30 January 2006

Silly

Friday night A. had a ladies' night out with her crowd of friends. I went for a drink and a meal with the husband of one of these women, who's also the head of a French development agency here (the militant atheist and expert on early Christianity I have mentioned before). We ended up in the same restaurant as A. and her friends, though they were in a different room. We set up a little prank: we asked two of the barmaids to come and walk with us into the room where A. and her friends were, hugging and cuddling us, doing the deuxième bureau act. And so it went. A. was sitting with her back to the entrance, so didn't notice us immediately, but two of her friends in front of her looked very shaken, especially as the atheist and I pretended to be shocked at seeing them, and acting as two unfaithful husbands caught red-handed. A silly joke, I know, I know, but a good laugh nevertheless.

Another quite amusing incident took place yesterday. We had been invited to join a picnic in the countryside by the French club (a feat of successful integration!). We drove out in convoy. In front of us was A.'s French teacher, a pretty woman in her twenties at the Alliance Française, whom I had just been introduced to. She was standing in the back of a pick-up truck with some friends. When the convoy picked up speed the wind blew up her skirt, exposing her two very well-formed buttocks only nominally clad in an exquisite string you would not normally expect out in the bush. She had great trouble restraining the skirt during the rest of the ride to the picnic. Of course I thoroughly enjoyed the view. The teacher looked quite embarassed afterwards and didn't come near me during the picnic...

There seems to be a sudden surge in journalistic interest from abroad (well, France..) in the country. We had a journalist from Le Monde a week ago, and I was interviewed yesterday at the picnic by two other journalists, one for RFI radio, the other for La Libération. Must be because of French military involvement in addressing armed bandits in the North of the country.

27 January 2006

Alea iacta est

I have finally sent in the application for that MSc study. A.'s supportive attitude helped a lot for me to actually do it, and so did my boss', who offered to be 'lenient' during exam periods. Puppy Dog, who considered doing one of the programme's courses himself, has decided not to, and has subsequently been a complety tactless oaf by depicting CeFiMS as an obscure and overcharging (well, I could agree with that) establishment nobody's ever heard of ('why don't you take a MSc with a more reputable institute, like the London School of Economics'). Just the kind of thing you want to hear when you're about to spend a small fortune and to commit yourself for more than 1100 hours of precious private time...

The application is not completely final yet: CeFiMS first need to make me an 'offer' on the basis of the information I have provided, and then I'll have to send them a ton of certified copies and certified translations of diplomas, plus a ton of money of course. Not sure where I will get the paperwork certified in the middle of nowhere, I will probably have a go at it myself with a few impressive looking stamps we use at the office...

The nice thing is that my plans have inspired A. to start some distance learning herself, so we would be cosily studying together in the evenings. She is still looking at the various options available.

Things have calmed down politically for the moment, we've had no mention of further incidents over the past week. Part of that is also due to a lack of information on what is going on in the hinterland. The country keeps happily endebting itself ever further, paying state salaries with money borrowed at completely unsustainable rates (between 10% and 18% on an annual basis; you can get your car financed cheaper than that!). The IMF should decide today on a new post-conflict program for the country, but even that will not substantially change things (just 4 million dollars or so, and a loan at that. We may be slow in disbursing but what we give is aall grant money.). The only way out is for the country is to get its act together as regards running their own public finances, in particular in raising revenues. Which is one of the reasons why we are here. Another reason is public health: I attended a seminar on the AIDS problem this morning, and heard some ghastly new figures: in our host country, on a population of only 3,5 million, in 2005 alone 274 000 children lost one or both parents to AIDS.

I am in charge of the office these days, as the boss and three of the other heads of section have left for a seminar in Brazzaville to discuss programming for 2008-2013.

I shouldn't forget to mention the latest thing that is making our life more comfortable: we are among the first people here to receive have South African cable television, including a host of English and Hindi TV channels. It's nice to be watching BBC out here. This afternoon we had our first little argument with M. over Cartoon Network.

All in all a good week then.

20 January 2006

Hesitating...

Still tergiversating about that study. Inscription time is now.

I have passed all week studying in the evenings, using a book on Public Expenditure Management available for free online, just to get a taste of what it's like, after all those years, and to see whether this ambitious plan of mine is feasible. The easy part is going home earlier and spend the extra time with the family. But then: sitting down to study for two more hours, plus a lot more during weekends, is OK when you're just back from a refreshing holiday, but I guess it will be something different during the times of year when I am at the end of my tether. On the other hand there is no doubt in my mind that it is going to be tremendously relevant to my work, and it will be fun to be much more knowledgeable in something as omnipresent as public administration (I still can't believe that I find something I would have found utterly boring ten years ago, so fascinating right now). It's the intensity that bothers me a bit, given the fact that work is intensive enough as it is. I should probably lower my ambitions and take longer than just two years to do the whole program.

I'll turn forty in less than two months, jeez! I should start thinking about how to celebrate it. Don't hide, but face it, throw a big party.

We're most probably going on a one-week tour to a game reserve in the north of the country, with our neighbours and their two children, who have become good friends of ours. The idea is that The women and the children would travel there by plane, whereas jean and I would rough it out in our fourwheel drive, 2 days up and 2 days down, security permitting of course. I am all excited about the prospect of a full four days on the road in the provinces, as my job normally does not involve much travelling in country. In my more sarcastic moments I sometimes joke that for me a field mission here means getting out of my office to visit a Ministry 3 minutes away.

A. is getting enviably fit, as she has running at least 4 times a week with a friend of hers. And it shows, she looks taut and trim. I really ought to get moving again myself...

18 January 2006

Out of the blue

Yesterday, all of a sudden, an interview in a local newspaper with a rebel leader we had never heard of. He turns out to be the son of a general and minister who served under the previous regime a decade ago. And yes, he wants the president to step down and will use armed force if need be. No idea yet how seriously to take this guy, we've had fakes in the recent past.

16 January 2006

On good intentions and past lives

Last week I managed to stick more or less to my good intention to cut back on excessive overtime. Not giving in to real or perceived peer pressure is the hardest part. However his first week I have been able to stand my ground, and as a result I have been putting the children to bed and playing chess with M. in the evenings a lot more than before. The chess playing may actually turn into a source of embarrassment for me before long, given the quick progress M. is making and the poor player I have always been.

Another reason why I try to cut back on overtime is to see if I can actually reserve time for studying in the evenings and weekends. In spite of the worklaod I read quite a bit here, certainly a lot more than in Brussels or Lith, and I am now seriously considering using that time for going back to university, through distance learning. The Center for Financial and Management Studies at London University offers a MSc program in Public Policy and Management that looks interesting and extremely relevant to my present line of work. It’s becoming ever clearer that good (financial) governance is the condition sine qua non for any way out of the misery developing countries are confronted with. This is especially true of our host country, where the rot of corruption, nepotism and incompetence has been eating away at the fabric of society for decades. The poor management of their public finances will probably even disqualify them for budgetary aid from most major donors in the near future, including us, which would send them into a terrible downward spiral. So the need for better governance is obvious, and so is the need for solid expertise on governance, especially financial governance.

Public Policy and Management is a long haul away from my original academic interests, and if I ever won the lottery I would probably return, sooner or later, to studying utterly useless ancient languages and their literatures for the rest of my days. But my present job has been an eye-opener in that I have developed a sincere interest, have even grown passionate, about governance issues. (Well, OK, I also long to be studying again, just for the pleasure of it. I’ve always been bookish; I guess that taking up an extremely practical study like this, with a very heavy economic component, is a good way to satisfy this need and to make myself useful at the same time.)

Not that it will be easy: as a humble classical philologist, I don’t think I can claim to be particularly gifted in such hard-core subjects as economics, accountancy, budgeting, etc.. (The latter is a euphemism that will cause roaring laughter among friends and relatives who know me well…), and it will be very hard work for me. It won’t be cheap either: 11.000 euros, blimey, for about two years of study, not including travel expenses for exams etcetera. But what makes me hesitate the most is the investment of time that is required, about 20 hours a week for a series of seven intensive 2-month courses spread over 2-3 years. A. is supportive of the idea, though of course with some reservations as to possible intrusions on family life. My boss (sober again…) was quite positive and supportive, and so are some other people whose advice I asked.

On a different note: I recently said that my only hang-up with Buddhism was my incapacity to believe in reincarnation, even though this does not upset my belief in the usefulness of leading an ethical life. Soon after, I started to read a general academic introduction on Buddhism, which mentioned in its discussion of reincarnation the work of a professor Ian Stevenson, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, on cases ‘suggestive of reincarnation’. I have purchased two of his books and a book by a sympathetic but critical journalist, Tom Shroder, who followed Stevenson on two of his travels to Lebanon and India. After reading the latter book and a preliminary perusal of the other two, I haven’t suddenly become a 100% believer, but I guess it is only a matter of intellectual honesty to at least suspend my judgment on the matter. Over four decades, Stevenson has collected about 2500 (!) cases of children in different parts of the world speaking in detail of previous lives. He was able to track down details about the life of the claimed previous personalities, and in hundreds of cases the children had birthmarks that could be linked to the reported death of the previous personality. He argues that rebirth is probably the best hypothesis to explain such phenomena. Food for thought, to say the least.

I briefly brought up the matter of possible native beliefs in reincarnation in the country with a native person of our host country at a lunch we attended today. He explained to me that that there are over 150 different ethnic groups in this country, and that even within and the same ethnic group there are varieties. He thought there were indeed also beliefs. There are also interesting food taboos among some groups, such as a taboo on eating … chicken (first time I have ever heard of it). And then there’s the omnipresent belief in sorcery and witchcraft, on which I am collecting a file of newspaper clippings which is already growing quite fat. We are sitting on an anthropological goldmine here; I really should do something with it. Perhaps I will tell you one day about a few salient cases in this blog.

12 January 2006

Mayhem and booze

'I was wrong when I said in my latest entry that the 'rogue elements of the Presidential guard came to the police office, took the man out of his cell and without much further ado killed him on the spot'. It turns out that there was considerable further ado, in that they invested time and effort to beat the man senseless, stab him repeatedly, cut off his private parts, and finally shoot him to a pulp with a Kalashnikov. A newspaper picture showed the corpse in the morgue, brains bulging out of a crack in the skull. Sorry for adding these disgusting details, but it shows the bestiality of the people involved.

If the above is hard to read, just imagine what it must have been to actually witness the scene, as did Amour, our nanny. She happened to be at the gendarmerie to follow up on her own trouble with the army when the Presidential Guard people came storming in. The policemen inside were so scared of them that they fled the precinct and ran onto the street barefooted. Amour was deeply traumatised about what she saw. Yet another element in this dense African life of hers.

So much for the rule of law in this country. The government has remained as good as silent on the incident. It shows that no-one really controls these murderous and, as it now turns out, sadistic elements, and that the population is rightly scared to death of them. I cannot yet foresee the consequences of the incident (which comes on top of many previous incidents), but they may eventually be severe in terms of our assistance. A dilemma I have talked about before: a whole population taken hostage by a few.

Something unpleasant happened yesterday afternoon: my boss, myself and other colleagues had a meeting with the representatives of the major French development agencies in town, and I noticed that there was something odd to my boss's behaviour. He turned out to be quite tipsy after a lunch that according to a colleague who had been there had been 'bien arrosé'. I had noticed before that he is a heavy consumer, but he never seemed affected by it. This time he definitely was: he spoke with a noticeable slur, repeated himself and he lost his balance once while seated (!) as he gesticulated with his hands. He also nearly tripped over a chair when he got up to answer the phone. Furthermore he made an important factual mistake in his presentation.

It sounds funny, but it really wasn't. He's someone I respect and sympathize with, even though I have been disagreeing with him on certain issues lately. The situation got embarrassing as the guys in front of us seemed to understand exactly what was going on. Word will get around on this, and it will not help our credibility. Perhaps somebody should cautiously raise the isssue with him (like 'please get pissed in your own time'). Let's hope this was a one-off incident?

07 January 2006

Welcome home!

What a great holiday we've had, with a very full schedule. Highlights: our Hindu wedding ritual of course, but also some great get-togethers with friends and relatives. Too bad we didn't manage to see all the friends we had hoped to meet.
All my mothers children and their families were together for Christmas, a rare occasion. The New Years Eve party we were invited to by friends was heartwarming, especially when some other friends, who to my initial disappointment were supposed to go elsewhere, came party-crashing on us. Meeting with my old teacher and friend from Nijmegen was great. I also caught up with some ex-colleagues from Leiden University. One of them had made a far-reaching, extremely courageous personal decision, that seemed logical and natural to me once I met her.

We're back in Africa since yesterday after an uneventful but most uncomfortable trip. R. is becoming ever bigger, but as he is not yet 2 years old, he can’t have his own seat. The plane being full to the brim, we had to hold him all night, duh! We almost didn’t sleep, something I don’t take well at all, it’s real torture to me. Put me in Guantanamo Bay with sleep deprivation for 48 hours and I’ll confess to being Bin Laden himself!

This time the family is divided in its feelings about coming home. M.’s sentiments against our stay in Africa and for our staying in Holland forever have flared up over the past week. I am afraid that his idea of life in Holland is a little out of touch with reality. Our efforts to make him understand that children in Holland have to go to school too and that they do not have unlimited access to the Nickelodeon and Jetix kids TV channels, have been a conspicuous failure ;). A. too is lukewarm about returning this time, although she thinks it will pass. T. on the other hand is as happy as a lark, and so is R. I myself came back reinvigorated, but the news of new trouble in our host country has dampened some of the enthusiasm.

In the night of 2-3 January an army officer from the President’s tribe (Gbaya) was killed in a fight over a woman with a fellow army officer from the tribe of one the president’s most hated personal enemies (Mandja). The latter sought refuge with the UN representative (the Senegalese with the reproductive prowess) but was denied access and instead handed over to the police. Some rogue elements of the Presidential guard came to the police office, took the man out of his cell and without much further ado killed him on the spot. The Mandja quartiers of the capital have since been in turmoil.
The episode brings to the fore deep divisions within the army. If the tensions take an ethnic twist, an element that was so far lacking or in any case not very prominent, then that is definitely a turn for the worse, as ethnic conflicts in Africa are so much bloodier than others. But let´s not jump to conclusions and wait.
In the meantime however A. and I have started preparing emergency stocks of water, pasta, canned fish etc., just in case things turn nasty and we can't leave the house for some time.
I have come back with the firm intention (as usual, I hasted to add) to cut back on overtime and spend more time with the family and on evening reading. The firmness of this intention will be put to the test this week as we are drowning in all sort of internal reporting obligations to HQ, deadline end of the week.
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