I did take pictures today but you liked the picture of the protest so much that I’m offering this instead. I did not attend, they aren’t my pictures. 

Thank you for the love and care. I absolutely appreciate it, it helps. I know I’ve been too busy for months to keep up with your journals but I should have a lot more time soon.

The person writing this novel wants to extend the drama of this part. 

They couldn’t put everyone on administrative leave in one night. Rumor is that HR said no and were put on administrative leave. They must have realized that they could not actually evacuate all the staff all around the world with all of their families and pets by Friday so now it will be in a month. 

I was not put on administrative leave last night. At 10 pm we all got messages that if we had not been put on administrative leave yet we would find out Thursday at 3 that we were being put on administrative leave Friday at midnight. 

I think everyone spent all day today saying goodbye and exchanging personal contact data. 

It is a little better than that. I woke up too early, because if you are stressed why would you sleep as much as you need? Our bodies think they should give us the bare minimum to keep us moving. 

I woke up and went to my computer to connect with the people in South Africa to see what was up with my expense report. The person I reached out to had been in meetings all day. I knew that meant they’d all been given very bad news. She completely redid my expense report because the glitch in the old one could not be fixed. I helped a wee bit. She got an error she’d never gotten before. She found someone in the travel office to fix it - thank goodness because all of our travel office people here have been put on administrative leave already. By the end of the day it was fully approved. At the two hour staff meeting at the end of the day today I learned that USAID has resumed reimbursing people’s travel expenses. I am quite hopeful I will finally be paid the money back.

I was empathetic and patient and I listened and I was very good, but I knew I wouldn’t have enough emotional reserve to handle the chipper person coming to my house this afternoon. I went to my friends’ who are in Canada so I could hide out in their empty house . At 3 pm the Bureau had an all staff meeting even though they knew they wouldn’t actually have the answers to any questions. 

How long will we be on administrative leave before we are fired? We don’t know. There is a law that says people can’t be put on administrative leave more than 10 days but no one expects that law to be followed. The longer we are on administrative leave the longer we still get paid.

Can we go on vacation while we are on administrative leave? Yes but you don’t have access to the government computer systems so you can’t ask for vacation.

Can we protest while we are on administrative leave? Probably as long as you don’t protest one of the political parties but you need to be on annual leave while you are doing it. How do you get to be on annual leave?

Some of the people will not get severance when they are fired. 

What happens to our local staff, like the South Africans working in South Africa? There are local laws that make it a little complicated to just fire people but they will be fired and when they are, there is a 35% unemployment rate in South Africa. Some of the South African staff are absolutely amazing and we are incredibly lucky to have them. They do not understand how this is happening. 

If you want to retire, are there enough humans left to process the paperwork? Will there be humans to process the paperwork? We don’t know. 

After demanding that everyone go into the office, will we be allowed to go into the office to get our things? We don’t know but the leadership will try.

The goal is shock and awe. The goal is to traumatize. It is working. 

Some of the people have spouses who also work in international development so they’ll both be losing their jobs at the same time. 

I am glad I went to their house because it let me cry twice not in front of Karen.

Article suggesting why Elon hates USAID so intensely:  https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-enemy-usaid-was-investigating-starlink-over-its-contracts-in-ukraine-2000559365

Video of Samantha Power on The Late Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIHJub72vuM

“Ukraine says it's far along in developing laser weapons to take out drones”


“ Russian soldiers fighting against Ukrainian troops have partially lost access to Elon Musk's Starlink internet connection service, several of Russia's influential military bloggers said, despite denials from the influential billionaire that Moscow can tap into Starlink.”