I, and just a week isn't all that long?
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