Hit the Deck

This week I learned that the United Nations loves mandatory training seminars.

My week began with a CD-ROM course called "Basic Safety in the Field--Staff Safety." Now, to most people sitting in the headquarters of any international organization in Washington or New York, being in Africa in any capacity is considered being "in the field." That is, if I'm in Senegal, surely I'm in direct contact with the starving people who receive WFP's food rations all the time, and I'm also probably living in a tent with no running water. False. (See previous post in which I reveal that I have a real toilet.)

Therefore, most of this Basic Safety course involved recommendations for what to do when confronted with land mines, child soldiers at checkpoints, gun fights, kidnappers, violent demonstrations and rioting, or any combination of the above. While it's true that living in Dakar presents the same hazards as any city--theft, auto accidents, asphyxiation from lack of greenery--I have a very minimal chance of encountering any of the dangers that would require me to crawl to the nearest cover or insist on my rights as a humanitarian worker. Nevertheless, after the course, I left the office believing that I would be blown up and/or ambushed by one of several vegetable ladies before the end of my ten minute walk home. And, if I actually leave Dakar, I have to take "Advanced Safety Training," which will probably advise me to stay out of areas where machetes tend to fall from the sky.

As if two hours spent on a program designed in the early 90s and embellished with Word Art and staged hijackings wasn't enough, yesterday I had to spend another two hours at a security workshop, held in French, in which the only words I understood were "white woman" and "terrorist."

Today, in what I assume will not be the end of my mandatory trainings, I attended a seminar on the proper and careful use of a tool that will vastly increasing the security of all WFP Dakar staff members, one that will avoid hours of needless pain and suffering in the face of a crash, fire, gun fight, violent demonstration, or kidnapping:

This afternoon, I spent 45 minutes learning how to use an external hard drive.

[Update, 7/30: Okay, I admit it. I just had to call IT to have them help me set up the hard drive.]