"Alina!" I shouted excitedly across the room before I could stop myself. It was 7 a.m. on a Tuesday and I had been in Goma for four days. Our team was about to depart for Masisi and things were not going smoothly.
After I arrived in Goma I went straight to bed totally nauseous. Waking up briefly to try to eat something and soon realizing that remaining in bed was by far the better option.
The next day I met the team early to go over the research tools for our review of humanitarian assistance. We would be travelling as a group of four over the next six weeks through North Kivu, Ituri and South Kivu. The first team member I met was the "Local Member" who was Congolese and had significant experience working with international actors in the region. He was responsible for logistics and arranging local accommodations during our trip as well as conducting interviews like the rest of us. He met me the night before at the airport. The second team member was the "New Member" who was a young woman working with The Firm as an intern but who insisted on being paid for her work before departing for the DRC (and justifiably so). She was responsible for conducting interviews with women's and youth groups and civil society. The third team member was the "Experienced Member" who had worked in a management capacity for the UN in the Eastern DRC for more than 10 years. A fellow Canadian, he was responsible for conducting the protection interviews for our review.
During our Sunday morning meeting the New and Experienced Members expressed concerns over both the logistics of the trip and the design of the review. As the methodological lead I was most concerned about the design of the review so I spent the day working on that, making sure that the language in the questionnaires was better suited to the context. The Experienced Member was quite insistent that we needed to spend more time in Goma and less time in the rural communities where we were expected to spend ten days. Everyone seemed to be on the verge of quitting.
The next day I woke up and my neck was quite itchy. I asked the New Member to take a look at it, but she said she saw nothing.
The team then met with our team of enumerators for North Kivu. While we were responsible for interviewing "key" stakeholders, they would conduct surveys with beneficiaries. I was responsible for delivering the training but was somewhat distracted by the fact that I had sent an e-mail to the Director and the Big Man saying that all of the team felt that we needed more days in Goma before moving to the rural communities and that if that wasn't possible, that we would all quit.
After a day of security briefings, interviews and training enumerators, some of whom seemed to have never conducted an interview before, the Local Member's phone rang. It was the Director.
After yelling at me through the receiver for more than 30 minutes about how we had to follow the firm's plan exactly during the trip with no changes to anything ever, and that we were to leave for Masisi the following day, I conceded that I was not the person who needed to be convinced and handed the phone to the Experienced Member.
When I saw Alina across the breakfast room at the hotel the next morning all my bags were packed (and I was ready to go). I couldn't believe my eyes. Alina had been one of my close friends while I lived in Uganda, but I hadn't seen her since even though she lived just South of the border. in the 30 minutes that followed I learned that she was finishing here master's degree at Harvard (of course) and had just finished a work placement in Rwanda. After briefly updating her on my life, we drove away in two range rovers towards Masisi, carefully following security precautions because protests were scheduled in Goma that day.
Next Blog Post: Saturday at Noon!
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