In Which It's Time To Sink Or Swim
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 05/Nov/2010 18:37, 34 days ago
Every day is bonfire day here, given that some of our neighbours burn their rubbish 24/7. Given a choice between burning and dumping it in the river, which would you choose?The fireworks come in a non-traditional form. Yesterday I quit. Not VSO, per se, just my placement here. But my first day without work looks a lot like the 40+ preceding it, and that is precisely the point. I wrote a long (2500 word) letter to Theresa explaining why I wanted out. Copying in our Country Director here and my Placement Advisor in the UK, I talk about how I have tried for 6 weeks to establish myself here, but have been met with nothing but resistance. How I have pleaded to be involved in anything and everything, but been told nothing is going on. How I have asked if there are meetings, told there aren’t any, and then been miffed to discover there are...but I’ve now missed them. How I was berated yesterday for not attending a meeting (I know, the irony) only to respond withDid you tell me there was a meeting? Did anyone?and a pointed look when a reluctantNo...is all they can come up with in reply. How I feel under constant threat here without the support of a partner organisation. How being the only white face allowed to walk around town (none of the NGO workers are encouraged to do this) makes me a target, and how I think it’s really sad that the only place I feel happy and safe here is at home in my compound. How, ultimately, I am fed up after treading water for a month and a half, so now it's time to sink or swim. Yohannes responds to the email so that is it: with confirmation that the ball is now in VSO’s court,I decide not to return to the hospital ever again.Today I get up and go to work with Vasile instead. She is driven in, so I hitch a ride and have a nosy at her office just for something to do. While we’re waiting for others to show up, my phone rings, and it is Yohannes again, following up. We have a long, slightly circular chat in which I explain my point again. I am not willing to stay at the DHMT here. I am not willing to stay in Kenema. I do not want to be moved to another province. I wanta placement in Freetown or I want to go home. I know that this limits my options drastically but I have to put my foot down somewhere. Unlike some of the older VSOs, I have a career to think about, and a year dossing round Salone is going to be hard to explain on the CV. Unfortunately some of this falls on deaf ears. Would I be willing to consider staying in Kenema if a certain member of staff was ‘dealt with’? No...and although I knew the guy in question had had problems elsewhere, if VSO did why did they think a placement here was a good idea? If it’s about the social life, would I bewilling to go to Makeni – there they have huge problems with Malaria because everyone goes out every night...? Not really selling it to me. In the end we leave it that he will look at some options and get back to me next week. I’m not super hopeful. I’m not sure if it works for or against me that they’ve lost two people this week (a fellow health volunteer and a member of office staff have both quit in unrelated incidents). I mention that I’ve heard lots of volunteers in Freetown are slightly under-worked to say the least, and get a quite defensive reply that this is often down to the volunteers’ expectations and them having wider skills than the placement requires. That’s really not the point: I don’t have to use my whole repertoire of skills here, but I would quite like to be busy for, oh, 6 of the 8 hours a day I’m expecting to work, even if it’s doing the same 2 things over and over again. I’m after quantity of work more than quality if I can’t have both.So, feeling worse after the conversation than before, I bid farewell to Vasile and am all set to walk back to town when the driver sees me and insists on offering me a lift. No complaints there. He drops me at Choitram’s so I can get us food for tonight (we’re having a gourmet feast of baked beans on toast followed by cake) and then I walk home from there. It’s cloudy and I’m all out of new books to read (with the exception of the Bible and prayer book left by Maria) so it’s an afternoon in front of thecomputer for me. So NOT what I came here for.