Departure!

After visa problems, tendonitis and waiting for emails, I finally have a departure date, squee! I’ll be off on Tuesday. Damn it feels good to be heading back into the field.

Just typical…

Jobs are like busses, huh? You wait ages for one and then two show up at the same time. This has put me in a bit of an awkward position. As I said before, I contacted IRC Ethiopia and they seemed up for it, and I’m a hair’s breadth away from being officially offered it. However this evening I got told that I could be put in a pool for a position with MSF in the Congo. Now I’d love the second job, but it feels wrong to turn it down after I initiated the contact with IRC. Additionally, everyone I’ve spoken to (including the HR officer at MSF) has told me that you do not turn down your first mission. But then again I’ve not really been offered it, I’ve been offered a chance at getting it. Feels like a game of double or quits… Gonna have to practice my diplomacy.

Picking up again

Seems likely that my boredom period will be cut short thank God! Rather than arse around doing nothing, or worse getting some shitty job as a pizza delivery boy (you need qualifications for everything in France, even to be a secretary) I’ve been in touch with IRC Ethiopia again, and they’ve tentatively agreed to take me on for a 3-6 month position working on Disaster Response and Preparedness (cool title, huh?). I’ll actually be working on what I want to do, I’ll be getting some more cash than before which will be good for the interegnum when I get home afterwards, I’ll finally have reached the dreaded half-way point of 1 year experience before you start to get taken seriously by NGOs, I know a lot of the team I’ll be joining, I can speak some of the language. Things are still looking good. 🙂

Ok I’m bored now…

Things have definitely calmed down now. So much so I’m wondering if I’m still alive. After the frenzy of job-hunting I succeeded in getting 2 jobs, both mentionned in previous posts with Medecins sans Frontieres and the Red Cross. However I have since been informed I’m on a 6-month waiting list for the former, and there’ll be nothing until 2010 for the latter… so I feel somewhat deflated.

This has been somewhat compounded by the French civil service. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great system, so long as you’re French and have never done anything but go to school, followed by getting a job. Having moved around quite consistently I’m now falling through nets… as I always have! Why change the habit of a lifetime, eh? My current position, after 3 months of being told by many people that I’m on file and will soon be receiving my social security card that avoids the need for direct payments, I discovered that nothing of the sort has happened and that I have no rights to health care whatsoever. I have to pay and be reimbursed using my EHIC card. Current expenses since 1st June: over 750 euros, current reimbursments: 0. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t that my EHIC card will soon expire, and not living in the UK I can’t renew it. A job will ultimately give me access, but being employed by MSF-UK and ICRC-CH doesn’t help as they don’t make French contributions. So I’m looking for jobs in France that won’t make me want to beat my head in with a mobile phone, but the moment I go off on a mission and then come back, I’ll back where I am now. It’s a massive pain in the arse!

… Maybe I’ll be forced to move back to the UK… we’ll see.