Preparing to leave

After to-day I only have 1 more full day in the office in Dakar. Next week I'm going to a workshop in Saly on the Petite Cote, and then I'm back in the office on Monday 10th May and fly out to Rome that evening. So I'm now really busy, firstly preparing for the workshop, but also starting to pack up ready for my departure, slightly complicated by the fact that I have to leave my appartment on Monday, so can't go back there when I return from Saly. Luckily some friends, Lucas and Catherine, have offered to let me stay at their place so I don't need to go looking for a hotel, but it means packing everything up now rather than when I get back which would have been easier.

Now starting to think about what the last year has meant and what will be my abiding memories of Dakar. I'lll try and put some more about this on my next posting (as mentioned - I'm really busy at the moment), but for me some of the keywords for Dakar are: sunshine, rain (in season), music, fitness fanatics, elegant dresses (Bubus) with matching headties, grubby taxis, colourful 'car rapides', sunsets, surf and sand, good food, not so good beer, pollution, power cuts, bustling markets, terrible roads ... in a word - Africa!

Final week in Dakar

As promised in my last blog, here are some pics of my colleagues in the Dakar office. Starting from the left we have Bety Sow Demba, the admin assistant, and then Alpha Bah, the head of the IT unit in the Regional Bureau and then Djamila Diop, the national IT Officer.

I'm now in my final week in Dakar. Next week we have a regional IT workshop in Saly, similar to the workshop we had in October. Following that I am back in the office here for 1 day and then I fly out to Rome for a debriefing session before finally flying back to the UK on 16th May. There's quite a lot to do this week in preparation for the workshop, and in addition of course I have to start packing up and getting ready to go home - time just seesm to be flying by, better get on with it!

Office life in WFP, Dakar

Well my time here in Dakar is nearly up - just another few weeks and I'll be heading off to Rome, and then back to the UK (Icelandic volcanoes permitting). So what's it been like working here in Dakar? Well in some ways pretty much like working in the UK - here's a picture of me in my office - could be anywhere I guess - usual untidy desk, computer equipment, message boards and yellow stickies reminding me to do things that need doing. And what's the office itself like - well it's a four storey office block that again could be in any city in the world, although I would say the view from my window on the 3rd floor would pretty quickly place you in Africa.

The office is located right in the centre of town in an area called Plateau, close to the Assemblée Nationale (the parliament), and surrounded by embassies and consulates. In the Regional Bureau I'm working with a small IT team, 4 people including myself, plus the head of IT, Alpha Bah. Will hopefully include a picture of the team in the next blog - not everyone is around at the moment.

But in many other ways the work is very different to what I am used to. For instance working for the UN means that the business 'drivers' are rather different, no longer is profit the focus, but how to make the most of the available money, and also how to increase the pot of money available, ie from donors.

Another difference is the spread out nature of the teams - in some Country Offices there is just one person responsible for the IT of the country - and this can be in very difficult circumstances where countries are recovering from years of war, such as Liberia, where the infrastructure that we all rely on (e.g. mains electricity, mains water, telephone lines and internet connections) is completely missing.

One of the biggest differences, and most enjoyable aspects of working here, has been the mix of people that I work with on a day to day basis. Here in the RB, in addition to 'National' staff (ie from Senegal) we have 'International' staff from Sweden, Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, USA, Canada, Thailand, Japan and many other parts of the world. And many of these have recently been working in the world's major trouble spots, like Sudan and Afghanistan. It makes for very interesting lunchtime conversations!