This is an archive in reverse chronological order of update emails I sent to friends and family from 2010 – 2017 when I was living in Haiti for two years and Niger for three years. There is a hiatus of a few years when I was on assignments in Philippines, Brazil and Mali.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Hakuna Matata
Date: November 18, 2017

A few notes from the Sahel:

Security in NE Mali/ NW Niger: armed forces are the targets.  You may have seen, seemed hard to miss, media coverage of the four American service people killed in Niger in October, until Harvey Weinstein (and Kevin Spacey and et tu Al Franken) took over the news cycle. It is very sad that American forces were killed, but in the most respectful and sad way I can say it, it is nothing new in this conflict. There were also at least four Nigerien soldiers killed in the recent event, but dozens of Nigerien army, civil protection, and gendarmes have been killed over recent months, with attacks on them approximately once a month in the north of Niger. And a few hundred kilometers north of that in Gao, Mali, there are attacks against the Malien armed forces and the UN peacekeepers on a weekly basis. Civilians and NGO workers (even expat ones) are not the direct targets of these attacks (with the lone exception of an American NGO worker in health who was kidnapped in Niger and smuggled to Mali in order to provide medical care to one of the separatist groups  there, or so it is widely believed. Haven’t really heard much about him since he was abducted, sadly.

Hakuna matata! On a lighter note, Alana Abercrombie and I had a great “bush and beach” trip to Tanzania this fall, we went on Safari to the Seregeti and Ngorogoro Crater national parks, and then did some diving and relaxing in Zanzibar. It was a trip of a lifetime and the Serengeti in particular was unbelievable with the abundance of wildlife. It felt like stepping inside the National Geographic Channel or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom in real life. Spectacular. Photos can’t do it justice. Very satisfied with the big cat element of the trip – lots of lions, but also some cheetah and even a leopard. Amazing. Also the phrase Hakuna matata was used *A LOT* by locals who claimed they were not just doing it for tourists but that it is part of the vernacular. Also did you know the names in the Lion King are the Swahili names for the animals? Simba and pumba, for example?

Get your dartboards out please. My current project was supposed to end in December with close-out through March 2018, but we got an extension through 2019. We got some nice feedback from the donor (DFID), see below that is being used in the Past Performance Record. It is gratifying after all the blood sweat and tears to turn this project around. Another region of CRS had already requested and I had agreed to move to Nigeria next year on a contingent basis to run a 5-year USAID resilience project in Boko Haram country (but based out of Abuja). But also separately I have had two soft offers from external entities to take on projects based in Haiti and Senegal respectively. And some other inquiries for opportunities in Rwanda and London.  So in the very near term I have to make some decisions about where to go next. Wish me luck!

Happy Thanksgiving and wishing you a good start to the holiday season.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Not sure I’m ready to lean in but glad they asked
Date: November 4, 2016

(Mali) Pot Calling (Niger) Kettle Black. Greetings from Niger where we have had some unwelcome security events recently including the kidnapping of well-liked and well-respected US citizen who had been embedded in a rural community a day’s drive from Niamey (capital where I live) for close to thirty years doing humanitarian work (youth livelihoods). Hostiles from Mali came down and kidnapped him for ransom. Current whereabouts unknown but hopefully there is some back-channeling going on for his release, but after binge-listening to Season Two of Serial podcast about Bowe Bergdahl, I’m not so sure…and also last month Islamic State came to town and staged an unsuccessful prison break to get some of their homies out of the slammer, about a week after they attacked and killed 22 Nigerien soldiers at the border with Mali. These events are a little bit more heat than we have been getting here in Niger lately, meanwhile, similar or worse is occurring in Mali weekly if not daily. Yet when I was up in Mali a couple weeks ago, the kind Malienne woman who works at Villa Soudan who remembers me from previous stays asked me if I felt safe living in Niger. I almost wanted to laugh at the irony, yet to be honest, I think I felt more at risk when I lived at 91^st St in NYC where there were occasional drive-by shootings a few blocks north of me than in either of these places. This is the first high-profile kidnappin in Niger in about three years. We still think Niamey and the places where my project intervenes in Niger and Gao are relatively safe, in that NGOs so far are not direct targets although opportunistic thefts and carjackings are not unheard of.

It’s official, I’m a California hippie. So yes I was able to submit my absentee ballot a couple of weeks ago in this Presidential election. I would not have missed that for anything given the stakes, even though the most qualified candidate for President we have had on the ballot in my lifetime who also does not make me want to puke and laugh derisively at him at the same time is a sure thing in the PRC. So if that wasn’t enough for my hippidom bone fides, or layer on going to Spirit Rock in Marin and trying hard to learn to meditate were still not enough, now it is official. On the CA ballot was an initiative to legalize mary j for recreational use, and although I have not partaken in literally decades, I am all for it! Even my dad who was a square if there ever was one thought that was a sensible move to regulate and tax it.

The only thing I’m ready to lean in to is some Lean Cuisine. But it doesn’t stop me from being delighted to have been headhunted for the COO position at one of my most admired NGOs, Partners in Health, founded by people I have huge intellectual crushes on including Dr. Paul Farmer and current head of World Bank Jim Kim.  I think the position would be better served by someone who has a medical background beyond being a consumer of services, ideally a clinician or MPH, although they have that in the nice to have not must have column. But I’ll be reaching out to some of you with the job description to see if you are interested or know good candidates. I’m not sure it is the right role for me, they want to groom someone for future CEO and my visionquest strategy skillsets are potentially too atrophied to provide the leadership on top of making the trains run on time, but I do think it would be a high caliber team of people that would really bring up my game and bring out the best in me in a way that has been lacking in recent assignments. I am playing hard to get, mostly because I don’t have a good exit strategy from this project that I’m committed to trying to see it through, and I while I often say I could live anywhere I am actually pretty intimidated by the thought of relocating to Boston where I have no network at all whatsoever. But even having said all that, it really made my day/week/month to be approached for the role because it is exactly the kind of thing I dreamed of when I left private sector to return to development work. “It’s an honor just to be nominated” as they say on the award shows.

Here’s a photo of the hound making friends when we had a five-house progressive party in my neighborhood mine was the last destination and we did have a tiny dance party on my patio with the new JBL pulse Bluetooth speakers that I brought back in my luggage. The speakers put on a synchronized light show that pulses with the music. I thought that was a silly add on that doesn’t justify the higher price from the earlier model of JBL speakers, but all the millennials LOVED it.

Also here’s a video of young girls in Ouallam singing about the floods that took out the road and several families’ crops this season at an event on International Disaster Reduction Day last month.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Nuthin but mutton, as far as the eye can see
Date: September 14, 2016

Happy Fall everyone! This past weekend was a four-day weekend for the fete du mouton (more about that below) and we took advantage to get up on some bluffs for sundowners on Sunday. Have been hanging out a lot lately with four of the eight UNHAS* pilots based in Niamey who are mostly South African. Even though they are Africaaners, they are reasonably open-minded, and definitely fun and funny. They are all in their late 20s/early 30s, and we will now be friends for life after we were talking about my upcoming birthday and upon learning my age one of them said “you don’t look a day over 30 (and I mean that as a compliment).” I can barely remember being young enough to think that telling someone they look like they’re 30 could be anything but flattering…

Sundown while we were on the bluffs for sundowners

Some of my UNHAS buddies Sam, Nick and Rob on the Hash a few weeks back

*UNHAS = UN Humanitarian Air Service, they provide low-cost flights to sketchy parts of the world, I only use them in Mali to get from the capitol to the field where we do our project work, as here in Niger I can get to our project sites in one to four hours by car.

Monday was Eid el Kefir when muslims celebrate when God asked Abraham to kill his son, but then let him sacrifice a ram instead. So here people buy a ram (prices go up +300% in the weeks prior), let it graze around in their yard, and then that morning they slaughter them in the streets in front of their house, butcher them there, and grill them all day. So up and down the streets of every neighborhood you are seeing nothing but mutton. I went to friends’ house and saw all the stages of this process, and it was both disturbing and moving. The halal process gives thanks to God for the abundance and the animals for the sacrifice of their lives. I am sharing photos of the before and after, but will spare you all the steps in between. But let me say when Armageddon come you want me in your corner as I will have some good ideas about how to source and prepare animal proteins if push comes to shove. Let’s hope it never comes to that. My friends are a mixed-religion couple, an American wife and a Nigerien husband, and the wife had a naming contest on facebook for the rams. They had three in total and the winner was “Hasta”, “La Vista” and “Baby”, followed by “Breakfast”, “Lunch” and “Dinner”. Gallows humor. Too much?

Other things we did over the long weekend (besides work :  ( were games of Cards Against Humanity, Jaded Aid (which is a humanitarian aid worker-centric expansion pack for CAH), a dinner party, the hash, and a pool party. So it’s not all bad.

In other news, I have a new F-T senior Grant Manager starting tomorrow and a TDY coming for two weeks on Sunday, and the reinforcements are really welcome, even if it does mean carving out lots of time and attention to hand-hold them to bring them up to speed enough for them to make productive contributions in short-order.  Looking forward to getting back to NoVa for meetings at the end of the month and a few days of leave; sad the timing didn’t work out such that I missed Kathrine who is on her way back to China with State Dept as we speak. But looking forward to seeing my brother and his family especially my niece and her daughter, and hopefully I will find a way to connect with a few more of you in metro DC.

p.s. I recently had a former colleague and friend from Haiti, Bill Gelfeld, staying with me here in Niger on a TDY, and he posted this blog about

Life in the Least Developed Country in the World

which I found pretty accurate and interesting.  https://billgelfeld.com/2016/08/19/life-in-the-least-developed-country-in-the-world/

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: it takes a village, and this is one heckuva big village
Date: July 5, 2016

This past week or so has been a time of great sorrow in the world including in my family, as we lost my niece’s smart and funny husband Stephen, father to Laura. So today is about trying to put a smile on your face and reminding you to enjoy it (life) when you can. And when I can’t turn my frown upside down here in Niamey well I am at least still enjoying the G&Ts that I make when life gives me lemons.  Or more accurately, when life gave me limes, high up in the boughs of a lime tree in my own yard.

Remember Abigail? She is the youngest girl in the photo, and her older sister and mom are in the photos (along with me and Tijit). Abigail just finished the school year 3^rd out of 30 students in her grade, and her older sister, who goes to school back in Togo (where her mom is from) was 2^nd out of 51! Even if income inequality in the US is making it harder to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, here in Africa the dream of your children’s lives being better than yours is still alive and well, thanks to Sephora’s efforts and her insistence that her daughters get an education no matter what it takes. My mom would have liked Sephora!

Now I know where the expression “plague of locusts” came from. So the rainy season seems to be in full swing here in Niamey. In that every 10 days or so we get a heavy rain for about 20-40 minutes. Then it is hot AND humid for a day or two, and then all the 3mm of standing water dries up, but not before mosquitos take advantage of the liquid abundance to propagate, along with all kinds of other insects including hopping ones and flying ones that look like june bugs without the tail lights. And they congregate in swarms, and it seems almost biblical. However they also bring this guy out of the woodwork; he usually keeps pretty scarce but he made an appearance in order to feast on this bonanza of bugs. These photos were taken in my yard and in one of them I think you can see an insect’s wing sticking out of his mouth! He did in fact change colors once but I didn’t capture it on film rookie mistake.

Counting on the person on this distribution who went to the School of Forestry not to name any names (Kate!) to tell me what this really cool thorn tree is and what is the evolutionary point of that? Tijit and I pass it on our walks, it is around the corner from my house.

p.s. Trivia Night range of scores on the movie quiz round was 17-28, high score from a table of young, privileged Americans. Appropriately, the team named “ ‘Mericah “ in an accent similar to one used by tongue-in-cheek patriots akin to the puppets in the South Park creator’s World Police movie got the average score of 22.

Well I’m tapped out, happy to hear back from you with your good  news to lift the spirits in this dismal time.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: trivial pursuits
Date: June 12, 2016

So you just heard from me, I know. In spite of not having anything earth shattering to add, I’m passing along some trivial pursuits, literally and figuratively.

Pub quiz night Niamey style. So pub quiz night has been a thing on the other side of the pond since forever seemingly, and in the states since at least since I was out of college. It manages to crop up everywhere in between. Everyone who was anyone was on a pub quiz night team in Port-au-Prince. In Niamey it is at the rec center attached to the US Embassy the last Friday of every month. The winners receive a frozen margarita, the mainstay of the little food shack that serves up burgers & fries, fajitas, beer (Heineken and local, no Miller products, sorry Mike). The winners are also rewarded by having to prepare the 4 or so rounds of questions for the next month’s pub quiz night. Last month our lovely, lovely Ambassador was on our team, and between her and I we nailed the Price round. “Paisely Park!” we both cried out in unison in answer to one of the questions. She is preparing a Muhammed Ali round for next time My round is – what else – movie trivia.

Hamdela I’m not missing any meals. So as you know I don’t like to miss a meal. Right now it is Ramadan, and almost all of the people around me are fasting during daylight hours. They don’t even drink water. Which is shocking in this heat. Interestingly, I am finding that being surrounded by so many who are fasting that I am appreciating my meals even more, and not in a schadenfreude kind of way, either. I am just savoring each meal all the more. Before Ramadan started I gave my guards the traditional gift of sugar. Even when they are not carbo-loading, they put about 17 teaspoons of sugar in their teas and gruels. At the end of Ramadan I would give them a goat or a sheep. But since that creeps me out, and they’re pretty expensive, I just give them cash. Apparently they buy frozen slabs of goat meat with it. Still creeps me out, but then again, I eat hotdogs so people in glass houses…I’m not throwing stones.

Take that George Foreman. In the last decade one of you got married and got a sandwich press as a gift. I was so impressed, I raved about it to anyone who would listen. Then another one of you thoughtfully bought me the Krups panini press and universal grill later that same year (maybe just to shut me up about it LOL?) That thing is da bomb, and it has made me many a tasty treat in SF, PaP, and now Africa. However I have to use this 200 lb anvil step up converter to make it work on the 220 v here. Check it out it is the proverbial black box. Each time I haul that baby out to make a croque monsieur I am thinking of you ladies (you know who you are). Last week I even grilled a chicken breast on it.

Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. That is one of the books I haul around from place to place, it’s up on my bookshelf along with Emily Post. One of my American millennial colleagues asked me who Emily Post was. – !! – Lost generation. And don’t get me started on the 25 year old ½ American ½ French summer intern. Anyway, notwithstanding all that cultural moral high ground that I’m trying to claim, what do you know, I can’t escape some of the worst aspects of American culture. Every Tuesday night we gather at my colleague’s house to watch TV shows she downloads on torrent. When it’s Homeland, that’s cool. When it is the Bachelor, or alternatively the Bachelorette, as it is currently, well, then I won’t lie, I’m mostly just showing up for the food and the company. Because that show is AWFUL!  There’s us chowing down before I loose my appetite from the shenanigans that go down on that horrible, horrible excuse for reality television.

The worst characters on the show that stick around in spite of egregious behaviour I dub the “Producer’s pick” because I’m sure they make the Bachelor- (or –ette) keep them for the ratings that their antics keep people tuning in to watch.

OK gotta go walk the hound before the next sandstorm.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Saving the world one email at a time
Date: June 5, 2016

So same old, same old here in Niamey. A tempête de sable de temps en temps (a few sandstorms every now again), temps above 100 F temps most of the time, me losing my temper with colleagues given gross incompetence fewer and farther between, more due to my increasing tolerance for ineptitude than an increase in competence, unfortunately.

Have had a few work trips to Nigeria and Senegal recently, which remind one of what it is like to be in something closer to the “real world” in that Nigeria, one of the largest populations and GDPs in Africa is also advance in terms of social enterprises, incubators and angel investors for enterprises that offer climate-smart solutions.  In Nigeria  I went to Abuja (the Washington DC of Nigeria), Kano – which was a lot like Niger, and Lagos (the NYC of Nigeria). Let me just say I was both impressed and heartbroken by Nigeria at the same time. While being one of Africa’s biggest producers/exporters of crude oil, they have few refineries, and crazy gas shortages such that regular people, people who I know, get up at 4am to wait in the gas lines for 2-3 hours to get gas; when they run out of time they cut to the front of the line and pay extra to purchase gas for their cars at 4x the current price in the US. The traffic in Lagos was full-on insanity, it can take HOURS to get a few miles during rush hour.

Per the subject line, on this trip to Nigeria, one of my colleagues from Uganda and I were comparing notes about how when we are back in the real world and people ask us what we do and we tell them, we sometimes get the “thank you for your service” that people offer up to members of the armed forces etc and it makes us feel uncomfortable. She shared with me the retort “saving the world, one email at a time” and that feels about right to me.

Here are a few pix of my colleagues/girlfriends from Niger; one pic is of us out on a girl’s night in Niger, another of us at a workshop in Dakar. Dakar is AWESOME, at least compared to Niamey. It reminds me a little of SoCal with the ocean views, people who are fitness crazy and jogging and swimming everywhere. I even got out there for a few jogs in the ocean-moist breezes and it was AWESOME. If CRS asks me to transfer to our W Africa regional HQ in Dakar I am ready in a heartbeat.

Here’s my Tijit on the hash, looking over her shoulder at a bunch of cattle who were following us.

Vacation plans.  am committed to Aug R&R in Maldives (a place I was introduced to from a slide show I saw on study abroad in France in 1987 and have wanted to go ever since, especially since I learned to dive in 1998). And at Christmas and New Year’s, when we have  a forced week-long office close, I look forward to finally going to India another place I have wanted to go for a long time. If anyone has spare time to join me, or suggestions for my itinerary in Maldives or India I’d be glad to hear about it!

p.s. Please don’t judge me, but today I paid more than $20 for a pint of Hagen Daaz ice cream. Which, ironically, I once had a job given out samples for *free* over 4^th of July in DC with Jen (Hall) Oeschger. And another mark of the difference between the real world and here, I would have bought 2 more pints of ice cream except that I didn’t have enough cash. Credit cards are not yet accepted anywhere in Niger. So every transaction – groceries, utility bills including my S African cable and my pathetic “high speed” wifi at home require in-person visits to the HQ buildings during office hours to pay my monthly bills. So for the wifi for example I have to go to the bank or ATM machine and take out $283 to pay it off and deliver it during business hours (when I have plenty of other responsibilities as COP on this ambitious project) for the privilege of a weak internet signal that doesn’t allow me to stream content or even download software updates over several days. In fact the last series of software updates luckily I was finally able to download when I spent a week in Nigeria and had close to “real world” internet speeds.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Risings - Happy Easter!
Date: March 24, 2016

Rush hour, quartier Plateau in Niamey (Chez TK)

    

This is the congestion on my commute home. No camels tonight, just a family with the traditional stroller (baby on mom’s back – look closely at mom on the left). That is about ½ block away from my house and 2 blocks from my office. Nothing but sand dunes in between. Speaking of being on the road, I have been traveling a lot lately and it is interesting but hard to get my bearings. To recap, I was in Senegal for a week in Feb, then spent a couple weeks in the Bay Area – happy 3^rd quarter of a century Uncle Fred and huge thanks to him and Sandra for hosting me! So good to see them and uncles Russ and Rich and walk the hills of Sleepy Hollow and see friends (and doctors and dentists UGH!) up and down the Bay Area and pensinsula. Then I went straight to Mali Bamako-Mopti-Gao-Bamako and back to Niger. A few short days later a week in Ghana (which was [relative to the rest of West Africa] hyper-developed and had ocean and trees and green and rain that we miss in the Sahel. The Uganda of West Africa is how I’m dubbing it). And next month I make my first trip to Nigeria: Abuja, Kano and Lagos. And then back to Dakar in May. So a few decades later than I planned, I am really getting to know West Africa. The flight itineraries that are involved are ridiculously punishing.  I don’t have the heart for it now, but in a future update I might give a recap of how many airports in how many days or how many flight/layover hours compared to time in country if I want to generate some pity.  Or here is a request for pity…

Speaking of pity – 3^rd world problems.

 

this is day 4 of trying to do the software update for iPhone on my high-end, $350/month internet connection – only 35 hours to go! Except that it always times out or has some kind of error overnight that requires me to start from scratch and never get the download until I get to the states again (and then within 2 mins the download happens. Sigh.) See you in Sept, software updates for iPhone and iPad. I know. 3^rd world problems.

Things rising from the dead this weekend include my gratitude and – dare I say faith? –  thanks to you. Happy Easter from Sephora and Abigail (and me)! Following up on two important points from previous communications: 1) Thanks to your generous contributions including a few kicked in when I was back stateside last month Sephora and her daughters have now received $575 which covers Abigail’s school fees and helps her be more resilient to other financial needs in their lives. She and Abigail have expressed so much gratitude it is humbling and inspiring. I showed them the Christmas cards I received from all of you and Abigail asked if she could keep them. Sephora then told me that at night she has come across Abigail saying her prayer and pointing out each family in the card and asking for blessing for each of you. I consider myself borderline atheist/agnostic, so it is hard for me to be touched by this sort of thing but COME ON! Even I find that beyond adorable and touching. So Happy Easter to you and thanks for lightening the load of these deserving ladies and making less of a heathen/infidel out of me. another follow up point 2) Peaceful easy feeling is not CSNY but the Eagles. RIP Glenn Fry.

Speaking of gratitude, aren’t we all glad we weren’t circumcised as youths (or ever)?!

When I was in Mali we made a stop in a Dogon village in Mopti. Here is a link if you are interested in what it means to be a Dogon.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_people

We were taken to the grotto where circumcision rituals take place on young men ages 9-12.  It is done in open air with knives (the same ones are used for each group of young men over decades – happily with increasing good standards of hygiene but still not exactly operating theater sterile by any stretch). The boys spend the next few weeks “healing” in the grotto where they are essentially under house arrest, at the end of which they undertake a 20km road race in the desert and the top 3 finisher get accolades. The female circumcision rituals are more closely guarded rituals so I can’t give you insights on those other than to say per my Malien colleagues from the region they are thankfully diminishing in frequency at the same time as hygiene practices for those who still undergo it are likewise improving (cold comfort given the implications).  Below are some Mali pix including a totem on the wall of the grotto in Songo.

Leaning in? or way out? For those of you keeping score, I accepted a promotion to COP effective early January, and at the time I had a lot of trepidation about the pain in the ass factor of the new responsibilities and dread about the salary negotiations. And I was right. The job is hard and requires a lot of hand-holding and micromanaging of low-capacity staff. Not ideal for an impatient efficiency freak. But it isn’t as bad as I thought now that we have the other guy out of the picture, I underestimated what a drag on progress he was. As far as the salary negotiations, so far there are two rejected offers and long periods of radio silence from HR in between and a final offer coming allegedly next week that I can almost guaranty will be less than the outgoing incumbent was making, who was so incompetent and so widely perceived to be destroying value on the project that in the absence of any contractual obligation or severance policy, we paid him three months just to leave early and get out of the way. NGOs (and I would add, especially those affiliated with the Catholic church) are definitely not meritocracies, and there is blatant wage inequality along gender lines. But part of the Catholic social teachings and gender norms in this organization IMHO are that you humbly put your head down and do the work and asking for compensation even when you are far under market value is tawdry and uncouth. Because I have been able to remain engaged ever so slightly in impact investing work (hence the trips to Ghana and Nigeria) I have kept some level of sanity and job satisfaction, and if I can trade up on that and remain with the agency it would be great. But the next time the phone rings with external offers (there were 3 last year that I declined because I did not feel it would be honorable as I wasn’t in a good place to handover the project) I may not be so fast to shut them down…

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Too many chiefs, not enough indians. Plenty of camels, though.
Date: January 15, 2016 at 9:32:49 PM GMT+1

Happy New Year! Wishing you joy and prosperity in 2016! My new year is already off to a bang, I was able to participate in an impact investing workshop at CRS headquarters that was re-invigorating, and makes me think I may be closer to finding that professional sweet spot that has been eluding me, the intersection between interesting work content that makes use of my education and work background, including the “golden years” at Goldman (that is a David Bowie reference RIP) and meaningful, altruistic work. Here is more of the latest and greatest.

Togolese émigré in Niger and daughter win the fantastically large Powerball! Or that is how Sephora felt today when I shared with her the Christmas present that was sent by 8 of you so far (and I know not all of your cards made the December pouch so there will be a 2^nd tranche of funding coming with the January pouch).  Today I gave her the equivalent of $265 and showed her the cards from the people who sent them.  She was so moved and grateful and joyful for this windfall which can help her with both daughters (she has an older one back in Togo) and she asked me to tell you “que Dieu vous benisse” (God bless you.) Wow I am actually tearing up a little bit – you guys are melting my stone cold heart. Thank you for what you have done for Sephora and her daughters.

Chiefs and Indians. So the subject line is reference to the fact that I have been offered the role of Chief of Party on the very compelling, but complex, resilience project that I work on in Niger and Mali, funded by DFID (the UK Department for Int’l Development, akin to USAID). I have yet to receive the formal offer, which I intend to negotiate to try to approach a compensation that is less than I “deserve” or that the complexity and inherent challenge of the posting warrant, but more than I currently make, which is significantly less than I made not just in the private sector, which is understandable, but it’s even less than what I earned in the most recent development gigs, by which I mean, working in international development/humanitarian relief in Philippines and Mali. What can I say, the Catholics are frugal, and that is what you want from an NGO as a donor, especially if you are one of the widows and orphans putting your cash in the collections at mass.  It promises to be a very uncomfortable period for me, because negotiating is not my thing, and especially not negotiating against contributions from widows and orphans (just kidding – in fact more like negotiating against UK taxpayers, including their widows, orphans, and pensioners). Taking over as COP on this project promises to be a “stretch assignment” or a “lean in” opportunity for me, and expectations will be high that I can undo some of the wrongs of the previous COP.  No problem, right – after all I have that expensive MBA it should be a piece of cake.  What could possibly go wrong?  LOL.  Stay tuned!

Found on vacation: one sense of humor. Reported missing by several third-party witnesses over the past few years. Not even noticed as lost by owner until it returned late Dec – early Jan.  I was lucky enough to have had a holiday in the Seychelles with the US-Aussie family unit of the Abercrombie-Wehingers, and although self-sailing our own catamaran was at points a bit stressful, especially when I almost killed Alana and I when I capsized our zodiac (the dingy, or inflatable boat we used to motor back and forth from the cat to land), it was otherwise so relaxing and restorative that at points I remember thinking that if I can get in a vacation like this in once a year, I could conceivably manage to keep working here in Niger (which is not always the most hospitable place from a quality of personal or professional life) for a while more. If you have a couple minutes, please do watch this short video https://vimeo.com/151282446 that Mike Wehinger shot and did some jazzy editing  — it is all actual footage that we took (no stock footage or b-roll!) including underwater shots of the sea turtle swimming right underneath our boat!!!  Below is Alana and I getting a technical assist at Anse Georgette (aka crash beach or capsize cove) from a kind South African who witnessed our brush with death.  And a before shot looking back at our rent-a-boat.

Besides holidaying with Alana, Mike, Dean and Lily, I am so grateful to have had a chance to see the Joneses, the Bells, Kathrine Mortensen and to have stayed with the Oeschgers during and after the week-long impact investing workshop in Baltimore. Is it Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that sing about a “peaceful, easy feeling”? Because that is how it felt seeing all of these peeps and just being able to check at the door all the developing country project anxieties and everything else and just be for a little while. (And just be funny thanks to return of long-lost funny bone). In all, a great tonic before coming back to camel town. Please see the welcome wagon:

Literally right outside the gate to chez TK à Niamey.

Once again, my best wishes for the coming year.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: WANTED: Your Holiday Cards
Date: December 9, 2015 at 6:23:38 PM GMT+1

Happy Chanukah and in advance Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  To those of you with kiddos in the right age zone here’s hoping you are finding and remembering to move your elves every night. The elf on a shelf tales of woe on fb are a total crack up, and a nice distraction from the other miserable stuff that’s going on in the world.  In any event, this message is essentially an appeal and reminder that if you are sending out Christmas cards (particularly those mailers that have photos and news of your family) I can receive flat mail at the following address and I would LOVE love love to get your holiday card!

Also here is a borderline pushy ask, but, if you want to slide a fiver or a ten-spot into the card, I will convert it into local currency and pass it to my menagere, Sephora to contribute to her daughter’s school fees. Sephora is an immigrant from Togo, and while she is not literate herself, she is spending a shocking portion of her income to pay the school fees of her daughter Abigail. Because she is not a citizen of Niger, she must pay if she sends Abigail to public school. However by all accounts the public schools here are really, really horrible. So everybody sends their kids to private school. Abigail goes to a mission school, but through the expat grapevine I have come across folks who assess and train schools and teachers, Abigail’s school has financial issues, likely fraud, whereby teachers’ salaries are absconded with and from a first-hand account there was an impromptu inspection made by my acquaintance who said she walked into a classroom with no windows and minimal light where the teacher was asleep in the back and the kids were fending for themselves. She recommended two much better mission schools and next week we (Sephora and I) are going to visit them together and if she likes them better, we will enroll Abigail at one of them. Sephora is a Christian, another differentiator that makes her life difficult, as if being an uneducated immigrant woman (and a widow with two children to support) wasn’t hard enough. But that is why she is targeting mission schools to maintain a connection to her faith in this country where Christians are a very small minority. I am giving Sephora a 13th month bonus for Christmas (equivalent to a full month’s salary) which I am sure she will appreciate, but it will not fully cover Abigail’s school fees. Sephora is a lovely woman, she is very kind to Abigail, to me, and what’s more, she’s great with the pets! This is Sephora and Abigail in front of my house.

Out here I am just trying to hang on until Christmas vacation that starts next Thursday. Hooray!!!!! Here in Niamey it’s insanely dusty, but it is cooling down. Work on the other hand is heating up on many levels although sadly, my supervisor and one of the direct reports I rely on the most are both struggling to deliver. Have been serving on the Steering Committee for the West African Chapter of Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs and engaging a bit more on the agency’s nascent Impact Investing practice and both of those are bright spots in my professional life.

Wishing you lots of bright spots in your professional and personal lives especially during the traditionally busy and sometimes stressful holiday season!

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Daesh (wanna be ISIS/ISIL), AQIM, Boko Haram and the Shabab can BITE ME!
Date: November 21, 2015

It is heavy, this recent period of more senseless violence and hundreds of deaths next door to the East in Nigeria, to the West in Mali, and way up North Paris struck again and now we are all looking over our shoulders everywhere with threats of terrorist attacks against NYC and other places. Perpetrated by “ass hats” (as they were rightly called by a friend of a friend on Facebook) who are perverting a religion that abhors the killing of innocents when they invoke the name of Allah or Islam. I live in the least developed country in the world according to the 2014 UN Human Development Index where Niger was ranked 187 out of 187, and even in this country the common men and women are horrified and outraged by these acts and have the good sense to know this has nothing to do with their religion or any legitimate religion. How can it be so clear to Nigeriens but not to conscripts into these terrorist organizations? My security guard Omar (not the one who gardens or built the kitty condos, the other one) thinks that most of them know better too, it is just the lack of opportunity for income, whereas these organizations provide them a reliable paycheck (and death benefits for their families).

Anyway, I thought it was a good time to reach out and let you know that I was not in Mali when the hotel was under siege, and none of my current or former colleagues were harmed or at risk directly, although it was a close call because that hotel is 100m away from CRS new offices in Bamako. It was a nerve-wracking morning until we got the all-clear that all were accounted for and safe. In Niger there has been some election-related violence (3 dead last weekend in Niamey with the return of an opposition leader who came back to turn himself in, he was a fugitive after being indicted for crimes related to human trafficking and we were on lockdown (shelter in place – no leaving the house) for both days) and increased “banditism” in some of the areas where the project is active but Boko Haram has been keeping a low profile over here at least, even if they are still up to no good in the East (Diffa in Niger and in the North of Nigeria). While that is likely to continue or potentially escalate, the threat level is still manageable, and it is “business as usual” on our project in Niger and Mali, just keeping in mind that there are low probability, high severity risks and to remain alert and cautious.

I also thought it was a good opportunity to share some feel-good photos:

Pets living large chez TK. They all get along, why can’t the terrorists follow their example and feel the love even with people (or species) with which they are at odds? I will say this pic and the pet love fest makes me happy because at the beginning the cats were a faction that were very anti the dog and vice versa. But now they play and sleep together and it is tots ADORABLE! And yes I let my pets get on the furniture, no judgment, please.

This guy was at a gathering we had in the field on disaster risk reduction; when talking about the climate-adapted agriculture he learned about through the project, he spontaneously started sketching out the zai technique in the sand in front of us (see the circles and half-moons in front of him? they capture organic material that become compost/fertilizer and retains moisture better for the plants). It was a heartwarming moment.

This is Jasmine, the sweet four-month-old daughter of a colleague. She was in a giraffe costume for Halloween. The cuteness was overwhelming.

Finally I’ll leave you with cultural anecdote that will surprise you as it did me I suspect. Or it will leave you wondering if I am full-on OCD and not just OCD-wannabe as I like to say. I was at an event in the mairie in the field with some local and regional government officials including the Departmental Prefect, so it was more formal than our typical workshops and trainings. For the pause cafe (the food and coffee breaks that are MANDATORY for meetings here; kind of like diet Coke was at sorority meetings in college – I shudder to think of the riot scene that would ensue if we dared to have a meeting without pause cafe in Niger or diet Coke in college) that was served while we worked instead of during a formal break, we were served a moringa dish. Instead of placing the plates on the table in front of us or the empty chairs next to us, they put it on the floor, at our feet. What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, the floors here are the dustiest and dirtiest of anyplace I’ve ever been, even though there is a lot of sweeping that goes on in this country. Almost perpetually somebody is sweeping, everywhere you look. But still there is a sheen of dust and dirt on everything, all the time. Much of my white or light-colored stuff (and my pets) have turned a shade of tan from constant exposure to sand. It doesn’t wash off (it doesn’t wash off the stuff, or off the pets, who do NOT like being bathed). Anyway, having the food served near or on the ground is how it has been done here until probably a few generations ago when colonizers introduced dining tables and flatware, etc. If there were any Asians in the room I would have felt less alone being grossed out (if I am not mistaken many Asian cultures find the feet unclean and in proximity to them is the last place they’d want to have food placed)! But anyway I ate my moringa from the dustbowl and I liked it, even if I could have sworn I was crunching on a few stray grains of sand while I chewed.

Speaking of chewing sand, have to sign off now, it’s back to the grind for me – have a donor report that needs to be edited and translated from French (the language my colleagues and our project implementing partners work in) into English (the language of the donor, the UK Department for Int’l Development). I’m on page 15 of 36. Has taken me 4 days to get through the first 15 pages but that was at the office during the work week where there are lots of meetings and distractions (and a bad migraine for 3 of the days). So hoping to crank out the rest of it in the next few hours. Enshallah. Good times!

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: take that, Carrie from Homeland 
Date: October 18, 2015

Greetings all, another installment from the HOTTEST PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE or so it seems lately. It is over 40 degrees celsius every day, and with the teeniest bit of humidity from the tail end of the rainy season it is beyond wilting hot it is melting hot. Here’s the latest:

Niger is the most amazing country I never expected to visit. Charlie Feibel, my former boss in the Philippines, found a great article that really sums it up in a nutshell, please check it out if you are curious for a better mental image of Niger. http://www.businessinsider.com/niger-food-animals-history-slideshow-2015-10

Mortality check. Here’s a photo of me driving my colleagues to pay condolences to another colleague whose dad died in that big stampede during the Hajj this year (the pilgrimage to Mecca that devout muslims make). It took so long to identify the bodies that her family only got the news that he was one of the deceased a week ago which was about a month since the event (or more); although they had presumed the worst until then, they were doing as much research as they could from a distance to try to learn what had happened to him. This is the fourth time I’ve had to pay condolences as death comes more frequently and earlier here due to diseases and accidents that are entirely treatable in the US. As a result they take it a lot less hard than we do – death really is a part of life here.  Incidentally when paying condolences,  you go to the person’s home, there is a large group of men sitting in the coolest / shady spots or inside if there is a fan, and a large group of women who are in the less desirable spots. Everyone is seated on large rugs and mostly just sitting quietly, sometimes making a little chit chat. So even when I get to the house if the only person I know there is a man (eg the son of the woman who died) I may not see him at all, I am sitting with his female cousins and his wife and his daughters, even if I never met them. It makes for long silences as there are very few things in common to chitchat about and I always feel so awkward making chitchat when something as devastating as premature death is involved. But I try to remind myself that it can be a distraction that they might appreciate to take their mind off the bad news. p.s. in this photo I am wearing my headscarf “Carrie from Homeland” style because we laugh at her on the show she always does a half-ass job of covering her hair; if you are being totally proper none of your hair shows. And in fact right now I am heading over to a colleague’s house to watch last Sunday’s episode of Homeland; she downloads stuff on torrent and a bunch of us come over on Tuesday nights to watch.

 

The world is my litterbox. On a lighter note, one of the best parts of having pets here is that 1) for the cats I use sand from the street to fill their litterbox and never buy cat litter and 2) since all the streets in my neighborhood are sand, when the dog poops on our walks I don’t bag it. Sometimes I don’t even cover it. I just leave it. Mic drop. Or really, poop drop. It is so dry here during most of the year the poop is petrified within a day. And it blends in with the offal offerings of the free-range goat and sheep that roam about. Anyway all of this was just an excuse to add a pic of Tijit:

Last week there was a donor monitoring visit, so it was crazy busy. I took the main guy to the giraffe park with some of my friends. It was a little bit more of an adventure than planned when we got stuck in the sand, tried to dig ourselves out and ultimately had to get towed out. Below are some pix, some of which will look familiar to those following on facebook, that include a group of us in front of the main office (where I go to work everyday) my boss and I in front of one of our field offices, a couple shots from the field (work) and a couple from the giraffe park (play).

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: who says there's no "i" in team? 
Date: October 5, 2015

It has been a while since my last update, please excuse the delay.  Had a great trip back to the East Coast of the US in August and that was much needed break. Really enjoyed catching up with the Keenans, the Jones, the McHuthinbas and McManuses, the Bells, the Johaneks and even a few Kroners. Of course within hours of being back in Niamey I was ready for my next vacation thanks to some creative differences at the leadership level of this project. One of us leaders think the project could stand more actual leadership and organization. It is lonely being the only “harshly efficient” American on the project. In case you were thinking, take a chill pill Tracy, there’s no “i” in team, well I beg to differ:

Green acres. (or hectares) The latest and greatest is that the rainy season started late but is still going strong so harvest should be decent this year minimizing (but not eliminating) food insecurity and malnutrition in Niger. On Facebook I posted a whole bunch of photos of climate smart agricultural practices the project is encouraging. Here is one of a field of cowpeas (aka black-eyed peas).

All SMILES. Also familiar to many from a recent Facebook post, here are some of my colleagues and I at the close of a week-long seminar on monitoring and evaluation. Ironically, the ackronym for the training is SMILER (=Simple Measurement of Indicators for Learning & Evidence-based Reporting). M&E does not generally put smiles on people’s faces.

Expat crowd. I am fortunate that the US expats I work with are great peeps who I enjoy hanging out with outside of work. They are younger and/or more social than me and it forces me to get in touch with my latent extrovert. And there are a sprinkling of non-US expats in my circle among them the Vice Consul of Germany who is a real trip. He studied abroad in the US somewhere in the hinterlands and he has unusually good pop culture knowledge of the states such that he likes the TV show Empire and he is often the winner at pub quiz night or Cards Against Humanity. You saw some photos of him on Facebook at the recent celebration of the reunification, he’s the tall one (not seen in this photo – he was too busy making the event happen).

Pets are doing great, all three are recovered from sterilization surgeries and they are super cute and behaving like a little pet pack that has their owner wrapped around their paws. Tijit and I walk everyday at 7 am and 7 pm and while she definitely looks forward to it and appreciates it more demonstrably than me (she jumps with excitement, sometimes all four paws off the ground at the same time) but I need it more than her and it becomes a great forced mediation and contemplation for me. The pets move too fast for me to get good pix so I’ll have to work on that for next time.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: Hamdullah my container finally made it! and other news
Date: July 23, 2015

Doggie MASH. You know you’re not in a “developed” country anymore when your dog is having her ovaries removed on your patio with implements that look like shoe-horns.

The vet is Russian she has lived here in Niger since before it was the “former” Soviet Union. Her French is good and so is her English she’d make Putin proud. Like the biased profiler I am, I offered her a vodka after it was all said and done (about an hour start to finish; dog ovaries are very small like the size of a pea/lima bean and buried under muscle and fat and must be so hard to find! How will she find the kitten’s?!?!). She didn’t take me up on it but I had a V&T and toasted her and her assistant who had “boules vites” (sparkling water). The cats are next in September – good times!

The Donald is a viable presidential candidate so I guess anything is possible.  [ed. note who could have believed he was so viable he actually fucking won!] Please excuse the non-sequitur. Why isn’t there a management book entitled “Stop wasting my time and go get some work done for a change” – what, that’s not an empowering management strategy? No wonder things aren’t progressing as fast as I’d like on this project – that’s what I’m thinking during most of the meetings I attend or lead. “When can I get back to work, I have stuff that needs to get done for crying out loud”. There is a lot of magical thinking when it comes to timelines, the actual steps involved in any given task, and the difference between the fastest possible route to accomplishing something and actual route that will take 10x as long given all the illnesses, deaths in the family (a collective 27 days of lost work due to that on my team in the last quarter), slow or no internet, electricity blackouts, and straight-up, run of the mill f*ck-ups. And follow-up is more like follow wha? And that is true of “management” as well as my less “worldly” local staff. Who are all really great people in fact, sweet and generally pretty smart &/or knowledgeable in certain areas. Just not so grounded in anything resembling reality or productivity. A good chunk of the team is below at a meeting we had in late May.

Hamdullah! Shipment finally made it! So my shipment arrived a few weeks ago – there is a picture of the actual ship that brought my container on one leg of the journey. It left Marin before I did but then cooled

its heels in Oakland given some port disputes and backlogs, made a stop in China, spent some time in Lome (Togo) and finally arrived in Niamey at the end of June. I had a miserable week between when it arrived in Niamey and when they actually delivered it to my house, which required A LOT of follow up with the “transiteur” during a period at work of 14h days/7 days a week so I did NOT have time for that little extra hobby, and which culminated a sketchy few hours on the loading dock of the rive droite customs house where I was the only white lady in sight amidst *literally* hundreds of hot, tired, angry (and hungry – it was during Ramandan) dock workers and African long-haul truckers who were alternately flirting with me, harassing me, and trying to steal my shit. My presence was required to open the seal on my container, which they did, promptly unloaded my crap into completely unsecured area with no oversight other than yours truly, open to the African teamster squad and left there in the unforgiving Sahel sun until about 1 pm where it continued to sit overnight. Favorite lines from passers-by during this interlude: “what’s in this big box – a flatscreen TV?” and “give me your iPhone.” (me: ha ha ha) followed up by “No seriously (in menacing tone) GIVE ME YOUR PHONE RIGHT NOW. I LIKE IT” African version of “just-in-time” logistics? It took the movers 2 days to deliver my stuff, and 8 hours and 4 tries to assemble my office workstation desk unit, but all’s well that ends well there was only about $1,100 worth of damage based on replacement/repair costs.

Dog whisperer inspired but don’t try this at home. No photo-documentary evidence but my bikes made it in the shipment and I have taken to biking with the dog during her walks instead of walking since she is this crazy fast high energy African breed. It is awesome but it has to look funny seeing this white broad on a bike, often in a skirt hiked up over biker shorts [because remember knees are like boobs so I’m wearing a lot of long skirts] with the dog on the leash going by at the speed of light but just barely navigating the dunes and other obstacles and traffic. Btw I was sure the dog was anorexic b/c I could see her ribs prominently but then I saw on Wikipedia that is a characteristic of the breed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azawakh I guess I should dial down the bacon and ground beef supplements and get this finicky dog to accept her “croquets” – dry dog food – which she pretty much rejects flat out. Spoiled brat! My part-time cleaning woman doesn’t cook for me, but she does make a special rice cooked in chicken broth with ground beef for the dog. The Russian vet (who is very hardcore, it goes without saying) tells me to get the dog with the program b/c I’m about to be away for 3 weeks and if I think the locals who are tasked with preparing and providing her food are going to give it to her and not themselves I am kidding myself and I’ll come back to a skinnier dog. Wish me luck with the dry dog food introduction strategy, which is at odds with me wanting to give her special treats to make her feel better about the surgery I just put her through. [ed. note it took a couple months but Tijit made the transition to dog food]

Happy summer everyone!

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: latest musings from Niamey
Date: June 7, 2015

Hello all, just a few snapshots and anecdotes.

Dog on lay-a-way. Meet Tijit (means dog in Tamachek, local bedouin dialect)

she is 3 years old her French owner died unexpectedly and his Nigerienne wife didn’t want to keep her. So a French woman, Anne Marie, who was a friend of a friend took her in temporarily. Now Anne Marie is moving away (to Gabon) to an apartment where she can’t keep Tijit. I had put the word out that I was looking for a dog and that’s how we met. Tijit (rhymes with “Brigitte” as in Bardot and she does have some French bombshell in her) who I also think of in terms of the Hammer time tune “2 Legit 2 Quit” because my girl really is too legit, still lives with Anne Marie but she has weekly sleep-overs 1-2 nights/week chez moi as we are trying to ease the transition so it’s not another shocking loss for her when Anne Marie moves away, and we have been sharing or alternating custody of Tijit on the Hash on Saturdays. Tijit is very high energy and needs to be walked or run to stay calm – I think the same can be said of me so we will be good for each other. She and I fell in love at first sight (“coup de foudre” as the expression goes [thunderbolt]) and she is definitely the right dog and worth waiting for. She is some kind of mix that seems to be partly lean, fast African breed Azawakh and part Springer Spaniel (like our beloved dog Patches who was our dog in the 70s until he had to leave the projects to go live with a family on a farm outside of Madison WI (and I really believe he went to a farm not the euphemistic one Mike if you know different please don’t tell me ignorance is bliss)).

Houdini act hiding spots. Tijit alternates indifference and curiosity toward Asterix and Pollux. The kittens don’t love her (yet)  but they are getting used to her; they are hissing at her much less. It is only a matter of time before I come home and find them all curled up together napping. [ed. note they love each other now circa 2018 and they nap in proximity to one another but generally not curled up together although Asterix does try to get in there] But for the time being the kittens are seeking out new hiding spots beyond the dog’s reach. I honestly don’t know how they get in and out of these spots. But I’m grateful Pollux isn’t spending the night up in tress anymore – I had to get a ladder to get her down after the first stressful night with Tijit in residence.  The next time she ran up the tree she picked one with lower branches that she was able to come down from herself.

Straight to compost – the agricultural equivalent of a movie released straight to video. Soulemane’s corn is taller than me (the photo below is more than a month old).  And completely inedible. It does not stop him from bringing me grilled and boiled corn fresh off the stalks from my yard which I accept gratefully and then surreptitiously regift to Sephora or put it straight in the composting bin. He is so proud of his accomplishments which frankly amaze me it seems beyond belief that it is possible to grow anything in this harsh climate. I’ll never tell him that I haven’t eaten more than a few kernels of his harvest, and in fact if I have to eat it in front of him smiling the whole time, I will. I have enjoyed much more the basil he has grown and there is no deception required. There’s an aubergine on the vine that I hope I can convince him to take home with him otherwise I may be asking for your favorite recipes to make something he and I both have a chance of enjoying.

Abari of Arabia. This is what my colleague Abari wore to work on Friday. He drove to work in his car, not driving a camel caravan, in case you were wondering.

Mass in Niamey. Today I went to mass for the first time in West Africa. Holy cow if church was like this in the states people would actually go. Except it clocked in at two hours and 25 before I peeled out. The occasion was the First Communion of a colleague’s daughter. I didn’t know what to expect in an almost exclusively Muslim country where churches were being burned a few months ago (Charlie Hebdo backlash) I didn’t think it would be well attended. But it was SRO probably about 800 parishioners packed in and half a dozen officiants. Amazing outfits, GREAT MUSIC and dancing. This would give a southern Baptist revival a run for its money. And so much incense. Wow. Probably to cover up the B.O. as it is so hot here and we only had fans inside the cathedral.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: latest musings from Niamey
Date: April 18, 2015

Greetings from Bamako, Mali where I am happy to be reconnecting with CRS friends from Haiti – Niek is the Country Rep here and his wife Abby and I worked together (and dived together) in Haiti. And Meredith who is a regional technical advisor based in Dakar but is here on TDY. We are all heading to my favorite brunch joint, Comme Chez Soi shortly – it is in Hippodrome, the lively neighborhood where the recent attack in a popular restaurant/nightclub killed five; it is no-go zone at night but not during the day luckily so brunch is still on. Later this afternoon I’ll be jogging 5-9km on the Bamako Hash (the global expat running group I told you about in an earlier installment) that is sadly very Frenchie here but apparently they had a beer check last week so maybe they are being infiltrated by enough Americans/Brits and starting to see the light. Mountain biking (in sand) with a group of expats tomorrow morning and already got in some laps at the hotel pool. It’s almost like R&R! In other news:

Knees are like boobs. So Nigeriennes are pretty modest. But what passes for modesty in the states does not apply. We Americans get more put off by cleavage. Also body-hugging tight dresses are sometimes seen as slutty in the states. Less so in Niger. Here the key is the length of the skirt (generally down to ankles) and covering your head, but everything else is negotiable. Showing your knees is the biggest no-no. The baggy dress I am wearing below, which I heretofore considered conservative, is actually quite racy here. My knees show when I walk and when I sit down. I’m such a hussy!

Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction. This is the book that the guy sitting next to me was reading on the flight to Bamako. Well he wasn’t actually reading it he was mostly snoring as he slept next to me but anyway it was a little too ironic not to enjoy the (gallows) humor. It is apparently a legitimate tome that reminds us that terrorism is all in the eye of the beholder when you consider it from the perspective of being legitimate acts against oppressors. But the topic was already top of mind for me as I headed to Mali from Niger for a week (the resilience project I’m on is in both countries). In Northern Mali, the area where our project interventions take place (just across the border from the region in Niger where most of our work is focused) just witnessed a brutal slaying of an ICRC truck driver – he was an African, no expats with him, in a clearly marked Red Cross vehicle, on his way to resupply in Niger. This is the most egregious targeting of an NGO and a local (rather than a military or peacekeeping force) that I am aware of to date in the hostilities. And on this same road, that comes from Niger to Gao (the way my team and I were counting on being able to access our project sites to participate in activities), last week there was apparently a vehicle-bourne IED attack that exclusively killed civilians. So it’s going to add another dimension of difficulty to this project to ensure we achieve the objectives we set out to to assist the beneficiaries in the region without putting our people at risk to do so.

Inoculation. The soap box I’m going to get on this week is about the people in the states who choose not to vaccinate their children and next thing you know we’ve got  outbreaks of entirely preventable diseases. Like measles. There is currently a meningitis epidemic in Niamey, and there’s not enough vaccine to go around. I’m sure you can imagine the difficulty of transporting live vaccines and maintaining the cold chain in a huge desert country with poor logistics infrastructure where it is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit most of the time during the hot season (now). I feel lucky I was able to get vaccinated, and have been trying to facilitate the same for the locals in my circle, it just seems like the thing to do with an air-bourne and dust-bourne disease that has a 25% mortality rate. So the idea of opting out of something so desperately needed in a place like this just seems wantonly despicable.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: latest musings from Niamey
Date: March 22, 2015

Furry feline friends! Top question on my mind: what to name the kittens I brought home? Asterix and Pollux [ed. note Obelix was the name I was looking for to accompany Asterix but I simply couldn’t remember his partner in crime from the French comic book series. I just call them both “kitty” most of the time so it’s irrelevant.] are top contenders at the moment. They were free-range cats from the main office grounds, I cat-napped them (the little guys in photo below on my patio).

They have a sibling still at work fending for himself along with maman; these two were the only ones I could catch after about :35 of scrambling around buildings and cars and under bushes and other hiding places. The cats at the office eat scraps they scrounge after lunch on workdays. But when I heard one of the cat colony starved to death during ramadan last year (no scraps because everyone at the office is fasting) then I knew I needed to bring a couple chez TK for a dose of comfort. My day guard, who is très sérieux, and an aspiring gardener complicit in my DIY composting adventures, asked me to bring home a cat to chase the lizards that eat the seeds as soon as he plants them. He spent an hour making them kitty condos out of discarded cardboard boxes and de-facto litter boxes (even though the whole yard is a litter box – full of sand!) but the kittens are too scared and are hiding and so explored their new territory yet. They will love their kitty condos- he put in lots of doors and windows and rags and cushions. If security guard or gardening don’t work out, he has another fall-back as pet habitat architect. (That won’t get him very far here since only crazy expats indulge in this kind of kooky pet adoration in places like this.) The photo below right does not even include all of Soulemane’s creations. Merci, Soulemane!

Free-range goats. So while we are talking about the pet menagerie (still on the lookout for a dog to join the kittens) let’s move on to other furry beasts. When I am not running into camels on the streets it’s sheep and goats – they roam around like they own the joint, eating everyone’s garbage and whatever else they can find. These guys were hanging out just outside 42 Issa Beri this morning and they are generally part of my daily commute (not just these goats, there’s TONS of goats. It seems like everybody has their own goat herd out and about most of the time). [ed. note I am not aware of any goat yoga taking place in Niamey during the time I lived there]

Pagne cloth. Went to the petit marche yesterday and got a dose of the hoardes and the haggling and bought a few bolts of pagne cloth, some of the bright, cheerful colorful fabrics that adorn men and women here and eleswhere in W Africa. This first batch is for curtins, I’m not sure I’m ready to go full bou-bou as far as my professional or free-time attire, but who am I kidding it probably won’t be long. My colleague Severine, standing on the left in the photo below, who is a dynamo by the way, is wearing an example.

Work blah blah blah. Work is getting on my nerves right now, I am working all the time because we are in start up mode and the administrative aspects, like trying to get 7 partners (only two of them located in Niamey) to understand, accept and sign 80-page grant agreements before a donor-imposed deadline of the end of this month, for example, is decidedly not sexy. So I’ll hold off on work stories until there are more feel-good and photo op worthy stories to tell.

Boko Haram is coming to town. So the bad news from the security front is that there is an active cell of Boko Haram in the capital, as well as MUJAO, the assholes that are causing trouble across the border in Northern Mali. There have been two thawted bombings and the risk of kidnapping is apparently escalating. You may have heard about the the terrorists who shot up a boite de nuit La Terrasse in Bamako a few weeks ago – some of my colleagues from when I was there last year were critically injured and medevaced out. So far we here in Niamey haven’t moved to curfews or anything more stringent, but those days are probably coming. Most of the Nigeriens that I hang out with hate Boko Haram, but of course I hang out with Nigeriens who are educated and rational and are open to the rest of the world. It does seem that the average Nigeriens are pretty much of the same opinion, based on how the press and their legislature has been responding aggressively against extremism. But it isn’t the average Nigerien I’m afraid of, it’s those nutjobs on the fringes. Not unlike our own political scene in the states, just with higher stakes given the explosives etc.

What did I do before I had a super-fast boiling electric water kettle!? It seems like all the French own them, and so do pretty much all the Africans I ever met.  I saw them around on kitchen counters and always thought it would be  a nice to have but not a must have. People: it’s a MUST HAVE. My quality of life, not to mention the quality of my tea and coffee is decidedly better (especially in a place where not only is there no Peet’s or Starbux but there is NO TAKE-OUT COFFEE ANYWHERE).

Wishing you all the best from HOT and getting HOTTER Niamey. No snow days here. Although a few nights ago we had a tempete du sable that covered everything outside (and even to a certain extend inside since the sand must get in through all the cracks and crevices) under a couple inches of sand. It sounded really scary like gale force winds but extra loud with the sand in the mix. So maybe we get sand dune days or tempete delays? I’ll check into it…

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: kicking it into high gear (or low gear when stuck in sand)
Date: February 22, 2015

Here’s the latest and greatest from Niamey:

Here are some of those camels I was telling you about. Although it is much more interesting to see them in the middle of traffic and not out in the middle of nowhere (see the last paragraph for more).

Back behind the wheel. The powers that be at CRS gave me regular access to a vehicle, a shitty Prado but it has H / L  4wd that has got me unstuck from a couple of dunes already, and I’ve been tooling around greater Niamey not getting lost and trying not to hit the stray pedestrians, overloaded camels, motorcylists, regular cyclists, handicapped people who push themselves along in hand-pumped bicycles, carts pushed by donkeys or youths, and the ubiquitous white taxis (they are the worst). I got pulled over on my 2^nd day out, but I put on the charm and acted both deeply respectful and ashamed that I went down the unmarked one-way street the wrong way, and at the end of it the policeman in his fancy uniform with braided epaulets and a jaunty cap ripped up the ticket and didn’t even extort me for a bribe. It is possible however that I am unknowingly now his 3^rd wife.

Polygamy, it’s not just a Showtime series with Chloe Sevigne. [ed. note that would be “Sister Wives”] Polygamy is rampant here, and not just among backwards or fringe people like in the States. Totally modern, open-minded men and women are engaged in it, including two of my colleagues. The man, Abari, is constantly on the phone with his two wives and trying to convince one or the other of them that he is spending more time on her than the other (but he works and travels a lot so he’s not spending much time with either of them). And my very cosmopolitan Administrative Assistant, Hadjara, is married to a man 16 years older than her. He was already married when they met, and when he asked her to be his 2^nd wife, she was having none of it, and told him he’d have to divorce the first to marry her. So he (allegedly) did. They have two kids. Now he’s talking about getting another wife (it sounds like his mom is fanning the flames) and Hadjara says that’s not for her, if he wants to marry the new one, she’s divorcing him. We’ll see how that plays out. I have been told that for a man to get a divorce he simply needs to say out loud “we are divorced” but for a woman to get a divorce is a long, drawn out legal proceeding.

On-on! The Niamey Hash House Harriers. So I’ve made it on two hashes here so far, and they are hot and dirty and dry – figuratively and literally. That’s what happens when the French are in charge of an otherwise British or anglo-heritage “drinking club with a running problem”. The hash is a running group that you’ll find anywhere in the world where there’s a critical mass of expats, often organized (“mismanaged”) by folks in the diplomatic corps of the UK or the States, but here in W Africa it is very frenchie and frankly, they can be tools. The first one reminded me of an article I read about an Italian ultramarathon runner in the Marathon des Sables who got lost in the desert in Morrocco during a sandstorm that separated him from the pack. He was in the desert with no food or water for like 19 days or something [actually 9 days], drinking his own urine etc. I thought about him a lot when I was trying to run in the dunes and up 500m of elevation (at least) and knowing there were no beer checks involved. But the next one was better, not quite as hot and a flatter run on a plateau that felt like the surface of Mars.

Manual labor. Here is the street in front of the office

and there is a guy (not shown in this photo) who has been coming out for a few hours a day to shovel some of the sand out of the way to create more compact surfaces to drive on (the lanes shown on either side of the berms). It’s our version of a snowplow I guess. Incidentally, driving on snow is similar but has key differences from driving in sand. In snow and ice (Jones: “black ice!”) you tend to turn the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the spin or drift. In sand you do * not * want to move the steering wheel, you are more likely to get stuck. I often just let go of the steering wheel in those cases, not in a “Jesus take the wheel” kind of a way, but to keep my bearings. But anyway back to the manual labor, he allegedly gets paid by the mairie, but he accepts handouts from people who use the road, and I passed him 2,000 CFA since he’s making my life better. And it is hot, back-breaking work. And also here I am in front of my house on rue Issa Beri.

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: tout pour la femme et l'enfant
Date: February 9, 2015

This past week’s highlights reminded me that we’re most definitely not in Kansas anymore, we’re in the Sahel.

• There are camels in the streets.!! For reals. And I’ll tell you what, they work hard for the money. They are the Nigerien equivalent of pack mules. They are walking down the middle of the paved thoroughfares along with car and moto traffic that pay them no mind, carrying bundles of items that far exceed their volume/girth. It reminds me a little of the people in Vietnam who transport questionable items on the back of their scooter defying laws of nature, gravity and logic. Like nine fishtanks full of water and live fish, which I actually saw once on the back of a moto on a road outside Saigon. But I digress. I will try to get photos of the omnipresent camels for a future installment.

• Sand dunes everywhere. In case the camels weren’t enough to let you know you were on the fringes of the Sahara, there are literally sand dunes where roads should be for the majority of the unpaved roads here in the capitol. For example, my 300m walk to work takes about 15 minutes because I am transformed into Lawrence of freaking Arabia or a wanna-be fremen for you Frank Herbert fans, walk-sliding in ankle-deep sand. Not the compact, maneuverable sand near the waterline at the beach, but loose, slip-sliding away sand where it’s next to impossible to get a foothold. Cars (big tall 4WD) regularly get stuck on my block. My guard and I dug out two just this past weekend.
• Climate change deniers, beware. Last week I headed north to Tillaberi, one of the provinces where the disaster risk reduction project I work on will be active. I was deeply impressed that the 20 or so participants, mostly civil servants like part of the forestry service, stationed in rural pockets far from anything we might deem “civilized”, were incredibly informed and engaged, and more articulate about climate change and the impacts on their region than many Americans I know. My blood started boiling when I thought of the Americans – who have access to universal free good quality education that Nigeriens can’t even dream of – who refuse to believe/accept that climate change is happening or man-made. If only a freaky-Friday miracle could occur that would force a permanent swap of fortune and circumstance for these deserving Nigeriens!

• What’s wrong with this picture?! For those of you who missed it on Facebook, I attach a photo of an item that stopped me in my tracks when I saw it on the shelves of the store “tout pour la femme et l’enfant” (“everything for the women and child”). Please know that Nigerienne women are modest and conservative, which probably doesn’t surprise you since this is a largely Muslim country. So the brushes below simply do not make sense. [the tip of the handle is a penis!]

• There has been no indication that Christians are being targeted in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo backlash a few weeks ago that led to the looting and burning of churches and four deaths. There has been mobilization of the Niger military against Boko Haram in the East near the border with Nigeria, but that is far from here.

This is a lengthy update, if you want off this distribution I completely understand and will not take it personally, just shoot me a quick note and I’ll stop subjecting you to it.

From: Tracy Kroner  
Subject: What $172 buys you at the grocery store in Haiti 
Date: February 1, 2015

This is a quick note to let you know I have arrived in Niamey, Niger where I expect to be for the next few years. I am too jet-lagged to offer much in the way of reliable first impressions, but there are a few points below and also contact info.

• Niamey is much like Bamako, Mali where I was last year except less crowded and cleaner (from what little I have seen so far)
• The expat grocery stores are geared more toward French/Euro expats than Americans, so happily my processed food intake will diminish!
• There is more variety of local produce even than Bamako, which is also along the fertile Niger river
• The inefficiencies and bureaucracies of a relief, recovery and development NGO that I had happily buried in the recesses of my memory are vividly brought back to life even after only a single day at work
  • it is going to strain the equanimity etc. that I have tried to cultivate after seven years of mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques
• I forgot how much I enjoyed couscous!
• Next week (inshallah) I move into temporary housing, a 6 bedroom house with a small pool, a short walk to the office. Not sure if I will stay there permanently, my 20’ container’s worth of stuff when it gets here will make it seem pretty sparse…or maybe I’ll just spin it as minimalist. [ed. note – this became my permanent housing for the three years I lived in Niamey]

CONTACT INFO

regular mail (biweekly pouch – flat mail, no packages):

* iPhone / Mac users: my local phone is attached to my iPhone, so add that number and theoretically I think that will make iMessage and Facetime easier, although I haven’t been able to make that work yet

** this is a VOIP (Vonage) from which I can pickup voicemail messages and forward calls to my local phone; for US-based callers it is a domestic call – feel free to leave me messages or to schedule a call with me; I am currently 6 hours ahead of E Coast and 9 hours ahead of W Coast

marche Katako where they sell dried grasshoppers as food, but I wasn’t fast enough to get a photo of it

Niger river from the Nouveau Pont in Niamey

[hiatus in updates from the field from April 2011 until 2015 when I arrived in Niamey, Niger. So no updates from the Philippines or Mali where I did a couple stints]

From: Tracy Kroner 
Subject: What $172 buys you at the grocery store in Haiti
Date: August 29, 2011 at 2:31:12 PM GMT+1

Happy Monday friends and family!  Just a quick note while I’m at home waiting for a ride to work since I came out this morning to find my front tire looked like this:

Shouldn’t come as a surprise given the state of the roads here.  This is literally the 4th time in less than a year that I’ve had a flat, the second time that it happened overnight.  Unfortunately the spare is also flat with a gash so gotta wait for the cavalry from the CRS fleet management to save the day.

Wondering how everybody on the Eastern seaboard is faring with [hurricane] Irene?  Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad that for a change the recent earthquake in VA and now this hurricane have bypassed Haiti and gone somewhere where there are better resources to be able to avoid and recover from the worst of it.

So getting back to the subject line, and some of you may remember seeing this on my facebook page, feast your eyes on this, without exaggeration or hyperbole, the below is what $172 buys at the grocery store.  That’s what I get for being so reliant on imports.  I’m all for supporting local agriculture, but plantains, coffee, sugar cane and pineapple can only get you so far.

Recognizing that this is a disjointed and somewhat random stream-of-consciousness note today, let me leave you with two more final nuggets:

1) I work with a Haitian whose name is Ramon’s. Yes with the apostrophe.  !! Like it isn’t confusing enough that they mostly have two or three first names and you never know which one they will go by (they do tend to go by their last one or their nom de famille) so I’d be Kroner not Tracy. [editor’s note – it is now 2018 and I’m back in Haiti and I worked with Ramon’s again this summer he was coincidentally hired as a consultant on our project. small world]

2) Seeing TV coverage of 9/11 and the footage of the towers and the pentagon that have been showing on a few of the cable channels lately, a Haitian who is at least a decade younger than me asked me if it was a movie or a documentary.  She had a hard time grasping that it was real, and seemed to have no knowledge or recollection that 9/11 ever took place.  For something that we have all internalized, and took for granted was a notorious event known about in every corner of the globe, how strange to encounter someone so close to home who didn’t.

Take care peeps, a la prochaine.

-TK

From: Tracy Kroner
Subject: another day, another IV
Date: April 18, 2011 at 12:08:45 AM GMT+1

Sak pase tout moun?  What’s up everybody?  Gumby dammit, but I am sick AGAIN and had to get a couple bags of fluids with some anti-emetics on Thursday.  Collective fingers crossed that it is not another bout of c-diff.  I tried to avoid the antibiotics as long as possible and just wanted to let this bacterial thing run its course, but four days in I threw in the towel and it’s Cipro time again.  Hopefully this will not lead me back down the c-diff path.  But if so, I hope to be back in states soon and can let US med specialists help me sort it out.  Here’s some of the latest and greatest:

Tete Kale – congrats prezidan drop trou!  Haiti has chosen it’s new president, he won in a landslide, he is a famous kompa musician (of whom I became a huge fan of when was here previously in the 90’s). I think of him as Haiti’s [Ronald] Reagan – charismatic and articulate but no skills or education to make him suitable for political office.  He is very mature and suave now but back in the day he used to tie one on and was known to pull his pants down on the stage and cross dress depending on if you believe those rumors (I don’t, Haiti is very in the closet and there wouldn’t be much appetite for that kind of display).  He is bald and his nickname throughout the campaign was Tete Kale which translates as bald-headed, baldie, or Kojak depending on your point of reference.  It is very hip to be bald here these days.  Here is his before and after:

before – gangsta

after – styled by the same group of  that organized his heartfelt “personal” telephone calls that we all got regularly on our cellphones during the campaign.  They can’t import anything useful, but they do manage to import annoying campaign tactics.  Nice.

Anyway watch this space as Tete Kale is in for a world of hurt as fuel prices rise and as a result food prices rise and as his constituency comes to terms with how long it will take him to deliver on his campaign promises (like universal free education.  Great idea, but good luck with that!).  I think there’s some more tire burning if not full on riots coming in 2011. p.s. I met Tete Kale during the campaign (when I thought he didn’t have a chance in hell of winning) and was a gushing fan and I told him I didn’t want him to win because I wanted him to keep playing music.  Luckily he and his entourage laughed, otherwise I could be on an enemies of the state list right now.

Turns my frown upside down.  Meet Micheline, the perky, bubbly, kind young woman who comes to my place roughly every other Sunday to do a really nice mani pedi for me for $12.  She is one of those naturally exuberant people, just a joy to be around, she would put a smile on my face even if she wasn’t doing me a great service that is sometimes the most relaxing time I get here.

In future updates:  the “Haitian Hand” and other unique and charming customs related to road rules and traffic patterns in Haiti; entertainment opitons and socializing: worth taking on the security protocols? the jury’s still out.

All the best,

xo

TK

From: Tracy Kroner
Subject: Tomas
Date: November 4, 2010 at 5:05:01 AM GMT+1

Hi fam – sorry for being out of touch.  so. tired.  the cholera outbreak and then the prep for hurricane tomas – hopefully just a tropical storm when it hits – have taken up every moment and spare ounce of energy.  my boss has been away out of country so i have been “Acting Chief of Party” for all our health programs but at the same time trying to do a very taxing and challenging job managing day-to-day operations without enough resources but on the bright side I have been in a position to use judgment, make decisions and provide leadership and that reminds me that I do have valuable strengths to offer.  Definitely more interesting stuff crossing my desk than usual and perversely, I find it much less stressful making the big decisions than being buried in the weeds on the little ones.

One of our partner hospitals up north has been hit hard with cholera cases, they’ve had about 300 cases and 6 deaths which doesn’t sound like much but they are a small hospital that probably normally sees only a few dozen patients during this timeframe and very few if any deaths so they are at excess capacity.  And any death from cholera is a “needless” death.  Another three of our 7 partner hospitals has also been affected.  We are still waiting for the other shoe to drop and cholera to hit PaP hard.  So far we’ve dodged the bullet, but [hurricaTomas may change that.

It has been nightmarishly difficult to try to source fluids, rehydration salts, antibiotics, aquatabs, bleach, soap, and other items that could help our partner hospitals treat cholera cases and the communities with prevention.  We got a truckload up to them over the weekend and another one heading out tomorrow before the roads become impassable due to heavy rains from Tomas.  The Ministry of Health had agreed to provide us access to medical materials then went on lockdown and we went into a long holiday weekend where nothing got done.  In the meantime we have been trying to source these items in the DR and in the states but due to paperwork and complications at borders we haven’t had anything released to us from either source.

Also with the hurricane/tropical storm Tomas we have had to preemptively dismantle our field hospital a huge undertaking that has required herculean efforts and lots of cash-for-work employees and also are preparing our hospitals for injuries and increased cholera due to the landslides and flooding that will be the bare minimum of problems and will undoubtedly shift the drainage of contaminated water further south and into the PaP catchment.  Good times ahead.  meanwhile we normally have a very desk-driven project profile of institutional strengthening so the other very time-sensitive deliverables of our projects have come to a standstill meaning we will miss some funding deadlines and essentially lose free money for our programs specifically from our USG funding that comes from CDC.  But what can you do in the current circumstances?  Immediate life & death need outweighing the potential long-term impact on health and livelihood that will come from our projects that is not so clear-cut as “life & death”.

And don’t even ask what we expect the hurricane to be like for people in the camps or what could happen to them.  It’s not good.  Most of them won’t leave for higher ground or friends/family in more secure locations because they don’t have those options available and/or they are worried that their stuff or their space will be taken if they leave.  There will be injuries and deaths from flying debris, flooding, and landslides.  Let’s just hope the storm keeps moving out of our path.  But even if so this problem is just being deferred to next hurricane season.

I have been working non-stop and marshaling the troops a few of which have been incredibly helpful including some volunteer docs & nurses we have here from the Univ of MD medical system.  On a few occasions I have blatantly broken security protocols and gotten out to do some jogging / running to try to let off some steam and have had mild endorphins kick in.  Usually this is long past curfew given what I have on my plate from v. early am to long past sundown.  I have tried to pick spots where I think I am minimizing the likelihood of kidnapping or gang rape but frankly you never know in this town. I have always let my security guard and my “alter ego” good friend know where I am in case the stuff hits the fan or I’m not heard from after appropriate intervals of time.  As you all know I’m not afraid to die but I am afraid of a painful death so let’s hope I don’t make a bad decision that takes me down that road!  Although I am sure if I am kidnapped it will not take long before the kidnappers stop asking for ransom and start offering to pay someone to take me off their hands.

ANyway, preparing to hunker down for the storm during which it is almost inevitable that cell and internet towers will go down.  Then need to dig out, put our field hospital back together and get materials to our hospitals.

More later,

Tracy

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tracy Kroner

Date: September 7, 2010 at 2:45:41 AM GMT+1

Subject: “Somebody’s got a case of the ‘Mondays'”=

Hope you all enjoyed the long weekend!  No rest for the wicked here in Port-au-Prince, today was a work day and boy was it a doozy.

Putting out fires

Per usual, that’s what I was up to today, except, literally.  Not me personally.  I supervised.  But we were without electricity for most of the day when the electrical wires that run above ground and across the street between our generator and our four buildings on either side of the street sparked and burst into flames.  We have a (sort of) electrician on staff who was en route from the main office to take care of things, but that didn’t stop of the garçon (our handyman) and one of our chauffeurs and some random passers-by from trying to diagnose the problem themselves by poking at the wires overhead with makeshift poles they cobbled together.  I quickly put a stop to that, not sure if my impression of electrocution (with bzzzzzzd sound effects and convulsion-esque body shaking) helped or not.  Probably just made them question the blan’s sanity (“blan” = foreigner, derived from “blanc” which means white but interestingly, even Africans who are black are called blan by Haitians).  Sadly, and I wish I was kidding, that was not the worst or most annoying thing I had to deal with in my work day today, but I’ll spare you and move on to…

Rambo at your service

Meet Stephan, the favorite of my own four personal agents de sécurité.  In what I find to be another absurdity of living here and/or the conservatism of my organization, I have armed guards assigned to my home 24/7. They work in 12 hr shifts from 6-6.  Pretty boring since most of the time they’re here, I’m at work or asleep, and there’s not much going on in my walled-in courtyard.  Each time I pass through the 20′ tall security gate entrance into my place the guards get a fierce look on their faces as they loudly cock the shotgun and enter into the street and scan the exterior and give me the all clear before they wave me forward, kind of like Keanu inviting one of the matrix agents to do some kung fu.  It makes me feel like I live in an action movie just without the action, explosions, car chases, etc.  Stephan is really scary when he’s doing his security guard shtick, it would be totally unnerving (especially when the loud “chu-chunk” of the shotgun cock which used to involuntarily make me jump each time I heard it), but he is the sweetest thing when you talk to him he gets this angelic smile on his face.  Every time I say “merci” to him for something (because he’s very helpful with my generator maintenance which requires manual intervention several times a day, helping me carry in heavy items, taking out my garbage, etc) anyway after I say thank you, instead of saying one of the more traditional you’re welcomes he always says something I’m more used to hearing after you say you’re sorry to someone: “ce n’est pas grave, madame” it’s very endearing.

Around the world of antibiotics in 80 days

So yesterday I finally finished round four of antibiotics (1. Cipro 2. Flagyl 3. Albendazole 4. Vancomycin) and hope I can steer clear of them for time to come.  Ironically, my GI woes turned out to be c. diff. (clostridium difficile) and were actually exacerbated if not caused by previous rounds of antibiotics, go figure.  This last one I was on, vancomycin, had a nasty set of side effects that were worse than what they’re supposed to cure me of but I’m hoping to shake them off.  That or I’ll have permanent ear nerve damage.  Whatever.  No biggie.  !  It’ll take more than a little nerve damage to keep a good woman down.

Until the next update my dear friends and family, remember to enjoy all the wonderful bad television and good (and bad) foods you can easily find in your local grocery store and if you see a whiteboard, which I still haven’t been able to commandeer, well write a “Tracy was here” for me.  And re the subject line, if you haven’t seen Office Space it’s worth a rental  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a8kzGrrad4

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tracy Kroner

Date: August 10, 2010 at 2:26:37 PM GMT+1

Subject: no more magic time

Hello all

While I’m no Wilfred Brimley just yet, that’s all I’ll say about my GI this time instead of harping on it per usual.  You’re welcome.  Instead, here’s some other things that have been going on lately.

No more “Magic Time”: so I haven’t been eating well here, and even I get tired of off-brand mac-n-cheese in a box.  The off-brand here is called “Magic Time” I think it’s some S. Fl outfit that sends generic foods to the Caribbean.  The Magic TIme fake pringles, fake cocoa puffs, and especially the fake mac-n-cheese (although “fake” in this case is redundant as anything whose main ingredient is a neon-orange powdered cheese product is anything but authentic) are all leaving much to be desired.  Happily at “Mega Mart” Port-au-Prince’s version of Costco, I found some actual KRAFT box mac-n-cheese!  It’s like manna from heaven – bidding Magic TIme a fond farewell.  Until of course I go back to Mega Mart the next time expecting to find more Kraft…don’t go looking for the same thing you bought the last time you got groceries, as the inventories at the stores are never the same twice…alas it could be months before Kraft products return to their shelves.

Look out drivers and pedestrians of Port-au-Prince: I’m behind the wheel now.  I passed my driving test and have been set loose on the “streets” (defined loosely as the sometimes asphalt, sometimes dirt, rubble-strewn, always rutted with deep ravines and potholes and often at death-defying pitch).  Thank goodness I was driving manual in SF because otherwise I’d be totally intimidated by the driving conditions here, where you need to be in “high 4” 4wd mode in the landcruisers just to get across town.  Most of my time on the road so far has been spent in bumper to bumper traffic, as demonstrations supporting one of 34 presidential candidates (yes including Wyclef Jean – it’s just a stunt to split the vote so that his candidate will have a better shot) have been taking to the main street and disrupting traffic at regular intervals.  Then you have to take the “short cuts” off the main road to get around them, and how I didn’t end up in the DR instead of at my intended destination after I made mid-course corrections is nothing short of a miracle.

“Got keys” (Friends episode reference – anyone with me?) so I got the keys to my apartment although can’t move in until the generator and inverter and batteries get installed.  It’s a nice spot in Petionville and even without a stick of furniture (except the outrageously expensive patio table and chairs I got to tide me over) I will be happy to be moving in there soon.

We are staffing up a little more at work, I’m building up my team but with so many new people it has only been a shift from me scratching my head and wondering how to get things done to a bunch of people in a room or in my office asking me how to get things done and me not having the answers.  But I’m at least starting to know who to send them to to figure it out on their own.  We entertained a group of NGO investors from the DR who are considering funding the pediatric ward of the hospital we are going to reconstruct.  It kind of blew a hole in my already tough schedule but I’m willing to bend over backward to do what I can to cement that kind of gift.  This week the President of the agency is coming and wants to spend half of his trip on our projects.  That’s a dog-and-pony show I could do without but what are you going to do.

Looking forward to my first R&R trip next week back to the states.  Gotta love this forced vacation every two months here – now I understand why that policy is needed.

xoxo

Tracy

building at the end of the block from our main office

my driveway

my place the patio

on the road

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: person wearing this t-shirt went to Haiti and all she got was GI woes

From: Tracy Kroner

Date: July 28, 2010 at 2:29:30 AM GMT+1

Greetings from PaP

OK so I know it will seem like the only news I ever have to tell relates to my GI troubles, so I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.  The flagyl didn’t work.  Still having trouble staying hydrated and nourished after (TMI alert) 5 weeks of constant nausea and diarrhea.  One blood test and stool sample later, turns out that in addition to giardia I have roundworms.  Gross!  So now I’m on a new hardcore antibiotic that is supposed to do the trick.  Fingers crossed!

Work is very challenging, so many rounds of follow up are required to get things done that it takes up my entire day following up on requests from prior days/weeks I don’t have time to think about let alone make new requests.  And this is in person, face to face, hand holding follow up, which would be fine if time was infinite  But on the contrary I’m really under the gun on internal and external deadlines.  And it means traveling between three different buildings in PaP which because of our ludicrous security policies (can’t make the 10 min walk between my building and the main building, have to get a car and driver) and our transportation shortage (not enough cars/drivers for the needs of all the staff) it is a huge hassle and long wait coming and going in addition to the transit time, which given traffic in PaP is also considerable and unpredictable.

And we’re so understaffed that I find myself doing all kinds of lowly stuff I haven’t done since I was an Admin Asst myself, including changing the toner.  I thought those days were over!  How many MBA’s does it take to change the toner cartridge?  One: this one.

And don’t get me started on the procurement process – it’s my worst nightmare.  My kingdom for a whiteboard – I’ve been trying to get one for literally weeks.  I told the procurement department to get a driver to go to the DR (Dominican Republic) and bring one back.  Barring that, to get on a flight to Miami and fly one in.  But alas.  Still waiting.  (Shipping it from the states not an option due to the

backlog at customs.  Takes months.)  And that’s only one on a list of hundreds of much-needed outstanding items we’ve ordered but yet to receive, like printers, scanners, file drawers, computers, etc.

The agency infrastructure (both Haitian and HQ in US) is extremely bureaucratic and cumbersome and driving me and all my colleagues batty.  However I am the one who is supposed to be making it better, except that I have barely scratched the surface on how it all works let alone how to begin to improve it.

On the bright side, we did have a very important milestone event last week, we’re launching a first of it’s kind in the world post graduate training for Haitian doctors and nurses, giving them practical training here in Haiti and in hospitals in the US and abroad to help them specialize in ortho/fractures, shock trauma, and

rehabilitation.  It will help increase the ranks of medical professions of which there’s a severe shortage here.  The minister of health of Haiti, led the launch event, and some notable luminaries from the US were present, it got lots of positive media attention (in Haiti) and helped me remember the important progress that’s behind the hard work.

My beleaguered GI system and I bid you good night and sweet dreams.

Love,

Tracy

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tracy Kroner

Subject: incommunicado

Date: July 5, 2010 at 2:20:15 AM GMT+1

Just a quick note to let you know I’m incommunicado at the moment, my iPhone was stolen today when we stopped to assist the gravely injured and dying in a horrific 2 car, 1 bus accident today.  Something

to be grateful for is that when we have accidents in the states there are well equipped ambulances and smooth roads and well trained medical personnel working in clean and technologically advanced hospital ERs to treat us.  Here the poor souls we crammed into our SUV had to travel in agony for 30+ mins over potholed roads to a hospital that could barely stabilize them, then return two hours over the same treacherous road to a slightly better facility in Port-au-Prince (the tent hospital I sent pics of last time, St. Francois de Sales, where we could call ahead and line up a trauma specialist to come in and assist.)   A group of us had traveled to Kaliko beach today for

some snorkeling and scuba diving, and on our way back we happened upon the scene minutes after it went down.  The blessing is that more people weren’t injured and killed as the bus had logrolled and it was of course full beyond any kind of reasonable capacity, but the injuries of those in the bus were relatively minor, it was the those in the other two vehicles who suffered the most, their injuries were grotesque and catastrophic and bloody, images I won’t soon forget.  Two were dead instantly and one of the men we helped into the back of a pickup with some other injured was not long for this world from the look of it.  All four of the injured we took to the

hospital will live, although for the one who was the worst off he’ll have a very difficult time, among other recovery issues he will face he most likely will lose his right eye.

Wishing everyone safe driving and please send your thoughts/prayers out for the bereaved in this accident and all the victims of road accidents.

Love,

Tracy

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tracy Kroner <t_leaf@mac.com>

Subject: GI bug strikes – sooner than I hoped

Date: June 23, 2010 at 2:01:47 AM GMT+1

Hello dearest family and friends,

Well it was inevitable but I didn’t expect it so soon, my track record has been much better on previous excursions to the 3rd world but maybe my guard is down because I know I’ll be living here, and maybe that explains why I took liberties…long story short, I spent last night in doctors’ care getting 3L fluids intravenously pumped in after a bout of food poisoning.  But nothing serious and even if it was, the meds I’m taking will put the kabash on it.

For those who have the stomach (ha ha pun intended) the full story is that yesterday at lunch we went to a local Haitian restaurant and the options on the menu were limited and not what I had hoped (like “hamburger” which was a deep fried breaded meat patty on a bun with chilies accompanying the more traditional lettuce and tomato and some rice with sauce Haitienne which was also infused with hot chilies).  Not an hour later I was feeling nauseous but the feeling was kept at bay until around 5 pm when I walked in the door of my guesthouse (it’s an 8-4 day here typically, although we do tend to start around 7-7:30 and finish up around 5 (but we have to be out of the office and in our residences by 6 pm per our draconian security protocols which are intended to prevent kidnappings for ransom as has happened to some expats from Doctors Without Borders and

other NGOs.)  At that point I was unsuccessful in my rapid attempt to reach the john and the result was a big mess that our poor security guard quickly took a mop and cleaned up, and he simultaneously called the head of security who called an RN on our team who is staying nearby who was checking up on me in person within minutes.  He gave me Cipro and the advice to start taking a course as soon as I was able to hold in a few sips of water which would probably be in a few hours.

By 10 pm my vomit timetable had accelerated from once every 10-15 mins to 5 mins or less and I was cramping and uncomfortable and I gave him the news when he called to check in.  He insisted on getting some IV fluids into me, and after 3 failed attempts on his part (he is a senior staff person who is a nurse by training, not a practicing nurse anymore) he called the American shock trauma medical team that works here under our auspices, they send a team of about a dozen doctors and nurses each week on a rotating basis and they

operate out of the hospital that I sent the photos of on Sunday.  The agency head of security (a big ex-marine named Shannon) came and picked up Carl and I and delivered us to the guesthouse where the med team was staying, and they promptly got the IV in and some anti-emetics.  We all laid down on the camping mattresses they had available (they really camp out and don’t have the same luxuries as our guesthouse i.e. they don’t have A/C or continual generator power which means sometimes no pump for the water, etc. which was a little bit of a drag since I was making frequent deposits into the non-flushing toilet, but the water was back by morning and I was able to flush the offending material before it freaked anybody out I think).

The ride up there at 11 pm was a little crazy (drivers are really crazy here, but not Indonesia-Thailand crazy, much more courteous and willing to stop or yield if eye contact and hand signals are made, they’re a very cooperative people), it was great to see Port-au-Prince by night which I haven’t seen since 15 yrs ago, lots going on out there even at that hour, vendors selling odd concoctions of foods and clothing items and art by candle light or sternos on street corners (no street lights) and music from nightclub (only one was open that we passed, very different from 15 yrs ago) and people watching TV at the end of their driveway with neighbors surrounding them.  When we got to the med team’s place, Carl

stayed on a mattress about 3 ft away from me and 3 ft away from him the head surgeon of the shock trauma team who gave me kind and generous attention.  Every 3 hrs or so Carl would get up and change the IV.  After the first one my nausea abated and by 7 am I was feeling pretty decent.  We got back to our luxe by comparison guesthouses, and today I worked from here and went to some meetings in the afternoon which I am told was pushing it too much (by the medical people) but not by my boss I who called to transact some business and I think she thought I was a lightweight.  But in my defense, the recently arrived Zambian who works on my team and also reports to my boss got a milder version of something and was home and in bed all day.  I mean when the African has GI issues and handles them less hardcore than you it’s got to do something for my street cred with the boss, no?

As of right now I’m OK, low grade fever and a little weak but the Cipro will take out anything that ails me and I’m sure after a good night’s sleep and some more determined hydration (drinking gatorade now) and some solid food I’ll be good to go tomorrow.  You know the cliche that your work colleagues are like family, well in this case is not a cliche — these folks really cared for me and gave me help I’d never have asked for in a million years (I frankly feel a little guilty such a fuss was made but bottom line I’m grateful and glad they did).  Remember I had mentioned that in the afternoon I had felt nauseous?  Well I mentioned it in the office

before I left, and two of my colleagues who temporarily share office space with me had separately texted my by 7 pm checking in on how I was doing and offering to bring me anything I needed (which given their location and our challenging security protocols that require convoys of vehicles to be organized to take us places after 6 pm, makes their offer non-trivial).  And my admin staff had called this morning with similar inquiries.  I was pleasantly surprised and even more impressed and grateful for the caliber and kindness of my colleagues.

OK I’m supposed to be getting to bed early so I’ll sign off but wish you all food-poisoning-free evenings and lots of love,

Tracy

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tracy Kroner <t_leaf@mac.com>

Subject: glad not to have been here when it started raining

Date: June 20, 2010 at 1:55:37 AM GMT+1

a couple more pictures from earlier today

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tracy Kroner

Subject: pets in Haiti

Date: June 19, 2010 at 9:34:09 PM GMT+1

How’s this for an anecdote:  today I learned that some Haitians have dogs as pets but mostly for security.  I saw a few more dogs today, very skinny and hungry looking, foraging in the streets.  But no cats.  I was informed that cats hide out because people eat them – when they are drinking (read: drunk on “clarin” the super-strong cane sugar alcohol, similar to Brazilian cashsa (sp?) I think) eating cats is considered a delicacy that is a good accompaniment to the drink.  So then I asked if people ate dogs too and was told basically, not on purpose, but that sometimes dishonest grocers will sell dog meat that is advertised as goat meat.  !!  Really glad I didn’t bring my pets now, I’d be scared out of my wits that they’d get out and as friendly as they are they’d be harvested right away and end up as someone’s dinner!!!  And I’ll be avoiding goat if it’s ever offered to me lol.

xo

Tracy

From: Tracy Kroner
Date: June 19, 2010 at 14:37:20 PM GMT-4
Subject: pix of hosp in Port-au-Prince
To: Tracy Kroner <tracy.kroner@gmail.com>

Greetings from Port-au-Prince. Attached are some photos of Hôpital St. François de Sales, which is owned by the arch diocese of Port-au-Prince. Of 15 private hospitals in Port-au-Prince, 13 have been put out of commission by the earthquake. This is one of the two still functioning, mostly under tents, although there’s radiology and an operating theater inside one part of the building that’s still intact. The agency will be temporarily relocating it across town so that rehabilitation and reconstruction can be done on this site, which is close to Champs des Mars (one of the largest tent cities that quickly sprung up across from the flattened Palais National).

Typical Haitian – even worried about a loved one at the hospital they can find something to smile about.

The hospital courtyard.

A mother with her baby in the pediatrics tent.

Formerly the hospital lab, which is now under a tent (that is too hot to provide reliable readings of many samples).

USG largesse provides the hospital with latrines. Along with some port-a-potties that the agency donated, those are the only toilets available at the hospital.

Not far away, part of the compressed Palais National complex, the Casernes Dessalines used to be the seat of the army. This building used to be a lot taller.