In my last post I simply stated that I was here in Geneva and that I had made it to the offices of the World Student Christian Federation. I will tell you a little more about exactly what I've been doing in the past 48 hours. It has been an eventful 48 hours.
Noon Wednesday: I arrive at the Geneva International Airport. After a small luggage scare (I thought my bags did not arrive, but in reality I was just at the wrong turnstile..oops). Christine Housel meets me at customs. She is my direct supervisor. I had never met her before so she had a nice little sign that said "Maryann Philbrook". Christine is an American woman who has been living in Geneva for 7 years now. She is also an Episcopalian. (Although we are an ecumenical groups everyone that works here is Anglican).
13:00 Lunch with Christine at Cafe du soleil. We have traditional fondue. Very tasty! Hot melty cheese that we dip small pieces of bread into. Yum. We also have a side cured meats and a small salad. A perfect introduction to Geneva.
15:00 Meet people at the office. Charité, the Human Rights intern. She is amazing. I'm looking forward to working with her. Henriette, the accountant. She's in charge of money. I don't get to meet Monika or Marlin. They're both out of the office. I get to spend a little bit of time on the internet.
17:00 Get a ride to my temporary home. Michael, the director is out of town for the month of March. He and his wife and kids are at home, in New Zealand, visiting friends and family while he is getting ordained. So I am staying in his house and using his office. Pretty swank digs for someone just arriving. I was so worried about where I was going to stay, but God and the people here at WSCF took care of me. Thank You!
18:00 After my shower, I go to the local grocery store. I wander around in a jet-lagged daze and pick out a few items for dinner and breakfast the next morning.
19:00 zzzzz...zzzzz...
6:45 am. Woke up and can't go back to sleep. That could be because I went to bed at 7 o'clock last night... Christine had said she would pick me up at 9 am to take me to the Office to get my ID card. So I have some time. I make myself a leisurely breakfast and then I decide to read the Student World from 2007. The theme is migration; there are articles from students and clergy discussing different ideas.
9:15 No Christine. I decide to brave the Swiss phones and use the one in the house to call the number I had been given for Christine. An automated message in German. Oops. I try the number I had been given for Charité. No answer. I try the WSCF offices. No answer. What to do next?
9:45 Still no Christine. I try all the numbers again. Finally, when I call the number for Charité I hear an American accented voice. Christine? Apparently, she had not recovered from her jet lag yet - she got back from the States on Tuesday. So she had not slept at all the night before and then slept through her alarm. Change of plans. She gave me directions to the office on the Public Transit. Let's meet at the office for a 1pm meeting at the UN.
10:00 I take the tram into town. It is surprisingly easy. Michael lives about 45 minutes out from the office. I simply take the tram until the final stop. Then I transfer to a bus and get off and walk to the front doors of the Ecumenical Center. (The Ecumenical Center is where the World Council of Churches is headquartered). This is where it gets difficult. This building was clearly built in phases. Some of the stairs and elevators go up to the 3rd floor. However, I work on the 4th floor. I have the receptionist call the office so that someone can meet me to walk me up to the offices.
11:15 I arrive and Henriette guides me to the offices. She looks to see if Monika is there. No Monika. Let's meet Marlin next. Henriette knocks on a closed door and dumps me into a conference of some sort. I sit down next to Charité. Marlin, I assume, is talking about his advocacy work in Zimbabwe. It is fascinating to hear about the work that he has done and the real threats that he is facing and overcoming to help bring stability to his country. Very inspiring guy.
12.45 Charité and I discuss our upcoming visit to the UN. It is also her first time. Christine arrives and whisks us away to the UN. Since we are running late she drops us off the Security Entrance where we can get our badges. She runs off to the meeting. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes (only to discover that an agent was free the whole time but was not signalling us!) we finally talk to an agent. We give him our paperwork and he makes us fill out another form. Then we take a picture and get a badge. I have a badge for the UN. I can go anytime I want to any of the "public" events. I will have to find some in the next few weeks to take advantage of this privilege.
13:35 Wander the halls of the UN looking for the "NGO Room." No one seems to have heard of it or know where it is. The meeting started at 1, so we are running rather late and we're both desperately hungry. Finally, in a last ditch effort before giving up and going to the Cafeteria we ask a security guard. He DOES know where it is. It's actually next to the Cafeteria. We find it and interrupt the meeting, only 45 minutes late.
14:30 Meeting adjourned. We leave with Christine. She runs into a colleague, who's statement she has to sign. Charité goes back to the office for a 3 o'clock meeting. I hang out with Christine while we wait to sign the statements. (At the UN NGO's can create statements about upcoming resolutions. Other NGO's can then sign them, putting more weight behind the statement.) I chat with some other interns that work in this same building, but for a different organization.
16:25 Finally make it back to the office. Get a minute to check my email.
17:15 Christine calls to me from the hall. An impromptu celebration of my arrival. Complete with Chocolate Cake and Sparkling Apple Juice. So sweet!
18:00 Charité and I leave to run some errands. I get a monthly bus pass. She tries to get her phone fixed, only the store is closed. So we end up eating at Kebab place near the train station.
19:45 Head home.
20:10 I arrive at my temporary flat. Read some more the book Searching for God Knows What.
21:00 Get into bed to read.... I can't believe I've only been in this country for 40 hours or so.
Okay, well that's enough for now. I will post more later on my reflections on all these amazing things.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
that's awesome
ReplyDeletethat zimbabwe guy - marlin - was he kicked out of zimbabwe ? mugabe (the leader there) kicked out all the NGOs recently so i am curious if marlin had his work interrupted. zimbabwe has all sorts of problems - big cholera outbreak, something like 80 percent unemployment etc. the ruling zanu-pf party lost an election to the mdc (movement for democratic change) led my morgan zvangirai (sp?) recently, but they had to have a run-off, and during the run off several hundred mdc people were attacked by the government. Mugabe basically has something wrong with him. he started out ok as a revolutionary leader during the 60's or 70's, but hes been kicking out all the white farmers and redistributing their land, so the new farmers who are inexperienced have made mistakes and food production has plummeted. mugabe basically claims that the west is out to get him. well you probably have been told all this by marlin anyways. i like reading the foreign news on the bbc online and zimbabwe comes up a lot.
oh yeah also they've had several thousand people die of cholera - totally preventible with clean sanitation - because zanu pf has claimed there is no problem, and no one is upgrading the country's infrastructure because there is basically no economy anymore. inflation is literally something like X thousand percent. the currency is worthless.
my friend robert is currently taking a brief vacation in south africa (directly south of zimbabwe) and i asked him to try to find a trillion-zimbabwean-dollar note for me. (or maybe it was a billion, not sure). they printed some of them, but now i think they've just ditched the whole currency scheme and are using either dollars or the currency used in south africa whose name i can't remember.
there are lots of horror stories in africa. do you guys have any missionaries in uganda ? theres a 30-something year old low-level rebellion there by a group called the Lord's Resistance Army, led by a guy named Joseph Kony who is currently in hiding in the congo. he's claimed in the past that he is the messiah. and he encourages maiming and killing people. thousands have been killed over the years by that guy.