This is from the week of June 7th.  Adjusting to life without electricity in this already strapped for-resources environment means having to roll with the punches a bit faster than normal.  Impending deadlines at work make everyone scramble a bit more than usual.  I’m struck yet again by just how many people are in the process of coming, leaving, or thinking about one of those options.

My office building lies four kilometers west of the center of town, on a road called Avenue Boganda.  The center of town is built around a single large roundabout that radiates major roads like spokes in all directions, except north.  North is a large green hill that sports the Bangui sign, huge white letters that light up to remind you of your whereabouts in true Hollywood fashion.  When the power cuts start, the sign remains lit.  The presidents palace and many government buildings are not too far below it – but as the toll of lost wattage begins to set in, “Bangui” disappears from the night skyline.

The road is straight and paved, wide enough for at least three cars to pass each other abreast.  Like most of the town (or city, if you have a good sense of proportion), the road is lined with large leafy trees.  The UNDP office is one of three large buildings spread out evenly on the north side of the road; one roughly every kilometer.  Most of the surrounding structures are low one-story shacks or houses.  It’s hard to tell what happens off the road since the town is obscured by the green bush and red dirt roads.  So we stand out in sharp contrast to the capital-poor areas around us, but it is deceptive.  There is a lot going on in the green.

The building stands out also because it is an odd rectangular cube-shape, and if the 20 foot walls didn’t obscure one’s view of the courtyard that wraps around the building, one could see that the top six floors are balanced on a single story of enclosed stairwell.  It used to be the Japanese embassy and the efficiently used space inside features narrow stairways and rooms that stack narrowly next too each other.  It looks like a fat alien cube, plugged into the red earth.

The maze-like interior takes a while to get used to.  I’m five weeks in and I still don’t know where everyone sits, although I’ve gone on excursions with the excuse of finding out this and that to explore.  We share the building with the Global Fund for AIDS and the World Food Program (I think).  I feel like an ant when I first arrive but this feeling has been dispelled by the languid, slow pace of work.  There is no scurrying, at least not physically.

Underneath and within the work, the UN system promotes a passive-aggressive type of bunkering in to one’s position, defending your right to advance.  Local and international staff alike are here partly for the noble mission of the organization, but mostly for the money (click here to see a publicly available Excel chart that describes pay grades for the most prized positions).  The UN was designed to be the best civil service on the planet so it has taken the highest civil service reimbursement available, which is that of the Americans.  For staff who come from developing countries, these are unheard-of sums.  For Northerns, these are middle-high to somewhat high sums.

But you have to earn the right to earn, which means advancing through the system.  There are several levels for national and international staff, each level associated with several different job titles.  The levels have labels like  GS (general service), P (professional), D (director) up the the lofty echelons of the secretariat in New York and other administrative bodies in Geneva, Nairobi, and possibly elsewhere.  Getting on the first rung is extremely important, as your first full-time position means that you are in the system.  For life, or a big screw-up, whichever comes first.  Most people work on a short-time scale within the countries they are posted.  Rather than being assigned to a place or position for the long term, one receives contracts structured around a year or two.  Longer contracts are in some cases not desirable, as you must finish the contract before being eligible for advancing.  For most people, the short-term nature of their employment means no small amount of effort is spent on seeking opportunities for their next (and hopefully better) posting.

Of course I’m piecing this together and certainly don’t have a definitive picture just yet.  But this general outline reveals the somewhat backwards work incentives and systemic problems that can easily lead to deep rifts within.  It is difficult to engage completely with your given mission or task if in the back of your head you are thinking about how to get ahead:  show results, follow the rules, make people happy.  This probably sounds familiar to anyone who has had a job anywhere at any point in time; the stakes are higher for those whom these positions represent a unique, golden ticket.  And the bureaucracy that helps these giant organizations try to weed out nepotism, corruption and inefficiency takes on a life of its own, presenting formidable challenges to the many newly minted civil servants to the world.

In our building these challenges exist, as in all work places.  Members of my group are of course on the hunt just like anyone, and there is nothing wrong with this.  I’m actually quite grateful to have the opportunity to see the process from this perspective, which was one of my goals for the summer.  I’m even more grateful that we are not completely on the defensive, wrapped up in advancing our careers or that of our supervisors – I think there is more of a commitment to the people served, and a better understanding of how to work within the system and get things done.  Also instructive.

Whatever the motivation, we’re working hard despite what could be a work-stopping shortage of enabling resources like electricity, internet, and sometimes food if the guy in the office canteen has not planned properly.  The generator in the building is now running seven hours a day, the maximum prescribed by the maintenance guys.  There is a strict schedule but this is hard to adhere to when a part breaks or a meeting has to run longer than scheduled – so we’re making maps and running the websites and editing reports and researching and writing and all of this is at the whim of the sudden dim whine of everything in the building powering down.  It drives us to seek out sources, relying on companion organizations who have better generators, or who are located on more privileged power lines.  So now there is real physical scurrying to-and-fro, a lot of jumping in landcruisers or taxis, driving around the city.  Especially at 4:30 in the afternoon, when our generator gives out.  We spend a lot of the week huddled in the server room at the Ministry of Planning, trying to meet deadlines.

And me; I’m nearly half-way through and haven’t quite met as many personal or work goals as I would like.  The ankle is a bit better but all this activity means I have to spend more time on physical therapy.  I also spent a lot of this week squinting through a fierce headache so I’m going to cut back on drinking the boiled water and splurge on large containers of the filtered stuff.  Two of my roommates are out on missions (field work) so our power-less fridge has sprouted a jungle of fungi and foul odors; I might’ve picked up something from the spring cleaning I did.  I won a small victory in getting partially reimbursed for travel expenses; its my first reminder that all this hunting can and does literally pay off.  Before I leave, I am hoping to see this manifest itself in something other than a benefit for me.