Two Days on the Job

I've officially started my job.  As an added bonus, I've begun to figure out a bit more about what I'll actually be doing, though after two days of 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. meetings I'm not sure I have the mental capacity to write about it coherently.*

The basics: I'm working for the Clinton Health Access Initiative (henceforth referred to as "CHAI"), which is under the umbrella of the Clinton Foundation.  In particular, I'm working as part of the team in Swaziland dedicated to improving health outcomes in the country.  Specifically, I'll be focused on helping the Ministry of Health and related organizations improve their ability to forecast for drugs and other necessities for combatting HIV/AIDS.  Swaziland has been devastated by the disease, and has the highest per-capita infection rate of any country in the world.  Part of my job will also be in Gaborone, Botswana, where I'll have a similar role in helping in the procurement process.

I've spent the last two days at a conference hosted by CHAI's global pediatrics team.  That team has focused for the last several years on pediatric HIV prevention and treatment generally, but specifically on managing a donation of "commodities" -- anti-retroviral drugs, testing equipment, etc. -- from UNITAID (pronounced unit-aid).  Depending on the country, CHAI plays a greater or lesser role in the procurement and delivery process, nearly always forecasting and ordering.  I'm here because I'll have a role in helping manage that process in Swaziland and Botswana.


In the sessions I've had a chance to meet a bunch of people that work in or with countries all over the continent.  I'm  struck by how much these people care about what they do.  Each person takes every new case of pediatric HIV/AIDS personally.  They (we?) feel completely responsible for failures at a country level and hold themselves to an extremely high standard.  It was really interesting to sit in a room full of people so clearly dedicated to their jobs, or at least dedicated to the mission.

Unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to see Nairobi, we're staying at a hotel about halfway between the airport and the city and have been here in meetings most of the time.  We did drive into the city for dinner last night, which gave me my first taste of non-Western driving.  I am fairly certain it was a three-lane highway/main road, but cars were packed about 5-wide and barely crawling along.  It took us an hour and 45 minutes to drive to dinner, and about 15 minutes to drive back.  Switching lanes entailed cutting hard right or left into someone and hoping they'd give way, and our bus driver's strategy was to switch lanes as much as possible.  It was awesome.  It might have been unsafe had we not been driving <3 mph (~5 kph--I'm trying to convert so I can understand things around here) the whole time.
The epic drive did allow for the good-ish food trend to continue.   The Thai food we had for dinner last night was almost all good, one dish better than good, and one dish worse.  I'm staying tomorrow to work with my new boss all day tomorrow, but hope to find some time to explore the city and find our way to some Indian food, for which the city is famous.


I'll stop there, having long overshot the 20-minute time limit I'd set for myself, but will finish with a question to people more knowledgeable (and with better access to Google) than me:  Why does Tusker Lager (the beer of choice here in Nairobi) have sugar as an added ingredient?  It doesn't taste particularly sweet, and it's definitely not Belgian-style, so I'll pose that to someone who knows more about these things than I do and hopefully find an answer.


Kwaherini,
Garrett


*As part of my blogging/communicating plan, I'm trying to hold myself to writing more often at a lower quality standard than I'm usually comfortable with.  Please tell me if I'm boring, but hopefully you can overlook the bad writing.