Wednesday December 17th, 2003
So, spent the day hanging out with people, socializing, and stopped by the VSO offices briefly. There are CIAD problems (George and Jen’s NGO). Jen was fired, and the conseil d’administration isn’t really taking responsibilty for having had a director who stole a whole wad of money. In fact, they are starting to blame George for brining it out in the open. Nice. Arlette called me into her office. She was beside herself. George wrote a nasty letter about her.. and he was attacking her. I read the letter, and it wasn’t so bad.. so I spent an hour or so talking her down. Basically, I tried to show her how things may look from the other side, and that maybe George was worried. His placement was almost over, and the structure was falling apart (throwing away two years of his life), his friend was in the hospital after having had a heart attack, and his girfriend was pressuring him every way that she could to take her with him. Maybe George was a little stressed, and maybe she could give him the benefit of the doubt..and besides, he didn’t finger her specifically, he just said there were communication problems. The really nast part here is that I sort of accidentally encouraged George to write that letter. Ooops. Well, all in all it may have turned out for the best. She ended up talking to the CIAD board of directors, and at least solved the Jen being fired problem (which I also had my fingers in). The best part of this for me, is that I think that I have a pretty good understanding of how to deal with Arlette… and that will help me in the long run.
I also went shopping. I’m on a quest to find inkjet photo paper. I found some stuff that looks promising (it isn’t specifically inkjet paper, there isn’t any that I can find in Youndé). Even finding this paper was really difficult. I went into every store that even looked like it might sell paper. Now I just have to go back and negotiate.