This Would Be Funny If It Wasn't My Life

Once again I find myself in a developing country in a situation that, if it were fictional, would be quite comical because of its ridiculousness. Two weeks ago I gained a team of six Haitian staff members. The hiring process was really painful; I think we did over 15 interviews and in the end didn't even have much choice in who we picked because the people we liked best were way out of our price range. So many of my six new staff members have never had a real job before, never mind managed teams of volunteers and senior members of the Haitian ministry of health. Which is exactly what they're going to have to do during this campaign. So literally on day two of their employment I assigned them to one of the six zones where we're doing the larviciding campaign, and on day three I sent them all to their zones to begin mapping and planning.

At the same time, we are supposed to be working "hand in hand" with the Ministry of Health on this project. Our contact there is a doctor who is approximately 70 years old, has very few teeth left, smokes probably a pack a day, and is next to impossible to understand (because, I suspect, of his lack of teeth). I've even watched a Haitian on the phone with him trying to understand him and failing. That made me feel a bit better. So I literally have to bring someone with me to meetings with him so they can attempt to translate for me. He, of course, thinks I'm a complete idiot because I need to someone to translate his French into French. He therefore talks to me like I'm five years old, which I resent, and then resent even more because I still can't understand him. He, in turns, yells at me for not doing things I never understood in the first place, but never admits to making any mistakes himself. Meanwhile there is information I've been asking from him for 3 weeks now that he promises "the next day" after every meeting and is never actually ready the next day.

None of this is surprising, but since this is not Peace Corps I actually have deadlines, and that's where the problem comes in. I've pushed this campaign back as many times as possible and now literally cannot push it back anymore. That means that as of Monday we're starting our trainings, then we have three days of "sensibilisations" in the communities, and then we have ten days of the actual activity. And then it's all over. AAAHHHH!!! So much needs to come together before all of this that probably won't. My team was in the office today and I had individual meetings with them each to see how things were progressing in their zones. It was utterly frightening the lack of work in some of them. Maybe it's a good thing that this job is in French because, as my family knows from observation, I can be a lot meaner in French. There was one guy in particular to whom I basically had to read the riot act. It's difficult, though, because I really can't afford to fire anyone, so I just have to put the fear of god in them and hope it works.

So anyway, the whole thing is quite frustrating because I HAVE to move ahead with this based on deadlines that were determined before I even arrived in the country. And everything definitely will not be at the level of readiness that I would prefer if I had all the time in the world. I told Justine today that three of the zones look pretty good, one looks ok, and two look horrible. How's a 50% success rate?

And on top of all of this, the trainings are being led by members of the Ministry of Health. And even if my life depended on it I don't think I could get them to all sit down together and actually plan a training. So instead they're all just winging it. Since we have three different trainings on the same day for three days in a row with three different trainers, god only knows which volunteers are going to get what information! I certainly won't! And that's not scary at all given that we're just teaching them how to put insecticide in people's water. O. M. G.

And if you could only hear me attempting to build morale and a sense of teamwork in my crappy French-with-only-three-tenses, nevermind trying to communicate over crappy mobile phone networks with my three tenses, you would understand just how funny/sad it is. Justine and I laugh a LOT, but mostly to keep ourselves from crying.

Also (it gets better). Justine and I hired an assistant who started the day before my new team. We were so excited about her and really fought for more money so we could hire her, etc, etc. She showed up the first day with her two cell phones (we gave her a third work phone) and proceeded to take personal phone calls about every 5 minutes. Whenever I saw her computer she was either chatting on yahoo messenger or facebooking. We would ask her to do simple tasks and she would leave (before the end of the work day) without having finished them or even having talked to us about them. We had a talk with her this past Monday night about our expectations and hoped things would improve (although we doubted it). Meanwhile I had told her last week that during the actual larviciding campaign she was going to have to cover for one of my staff members who was going to have to miss three days to take her nursing exams that only happen once a year. She said nothing at the time, but I could tell she wasn't happy. During the meeting I had today with her and that staff member she told me, in front of the staff member, how she could not cover for her while she was gone. I told her we would talk about it later and when we did, after much questioning and beating around the bush, she told me that it wasn't her job. When I asked her what she thought her job was she said "supervising the team." And I said yes and that this, too, was supervising. During lunch she wrote an email to Justine and copied me (why to Justine I don't know) telling us point blank that the job was beneath her position and that she can't cover for this staff member and that we'll have to find someone else to do it. I told her we would talk about this with Justine when Justine got back. Well, Justine got back after the assistant had to leave for a meeting I sent her to, so we were all waiting (HR included) for her to get back from the meeting so we could get her in line with how unacceptable all of this is. We waited, and waited, and waited and assumed there was loads of traffic (as there always is in PaP). Finally at 7:00 the driver came back - you guessed it - without the assistant. She had asked him to drop her off at her house (which isn't allowed before 8:30) and hadn't communicated anything to us about not coming.

*** Update *** I wrote all of the above yesterday. Today, after showing her that in her contact it says she has to cover for staff members in their absence and her still refusing to do it, we fired her. After ten days of work. That in and of itself was an experience. She made sure to insult me as much as possible during her firing, despite the fact that I wasn't the one telling her she was fired, and then proceeded to not accept the money for the days she had worked because she wanted to be paid for her entire contract. She wouldn't even take the letter that said her contract had been terminated and eventually just left to talk to her lawyer. She called this evening and is coming by tomorrow afternoon to get her letter. We're not sure if this also means she is accepting her money for the ten days she worked. This should be interesting! ***

The silver lining to this ridiculous project is that I've had the chance now to go out in the field with each new staff member and to see their zones a little bit. Yesterday I spent a few hours in one of the biggest camps that is right in front of the destroyed Palace of Justice. That was intense, but made me realise how much I miss being out and interacting with the population. I got to high five a lot of kids, a lot of people called me white and I didn't even get mad, and I got to see a little of life in the camps. So it was all good. Granted I almost had heat stroke by the end and don't remember the last time I sweat that much, but it was good all the same.

So tomorrow is my last chance to get all of the details in place for our trainings that start on Monday. And boy oh boy is that a scary thought! There is so much that needs to be done and so much I am relying on my staff members for, and that is also pretty scary. Please cross all of your fingers and toes for me because this project needs all of the help and luck I can get here. My life as I know it is basically over until the end of the first week of October, so I apologise if I'm totally MIA, which I probably will be. If I live to tell the tale I will eventually update, but probably not before I take a well deserved break.

Go go Gadget Larviciding!