work never felt like this…

Work, and it is work, is becoming more demanding.  The ‘honeymoon period’ of learning the culture (I know I will never understand it), unloading boxes of medicines, driving around in a battered MOT failure of a Land Cruiser on properly urgent tasks, or occasionally to the beach is long over.  Like most third world countries (I am still using that term) healthcare provision is scarce, expensive (to the community), and hard to deliver.  I know that by my own observation that the NHS is stretched and under-resourced, but let me tell you a little of our hospital.  We have 300 staff, serve around 20,000 patients a year, including 1400 births, and have little if any reserves.  I am still trying to set the budget to show a surplus on day 1, as I know that ‘ambitious’ forecast won.t last long.  For context, in Haiti each of those employees supports, on average, 8 people.  The lowest paid of whom is on just $100 USD a month.

So when I decided to give up my job and begin volunteering, I did not expect to be doing my old job for free, or working even harder.  But here I am helping to run a business which makes life-changing decisions, literally every day.  It is very demanding, but of course so very rewarding.  I know that I haven’t had a hot shower here since I arrived in early November last year, but it is so rewarding that I really don’t care; it is such an insignificant thing; dinner party trivia.  Especially when I remember most people don’t have their own water, never mind electricity.

What a week though, the finance team I am mentoring have worked incredibly hard for weeks now and embraced all of my ‘crazy’ ideas around efficiency, process and sometimes plain old JFDI, albeit carefully explained and encouraged.  They are getting their rewards though, debt is down to less than a month’s income.  Yes crazy numbers, but I’d like to think their hard work is turning the super-tanker.  But more importantly, and the most rewarding aspect, they have confidence and belief that they can do it.

Yes, I am working harder than I did in the UK, but it’s so worth it…