Yesterday’s to-do list:
✓ Wake up on time (05:45) in Dungu, République Démocratique du Congo.
✓ Remove 156 icepacks from 3 freezers, place on conditioning table to warm up a wee bit.
✓ Make coffee, eat bread and jam, drink coffee.
✓ Help load 26 vaccine carriers with conditioned icepacks, ready for measles vaccines and solvent.
✓ Organise loading and departure of vaccination material for 8 teams onto 40 motorcycles and 1 red pickup.
✓ Sort receipts, and various other admin work.
✓ Eat more bread and jam, finish off jar of peanut butter.
⃞ Dismantle vaccination site in front of hospital. Site still operating, dismantlement cancelled.
✓ Sign contract with carpenter to build roof over Namboli drum burner, with hole for chimney.
✓ Sort logistics material (tables, chairs, tarps, etc) in courtyard so staff can enter and exit their bedroom doors.
✓ Dismantle vaccination site in front of hospital, send all material back to base on motorcycles.
✓ Meet plane at airstrip, collect cargo, load 4 large cool boxes onto plane, instruct logistician for retrieval of 25,000 measles vaccines from Isiro.
✓ Unload cargo at base, organise massively overcrowded storeroom.
✓ Check on progress of fence around Dungu Uye incinerator, notice old metal grill needs replacing.
✓ Sign contract with welders to make new metal grill for Dungu Uye incinerator.
✓ Create 2 long purchase lists, send 2 logisticians out to buy loads of stuff with cash advances.
✓ Meet plane at airstrip, collect 4 large cool boxes filled with measles vaccines, plus 1 logistician. Load fridge, motorcycle, 2 hospital lamps, and 5 boxes of cholera vaccines onto plane.
✓ Unload cargo at base, re-organise massively overcrowded storeroom.
✓ Receive vaccination material from returning vaccination teams, sort, and store in storeroom.
✓ Visit site of drum burner, check quality of roof before paying carpenter.
✓ Settle cash advances with 2 logisticians.
✓ Attend team meeting, plan for coming days.
✓ With assistant, prepare payment information for 48 rented motorcycles, 5 daily labourers.
✓ Hand over admin/finance to colleague.
✓ Bucket shower.
✓ Sleep.
Published by The PhotoDiarist
Humanitarian logistician based in Vancouver, BC, Canada
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