I’m afraid there’s not too much to report from last week.
Wednesday was Independence Day and then we had an all Carter Center staff
meeting on Thursday so Monday and Friday were the only real work days. I did
receive a new assignment for this week. On Wednesday they want me to do a grand
rounds with some of their clinicians in training. My understanding of grand
rounds is that you present your own patient or at least a patient that you’ve
worked with. I’m not too sure what to expect but I’m supposed to get some more
information today or tomorrow. I’m not too worried about it, it will all work
out.
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| Eastern view of Successful Beach |
Independence
Day was a bit of a muted affair. I took a long walk around my neighborhood and
down to the market just to see what was going on but it wasn’t much. Most
people I saw were either working like normal or just hanging out at the local
bars. The grocery store near my house closed at two and most other businesses I
walked by were closed but there wasn’t a big show or parade or anything. When I
first got here, one of the staff members was talking to me about how Liberians
don’t have any pride in their country. I kind of attributed the lack of
Independence Day activities to that but I think the real reason is that most
people can’t afford to take a full day off of work.
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| Western view of Successful Beach and the bridge we crossed to get there. |
The
staff meeting was in a word, chaotic. There were probably 50-70 people in the
meeting talking about a variety of topics. I say 50-70 because people were
consistently coming in and leaving throughout the whole thing. Some of the
topics were the election activities, each department gave a synopsis of their
work and introduced any new staff members, and the new code of conduct. Oh man,
the code of conduct. This code of conduct has been the major point of contention since I’ve been here. From what I
understand, there was no code of conduct prior to this one that was introduced
about 6 weeks ago. It’s a huge document, at least 20 pages. It also covers a lot of different things. It gives
directions on how to get contract approvals, standards for salary advances, and
where and when the Carter Center can be represented. It’s a less a code of
conduct and more of an employee manual with some standard operating procedures
thrown in.
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| View from Linda's House. That's La Lagune on the right. |
When
you read it, you can tell that some lawyer in Atlanta probably wrote it. The
thing is ironclad. And I don’t think anyone in Liberia agrees with it. As soon
as it got brought up in the all staff meeting the room was thrown into
pandemonium. Everyone had an opinion on it and everyone just had to voice it at
the same time. People threatened to quit if they had to sign it. Needless to say, the issues were not resolved and the group decided to send all of their issues back to Atlanta and hopefully something happens with that.
This past weekend the other interns and I went to La Lagune for lunch, then down to the beach and then to Linda's house for some beers. The beer selection isn't great, to be honest. The local beer is called Club. It's fine, it's just your standard light beer. Your other options are Tsingtao, a Chinese beer, Guinness, or Heineken. So the selection isn't great. I miss Ninkasi.
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| Helpful signage |
That's really it for this week, I'm afraid. Feel free to hit me up with an email at timdaniel25@gmail.com and/or heck out the instagram @tdaniel541
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| Africa chillin' |
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