Stressful week

Ok, I haven't written much about work, but here's a little summary, more because I need to vent a bit. None of this changes that I'm really enjoying myself, having a fascinating experience and all that, nor even that I dislike the work. But man has this been a hard week, and it's not even over.

My primary task since I got here, in fact pretty much all I've done, is help organize this conference that CHRI is hosting. It's not some small conference either, it's an "international conference". We have a major budget, are flying people in from South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Cameroon as well as India and London. It's a major two day conference on Freedom of Information, with at least 50 participants and all that. Huge deal, and really important for our office's reputation as well.

I'm part of basically a four person organizational "committee" I guess. When I came it was just two, Florence and Edmund who are Ugandan and Ghanaian respectively, but both permanent staff. I was assigned to them to help organize this thing, and later Stephen, an intern from Denver, begun to help as well. Slowly though I've become more of the centerpiece of this organizational committee, with almost all e-mail correspondence going through me. All the major documents are on my computer and my responsibility to update and all that. It takes up just about all day every day of my time. It's amazing how time consuming this kind of thing is.

Anyways, this week became disastrous after Edmund tried to take care of the flight reservations. Now Edmund's a great guy, lots of fun and I really like him a lot. But his only task was to book the flights for our international/non-Ghanaian participants. And he messed it up big time.

First of all, he booked most of the people on Ethiopian Airlines (6 of them, conveniently all of whom need Visas, meaning we did NOT have time to spare in getting their reservations completed). But he booked them all on the wrong day. So we had to go back and rebook them all. This I realized before we sent anything out.

Then I realize most of the names are spelt wrong. Minor errors, but nonetheless enough that they could be problematic. Then I realize some of them have major layovers, including three of those six having 15 hours in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Essentially, Edmund hadn't looked at their travel itineraries at all. I asked him if he'd looked, and he said he didn't really understand them much at all.

But we sent them out anyways. Then we get a reply back, and one of the participants has a flight leaving from Johannesburg (South Africa), but he's from Cape Town, a two hour, 500 dollar flight away. Already looking dumb, we tell him we'll pay for both flights, but he expresses concern over having to take three planes on two airlines with a 15 hour layover in Addis Ababa, so he calls about the layover at least.

Then this Cape Town participant is informed his flight isn't even confirmed, it's just been waitlisted. Of course, Edmund paid for these flights, without confirmation or knowing they were just waitlisted. So we scrapped it all, cancelled that guy's flight and told him to book his own and we'd reimburse him.

There are further problems. One of the people from Nigeria is booked to leave from the wrong city. Edmund needed only to check the participants list (which I'd given him many many times) to see this. And then he went to buy a ticket (with cash, becuase you have to here), and didn't go with enough today.

All in all I spent two days this week running around Accra solving problems. And it forced me to take a lot more control over the organization of the conference. It is being held on July 30th and 31st, so it's very soon. And Stephen's heading to the North next week. So we're down to the three, with a super busy Florence and an incompetent Edmund. So now I have a major international conference that feels like it's on my shoulders.

The worst part is that this isn't even the most advanced stuff. Sure it's advanced executive assistant type of work, but it's kind of holding me back from doing more investigative, intellectual work. Overall I don't mind, because it keeps me really busy though.

So there, there's my vent.

Other than that, things are going pretty well. I've now hit the phase where I feel like a veteran. After tomorrow, I will be the oldest (in terms of time spent at CHRI and in Ghana) of all the interns, which will still be at a total of around 15-18 next week. It's pretty crazy, I now feel like I've been here forever, and yet I still have well over a month to go.

Oh, and no tequila this weekend. I don't think at least, lol.