R&R

     I need to apologize for the lapse in posting.  I have been pretty busy since getting back from R&R but that was expected.  I guess, though, that I should explain R&R.  When you work 7 days a week in this environment, it is important to take occasional breaks to be able to maintain focus and emotional energy.  Sometimes the stress is from the work, sometimes it is from the waiting.  But it is there.  Burn out is a significant risk here and it can be hard to replace trained people.  For that reason, USAID built into the contract respite breaks every 6-8 weeks.  It improves the sustainability of the effort and helps keep good people.  

     R&R gives people something to look forward to.  People plan what they are going to do and where they will go for their next break.  Sometimes people want to go someplace warm (we are pretty acclimatized to the heat and Europe can be cold this time of year).  Sometimes they want to get away from the heat and Europe at this time of the year is a draw.  Europe does have the advantage that they don't care if you have been in an Ebola zone as long as you are not sick and don't have a fever.  Some people just stay in Monrovia at a hotel where they can just relax and get away from the ETU.   Wherever you choose to go, it can give you a chance to control your own schedule.

     R&R also gives you an appreciation of the passage of time in an environment where each day can look like the next.  In a place where the day of the week, indeed the month, doesn't effect your activities, you can loose a sense of the passage of time.  You may not appreciate how long you have been the or it may feel like the end of your tenure is forever in the future.  The R&R gives you a marker for past and future.  

     All that said, Brussels was great!  Jo flew out to join me and we had a wonderful time in a city with a lot to recommend it.  I don't know what I will do for my next R&R, but I will start planning for it in the not too distant future.