How I ended up in Africa

Back in October, shortly after returning to Dallas to lay low for a bit to relax from all my travels (tough life, I know), I applied for a job with Doctors Without Borders (known worldwide as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF). Yes, I am aware that I'm not a doctor, but they didn't know that.

Okay, actually they did. They hire lots of non-medical types to do all the stuff that supports their medical work in the field. This includes engineers, who are often hired to work as logisticians or coordinators. Travel for work? Use my engineering background for the good of mankind? Seems like a good deal to me!

I was invited for an interview at the U.S. headquarters in New York City in December (first cut in the recruitment process). It went pretty well, I thought, though I was a bit skeptical of how I'd performed during the technical test I had to take so they could see if I had any idea of what I was doing.

Turns out I did know what I was doing, at least enough to make that cut (the second). After they dug a bit deeper into my background, I was invited (third cut) to their "Info Days" in March, which is a three-day meet-and-greet, get-to-know-each-other-better, informational workshop with a bunch of other candidates, both medical and otherwise.

About a week later, I got the email welcoming me into their "active pool of candidates"
(fourth cut!). Basically, since their needs in the field are always changing, they maintain a pool of personnel they can draw from as needed. Then it becomes a waiting game for your first assignment. The wait can be very short if they immediately have a need that you match with better than anyone else, or it can be quite long if they have a lot of people with similar qualifications. Speaking French is a great qualification, because a lot of the countries they work in are French-speaking. I, for better or worse, do not speak French. Thus, I settle in for a long wait.

Skip ahead a couple of months. After my trip to Alaska (see previous post), I drove back to Dallas to spend some brief family time before driving up to Connecticut for an early June wedding and then down to North Carolina to stay with extended family for the summer. On day two of the drive, Thursday May 31st, I check my email to find that MSF may have a brief (three months as opposed to the typical nine to twelve months) assignment for me in Juba, South Sudan. The catch? They need someone who can leave very, very soon. We talk on the phone and I say something along the lines of "you couldn't have possibly called a more suitable candidate." I can barely contain my excitement, but I have to remind myself that it may not work out. They still need to confirm the match with the office in Geneva.

So I spend the weekend hanging with long lost friends in Connecticut, getting tipsy and telling everybody who asks "what's new?" all about it.

It takes until Monday the 4th to get final confirmation, and on Tuesday the 5th I pick my buddy Kevin Hawk up from work. We drive to the train station, and he takes my car back to his place for storage during my absence. Several meetings at the New York office, eight vaccinations (and three follow-up doses in a tiny cooler), and only 6.5 days after learning of such a possibility, I find myself on a flight to Geneva, Switzerland for more briefings.

Geneva is nice, but expensive as hell and I'm busy in meetings and more exhausted than I can ever remember being without running 26.2 and it's raining off and on. I spend my little down time resting and getting my affairs in order. Part of my time is also spent lamenting the loss of my camera, which I left in a chair at Heathrow Airport the previous day and only realized the mistake once at my hotel in Geneva. But not all is lost! Heathrow has an online lost and found database, and tonight (the 10th) I found a camera matching the description of mine that was reportedly lost two days after I was there. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one, but in the meantime (meaning until I return to the States), my phone will have to fill in unless I find a replacement locally.

6:30am Saturday June 9th, I leave my hotel for the airport. A short stop in Brussels and I'm on my way to Africa! It only took twelve freaking years!

I was supposed to go to Zimbabwe in the summer of 2000 to work on a school project, but the trip was cancelled due to a swelling in political unrest. We had been preparing for weeks, had already gotten vaccinations and had even written the first drafts of our initial project reports. "Utterly devastated beyond my ability to comprehend" would not be an overstatement of my feelings at the time, nor those of the twenty or so others who were also scheduled to go. A consolation trip to Namibia the next year was cancelled due to some less tumultuous inconvenience. "Bummer." A South Africa trip for World Cup 2010 was cancelled because my friends, who I had been telling for 3+ years to save up money so we could all go, and who more or less assured me it wouldn't be an issue, said they couldn't afford it. "Strike three!"

It's currently 10:35pm on Sunday June 10th, and I am in the MSF guesthouse in Kampala, Uganda. Tomorrow morning I meet up with my "mentor" to start a week of training before I fly to my three-month assignment in Juba. Once there, I will have a few days with my predecessor before I am left to serve solo as manager of an MSF automotive workshop. It will be immensely challenging, often frustrating, sometimes frightening, and 100% amazing.