21 January 2007

Rachel B.


Yesterday we buried Rachel B., a local woman who was until July 2006 part of a support unit to the Ministry of Economy to manage European aid. She then left for Libreville in Gabon for a job with the Economic Community of central African States. She died lonely and far away from her friends and family from a burst bloodvessel in her brain at only 48 years old. After George Ng., whom I wrote about on 16 october 2005, she’s the second of the three local members of that unit to die prematurely, and her death presents another blow to the few competent national cadres of integrity this country has. She was much respected, as the massive turn-out for her funeral shows.

Last week was very difficult. The first week after coming back had been fine, it was fun to get into the routine. But tension built quickly after a few run-ins with the boss (one on me recruiting a local agent whom he did not want to manage european experts – not the first time he displays doubtful prejudices; one on the upcoming assessment and promotion exercise: I told him I saw room for improvement for its conduct, which had been far from perfect last year.) These would normally have been fairly trivial incidents of everyday office life, but the absence of A. and the children was getting the better of me for four or five days and didn’t do much good to my tolerance to other, work-related irritations, and I felt terrible. Part of the hardship of this post, I'll just have to live with it. I am feeling better again.

Good things happened as well though. I’ve started walking Sammy more regularly. Today I lost its leash somewhere high up on the hill, it must have fallen from my pocket. This meant that I had to allow the dog to walk free for the rest of the hike. I was initially nervous about him and harshly corrected him whenever he so much as looked at passers-by. Two office colleagues who had come along told me to take it easy and just let the dog do its thing, and they were right. Sammy actually listens quite well. It was a nice walk. Furthermore, yesterday was a nice and lazy day: spent all day reading Jan Siebelink’s ‘Engelen van het duister’, the sequel to ‘Knielen op een bed violen’, and equally a masterpiece on moral decay and the vagaries of human nature. Dutch literature really has a lot to offer. In the evening a colleague had arranged for dinner in the capital’s only Chinese restaurant, and we had a lovely, light-hearted evening with nice food and some good laughs among colleagues who get along well. A group of French soldiers accompanied by guitar were singing melancholic Breton and other songs, and did so quite beautifully.

Amour, the nanny who was with us for over two years, went to work with a colleague of mine after A. and the children left in June. She was fired for theft, caught red-handed, within two months. She was accused of theft very early on during our stay here, when A.'s necklace was stolen. All fingers pointed at her, but as we could not be sure it had been her (outside people had been in our house as well), we didn’t want to fire her. Maybe we should have: her reaction after having been caught by my colleague’s wife eerily resembled her behaviour two years ago with us.

I’ve started working with people of the Ministry of Rural development on a plan to pay two years of arrears (2001-2003; the cotton firms owing the money went bust) to small coton producers out of our budgetary aid. It’s a problem that I first learnt about two years ago. I immediately suggested we include it in our budgetary aid, and suffered some ridicule over it, as it had never been done before. Usually we just pay the money into the Treasury after certain conditionalities have been met (or waived…), and the government is then free to spend it, which is usually on salary arrears for its improductive state officials. These cotton producers have actually worked hard for their money and truly produced something. Moreoever the money (4 million euros) will go to the provinces for once instead of to the capital. It will not save the country, but will give some encouragement to almost 100.000 rural families in extremely poor conditions. I am happy and, silently, a little proud that I managed to push the operation through in spite of initial scepticism. It'll be a hell of a job though to actually get the money to those families, in a country riddled with corruption and highway banditry.

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