[Maro] Early Days
on M&S Diary (Sierra Leone), 23/Aug/2006 15:30, 34 days ago
EARLY DAYSMONDAY 21st AUGUSTWe have been here a week– it feels much longer. I am sitting on our bed under the mosquito net, which hangs precariously from the curtain rail, the corner of a cupboard door and a rusty nail in the ceiling – we’ve still got some home-making to do. The generator is whirring outside, providing power for the single neonstrip light in our room. Voices chatter and shout in the street below. I have just cooked a pot of dahl on our kerosene stove – my favorite comfort food – I think a lot of it is going to be eaten over the next year.I have had quite a productive day. I am surprised– given how overwhelmed I felt after having been given my orders by my line manager Alice last week. Alice is VSO’s programme manager for participation and governance. She is also in charge of HIV/AIDS mainstreaming – the project area I am working on. Alice is a hardworking, determined and direct African woman – a force to be reckoned with. “Develop us a workplace policy on HIV and AIDS” she told me before she left for a conference in Ghana. It was explained that I would then go on to work with VSO’s partners – mostly youth-based organizations – and the district councils in three rural provinces. Quite what I’ll be doing with all these different people I am yet to discover.So I spent the end of last week and today devising workshop material and working on a draft policy. I think I finally got somewhere this afternoon.TUESDAY 22nd AUGUSTI spent today at the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa-Sierra Leone (SWAASL). My time in Sierra Leone is to be split. I will spend half of it working with SWAASL and the other half with the VSO programme office and Alice. SWAASL run a drop-in centre for vulnerable and HIV positive women in the centre of Freetown. They provide medical support, food, counseling, advice and training for the women who come to them. They are also involved in campaigning on violence against women and lobbying the government to pass new legislation on issues around HIV/AIDS. SWAASL operates out of a few small rooms and is run by a handful of dedicated staff and volunteers. I spent most of the day with Marie who heads up the organization– another amazingly hardworking and focused woman. She told me that not only has she not had a single day off for over a year but also has four children and runs a small business to support them all. I think she is going to be a great person to work with.I go home via the VSO office to find an email waiting for me from the head of VSO’s HIV/AIDS unit in London. I wrote to her to enquire about resources available for training and workplace policy development. She is wondering why I have been asked to develop a workplace policy when VSO has constructed an international policy and specifically instructed programme offices NOT tocreate their own individual policies. She also forwards a document written by the director of the Sierra Leone programme office outlining their workplace policy on HIV/AIDS. Ahhh. So much for my productive day yesterday. I leave feeling frustrated at four days wasted work. Alice and Chals (the programme office director) aren’t back until next week. So I wont be able to resolve the situation until then. Oh well – tomorrow is another day.