Work

It occurred to me that casual readers of this blog might get the impression that I am in Chad just so I can comment occassionally about the cross-cultural experience. So I thought I should write something about work.

I spend my working week at the MAF hangar, which is at the international airport in N'Djamena, 6kms across the city from where I am living. It is not a particularly busy airport and there are probably on average less than 10 take-offs or landings of aircraft during the day (with several international flights also arriving and departing through the night).

Here are the two MAF aircraft parked on the apron in front of our hangar:

For those of you interested in airplanes (other than as a means to get from A to B) the one on the left is a Cessna Caravan - C208 - and the one on the right is a Cessna 182.

The majority of my time is spent sitting at a desk working on a computer, doing all the things that managers do. This week that seemed to be mostly about finances - trying to understand the programme's budget, verifying income and expenditure and answering questions from the finance department at our head office in the UK. And it all takes place here:

It is the first office I have worked in where my job title was on the door and it is a daily reminder that, whatever happens, I am accountable - the buck stops with me!