We were looking at the length of days here (being only 4 degrees from the equator, there is virtually no variation at all in the length of the day) and found that the longest day here is 12 hours and 20 minutes long. The shortest? 11 hours and 53 minutes.
Anyway, I promised I’d talk about my work. Basically, my role is multifaceted. It is:
1. To take what is happening here, from a humanitarian and development perspective and report it to the rest of the world (which is really the rest of world that’s interested in donating money at a governmental and organizational level to help CAR’s humanitarian situation and their development).
So to that end, the Blog has to maintain a tone of urgency and clarity over what the issues are and what can be done to ameliorate them (to whatever extent is possible). But it’s also a fine line because the UNDP (who I work for) has to maintain good relations with the government and with all the NGOs that are working here. So, you need to tread lightly when criticizing anything, bearing in mind that you or someone you work with might very well find themself across the table from someone who was responsible for X, Y or Z problem.
2. To redesign and improve the hdptcar.net website (increase its ranking on google, get more traffic in general, et cetera). When you searched for Central African Republic in June (before I arrived), hdptcar.net website came up on the bottom of the fifth page. This is pretty unbelievable considering that it’s a blog about CAR that is updated several times a week. Since I’ve been here, we’ve been able to move it to the top of page 3 (with a little help from Qiana). Traffic has remained the same . . . so if anyone has any ideas, that’d be great.
As for the design, they wanted to move it over to a different platform. Right now it’s a blog, and they wanted to move it to a content management system called Joomla. I tried to convince them that it was both overkill and unnecessary to do that. It worked and I just finished and launched an upgrade and redesign to the site last night. Huzzah!
3. Improve the Ministry of Planning’s website (http://minplan-rca.org/) — people from SIRIUS will sympathize with this greatly — the edict from the minister is “make it move.” Awesome.
I’m beginning this task this week. It’s not looking like it’s going to be particularly easy.
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So, in effect, my position is a writer, designer, project manager, and developer. I work in a boiler room at the Ministry of Planning with one other American (who happens to be from Columbia as well), a Swiss fellow, and a German who is my boss. Everyone is SUPER motivated (i.e., works all the time). That said, they are very smart and detail oriented with a “lets just get it out the door” attitude.
It’s a great environment to work in . . . and, honestly, it’s in stark contrast to the overall working climate in CAR which seems to be very slow. This is referred to colloquially as “capacity.” The capacity here is quite low: many people don’t have a lot of experience using computers, networks, email, et cetera. So we, as resident experts, end up also doing a lot of basic IT support (e.g., setting up printers, installing drivers, getting rid of viruses), even though it’s not really what the group is here to do.
I have more to say about it, but I’ll spare you . . . this post is already too long.
Oh, and tomorrow, I’ll have a surprise video for you. It’s childish, but honestly, it’s unlike anything I have ever seen at any workplace in my life.
