CEO Visit

After returning to Kenya, there was no rest. I was in the last stages of organizing a trip to Mogadishu with our CEO. At the same time, we were in full preparation for moving to a new apartment. To make matters worse, I came down with a bad stomach infection which stayed with me almost a full week. It was horrible timing.

I had to prioritize. The visit was top priority. Getting ready for the move would happen in small gaps in my schedule here and there, but I didn’t have the ability to put much energy towards it until the visit was over. The sickness just made everything more difficult. But I didn’t have the luxury of just staying in bed. I had no choice but to plug on.

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Organizing the visit was extremely complex. We had hosted him before back in 2018, which gave my team, most of whom were around back then, some experience with such a visit. I had hosted him in Burundi back in 2014, but that was a much different context and a lot has changed between then and now.

Making our way across Mogadishu

 

The initial discussion concerned the potential itinerary. Given the small window of time we had to deal with, it would be necessarily be a half-day of meetings in Nairobi (including a dinner with a group of ambassadors) followed by a day trip to Mogadishu, similar to what we did in 2018. But the security situation meant that we wouldn’t be able to visit the internal displacement encampments on the outskirts of the city as we did previously. We would need to focus on a hospital that we support followed by a meeting with the prime minister. We would then make our way to the office to meet and have lunch with staff.

Meeting with the Prime Minister

We would then make our way back into the “green zone” to have a couple of meetings with the UK, the UN and other important stakeholders. After these meetings, we would head back to the airport (including VIP treatment) and our evening flight back to Nairobi.

The hospital visit

 

Thankfully, it all went more or less according to plan. In fact, it was the first external visit I’ve had that was consistently ahead of schedule. That never happens. We had built in some extra time for navigating traffic and all of the police checkpoints. We had an inside connection with the government that enabled us to pass through these checks with far less hassle than normal. It made a huge difference and allowed us to spend less wasted time in the vehicles.

During the clinic visit, we were chatting with a 23-year-old woman who was having her baby checked. The baby was well below normal weight and the nurse asked her how many other children she had. She said this was her seventh. The CEO and I looked at each other with a bit of surprise. Seven children by the time she was 23. I realize that this is not terribly uncommon in Somalia. But it's always a tough thing to get my head around, particularly for someone who has almost no means to support herself.  

Meeting with staff

 

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It is always stressful given how much could go wrong over the course of a visit like this. There is so much that you can’t control. Thanks to years of experience doing this sort of thing, and years of experience with mostly the same team, we could quickly respond to obstacles as they appeared. It is satisfying to be at the helm of such a talented and effective group of professionals.

  

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On the flight back to Nairobi, I sat next to the CEO. We talked a bit but mostly absorbed ourselves in the tasks awaiting us on our respective tablets. I was exhausted after a day and a half of tense meetings and all of the organizing, but I wanted to push through a bit longer so that I wouldn’t have a ton of work awaiting me the next morning.

After we landed, we made our way through immigration. We said our farewells and I existed the terminal and located my awaiting taxi. Once in the car, I took a moment to exhale and think about all that I had been through over the past days and weeks. It’s been a lot, but I’m thankful that all of it has worked out so well.

Alas, more big challenges were awaiting. The move to the new apartment. On the heels of that, we would have a visit by my sister-in-law and her partner for the Christmas holidays. It would be full steam ahead to make sure we were ready to host and settle into our new place.