Self-isolation rolls on. I’m sure there are many like me that wake up and think, “Seriously, is this really happening?” I can honestly say that I’ve thought that same thing many times throughout my life. Usually though, it’s stuff that’s more or less only happening to me. To have such a collective WTF is quite different. Rather than looking around me and thinking, “You have no idea what is going on in my head right now”, I suspect that millions and millions have been thinking similar things. You see it in the Twitter posts, Facebook (I’m not on FB but I assume), etc. People will be unpacking this pandemic for years to come. We’re in the middle of a historical event. Those that are better off may be annoyed by some of the inconveniences but are certainly embracing certain aspects of it. Others who have lost loved ones, been sick themselves and/or lost livelihoods, lost savings likely don’t have much energy to spend on existential thoughts. For some, their lives have been devastated.
For now I’m more in the former category, though my job deals mostly with people in the latter category. It’s never been this bad in the nearly four years that I’ve worked in Somalia. Many don’t have time or energy to deal with a coronavirus. You pester them about respecting Covid-19 mitigation protocols and they just lost their home and belongings to the recent flooding. Or they have been inundated with the locusts. Or militant groups have arrested and beheaded their father. Or they lost their only child to malaria. There are many ways to die in Somalia. This is just a new one.
On a call earlier today with my leadership team they were talking about how many people sort of look at such things as fate. If Allah decides it's your time to go, so be it. You can't control it. They used the word "fate" several times. While I understand where that's coming from, what's not clear is where you draw the line. The same people that say these things also take medicine, visit doctors and do a lot of things that demonstrate that they are proactive in protecting human life. Seems to be an arbitrary line between accepting your lot and influencing it. I suppose we all do that to some degree.
I regularly get messages from local government officials from various parts of the country, even places where we don’t have a presence. They are appealing for assistance and it’s quite heart-breaking. I really would like for us to be able to do something but there simply aren’t enough resources to respond to everything. For now, international aid is hanging on but we’re all a bit concerned about the future. As governments increasingly focus on supporting needs in their own countries due to the pandemic, there is likely to be less of an appetite to maintain the same levels of support for other countries. We hope not and it might even be misguided to think that way. As has been said, the coronavirus anywhere is the coronavirus everywhere. Leaving poorer countries to fend for themselves may end up coming back to haunt the rich countries. So it might even be in their own self-interest. And a million dollars spent in a poor country (if spent wisely), has a far greater impact than a million dollars spent in a rich country. Just sayin’.
On a slightly different subject, though still work-related, the other
day I received a LinkedIn (for those that don’t know, a social network platform
generally focused on careers) request from a former staff. That, in and of
itself, is not unusual. I receive lots of those, some of whom are former staff.
What was unusual about it was that this particular staff was a guy who pulled
off a fairly bold heist as he abruptly left the organization.
Goodluck
It was 2007 and I was Field Coordinator working in refugee camps in NW Tanzania. Our office was located in the small town of Kibondo. We carried out a variety of activities in the four camps located near the border with Burundi. We had a rather large fleet of Land Cruisers and a few trucks. To supply these vehicles with fuel, we used a tanker truck to periodically go up the road to UNHCR, fill up and return to fill the fuel tank in our compound. One Saturday our supply chain guy by the name of Goodluck (kid you not) went to UNHCR to fuel up. It wasn’t that unusual to fuel up on a weekend though we normally did it during the week. The procedure was such that the truck pulled up to UNHCR, the guards would write down the vehicle plate number in the gate logbook and then the truck would pull forward to the fuel tanks. At the tanks there was another logbook where the attendant would measure the existing level of fuel in the truck to approximate the volume. Both the UNHCR staff and our staff would sign in the logbook. After fueling, they would measure again and write in the new number to confirm the amount of fuel taken. As the truck would exit the compound, the UNHCR guard would note the time of departure. Upon arrival at our compound, it was basically the same process in reverse.
On this occasion, however, upon arrival at the UNHC compound, the guard failed to recognize that the truck wasn’t in fact registered with our organization (or he was in on the deal). It wasn’t registered with UNHCR either. Goodluck had teamed up with some guy who owned a private tanker truck and proceeded to fill it up. As you can guess, he and his buddy exited the compound and drove off into the sunset with about 14 thousand liters of diesel fuel never to be seen again.
In most of the world, it would be hard to hide a large tanker truck. In Tanzania, you didn’t need to. Several days later we found out that he was in Mwanza, a town 370 kilometers away on the south end of Lake Victoria. We had notified the police when the incident happened and we notified them again when we received the tip as to where he was. The police informed us that they didn’t have the resources to pursue the criminals – that they would certainly follow up if we could cover all their costs. They were even kind enough to do the calculations for us. It was a rather large figure for something that was their job. Were it not for corruption, the affair could have been handled with a couple phone calls and very little effort by colleagues on the ground in Mwanza. But that’s not how it works in Tanzania unfortunately.
So Goodluck wants to be connected on LinkedIn? I’ll
pass. Maybe when Lake Victoria freezes over.
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