The Board

I am finally at ease to sit down and write a few lines, after the craziest last decade in February. The mighty, rich, gorilla board members descended from the US upon Africa for what was supposed to be a week-long ‘board meeting’. In my naiveté, I assumed that that would include a lot of actual meetings, with budgets and strategy and stuff. Wrong, of course. Already in January, I was entrusted to put together an agenda, to which people kept adding ‘drinks’, ‘cocktails’, ‘beach party’, ‘dinners’, ‘receptions’, etc., etc. When I finally had it all ready, it struck me that the time for ‘meetings’ was down to the grand total of four hours in seven days. WOW!

That being said, I was not all that upset about organizing fancy events on the beach here and there. The only problem: no one had given me a budget from the outset, so after running around both in Rwanda and Congo to find appropriate venues, book music bands, decide on fancy drinks, AND invite people, I was told that “we need to cut back, as there is no money.”

It was, actually, an interesting exercise for me, juggling with inexistent funds and actually coming up with a really good event. I feel like I have strongly enriched my set of skills – as in a field job you are really supposed to be on top of all sorts of tasks, that no one has ever trained you for, and deal with last-minute changes in the most unexpected ways.

The only problem: I was exhausted! All of this came, of course, on top of my daily duties, which included gorilla runs and writing a ton of stories for our publications (funnily enough, the “Gorilla Journal” that comes out in March has me as the sole author from cover to cover…). On top of that, I was deeply involved with giving our center a facelift for the board visit (this implied cleaning everything and everyone up, including our dogs and cat, who all got a ceremonial bath in view of the American millionaires coming down to Rwanda). As the communications coordinator, I was also charged with getting all our staff to speak proper, efficient English, pretty much put together all their presentations, and give concept for the brochures we were going to give out.

Throughout this entire process, I was not exactly in the best shape ever, as I busted my knee on Valentine’s Day, and kept limping with a large bandage ever since, PLUS I was already deeply illegal – as my passport kept being a no-show, stuck in some office somewhere, during which time all my visas were running out. As the board visit was getting nearer, I was getting completely stressed out, having to organize their entire visit to Congo from across the border (and, I am sure you all know by now, that in the DRC if you are not there personally, pushing everyone hard, NOTHING ever gets done.)

With all this in mind, I should get a medal (or at least a raise) for actually turning this whole thing into a big success. AND for having the patience to cater to the board participants in a very calm, constructive manner (some of them were at times worse than 2-year-olds, of course). My job was particularly demanding when I had to make sure that no one stayed behind in some random toilet, that they all had their passports with them when we were approaching the border (even after intense training some of them had not quite understood that necessity), show them how to sign their names under the ‘signature’ column on some forms that I had already filled up for them, AND find an answer to the brilliant question, posed while queuing at the heavily militarized DRC border: “How do you say ‘what’s up’ in Kinyarwanda?”

So there. In all honesty, and despite the exhaustion, this was all a great week. Too bad at the very end I didn’t get a helicopter ride with the billionaire (yes, you read it right) of the group. He just happened to have too many bags for me to fit in as well (and thus I missed the opportunity to take aerial shots of the Volcanoes National Park, on a truly glorious day).

My depression wore off quickly, though, as like this I had the chance to stay one more day at the Kivu Lake beach, in Gisenyi. Funny day, too – the luxurious Serena Hotel was being prepped for the presidential retreat, so pretty much all guests had left, and about 200 soldiers with sniffing dogs had taken over. We were literally just a handful of mzungus, being shoved back and forth, in the middle of this armed-to-the-teeth regiment. It was the most unlikely setting to start any kind of romance – but as luck has it, I did meet a really hot guy, so we were flirting over lots of beers, on the beach, surrounded by staring soldiers. I also met another back-in-the-day-hot-man, who is the head of some mining company that intends to produce ‘organic, green gold’ in Congo, and who was really interested in giving me this story as exclusive, to cover :-) Add to that the joy of Barca's win and Messi's goal over the weekend, and this was a really amazing wrap-up of February.

Stay tuned for after-exhaustion updates!