Ruinous

Why does work often feel like the entire day is spent organising priorities, arranging meetings, coordinating people and facilitating decisions, instead of actually performing the more tangible work itself. I’m not going to achieve impactful conservation in Mozambique if the whole time is spent discussing budgets and finding spaces in people’s diaries to arrange a time to plan a workshop at which we’ll discuss more budgets. While this is going on, no one involved is doing anything practical by way of conservation action.

I know this is a daft scenario to outline as the truth is that a billion ‘management-esque’ plates spin whilst some people crack on with the fieldwork, but we’re only six weeks into the year and I am starting to resent the sheer volume of coordination and administration that feels too many steps removed from the cause. I’m sure this will drive me from the NGO sector before my working life ends...

Ilidio whipped out one of his classic conspiracy theories during our Portuguese lesson, this time related to coronavirus.

No, I don’t believe the virus was cultivated by a group of humans in a lab and transplanted into animals consumed in China as a way to control the Chinese population. I believe that the consumption of wildlife is a risky business that has and will lead to this sort of disease crossover, of which the latest coronavirus outbreak is a particularly virulent strain.

No, whilst we’ve all seen dystopian movies about the end of the world I also don’t believe that coronavirus will infect a billion people. I believe the death rate among healthy adults is very low and that there is a disproportionate number of deaths affecting the elderly or already sick. If necessary I’ll camp out in the hills of Swaziland whilst Maputo becomes a scene from 28 Days Later; a lone survivor wandering the deserted streets in a surgical gown.

*disclaimer
I’m not an epidemiologist so these words cannot be used as evidence of the naivety of humans when a last band of survivors stumbles across blipfoto.