Paris 2010

There are several direct flights a day from DC to Paris, on Air France. Therefore, I fly to Frankfurt and from there to Paris. Because Lufthansa gives the World Bank better prices.
This sort of thing has been remarked upon rather a lot by my colleagues. It seems rather counter-intuitive. But – the World Bank’s mission is to eradicate poverty. As usual, with really big public policy issues, this is being done by throwing money at the problem in the hope that it will go away. Only they’ve been throwing large amounts of money at the problem for quite a while now and it doesn’t seem to be quite on its way out the door yet.

So they’ve been looking at their programs for a while now, attempting to get higher efficiency out of lending and knowledge programs, or more colloquially put, trying to get more bang for the buck. Less of the sprinkler method, trying to deliver the needed – ahem – liquidity to more specific targets. The FPD-FI unit (Financial and Private Sector Development – Financial Integrity) that I am now proud to work for, in this metaphor is the semi-buried hose with tiny holes where water trickles directly to the root of the plant. The yearly budget for the whole team is smaller than most lending programs. The idea is that by delivering knowledge straight into the hands (or, rather, heads) of those who will be making important decisions for a country’s financial stability, we get a lot of leverage. But we, too, need to look at where we can do “more with less” (which wouldn’t be asked of everybody quite so often if the Pathfinder mission hadn’t been such a spectacular success, thus raising rather overblown and unfortunate expectations). And the travel budget of our unit is big. I assume our staff salary is a higher total, though I know the total cost of my travels for the unit so far already rivals that of my first year’s salary, and I haven’t even been here for half a year yet.

In fact, I’ve been here about half that – the rest I spent traveling. I notice that a lot, lately. Here is how you know if you’ve been traveling too much:

When the plane touches down and suddenly decelerates, you reach out and stop the closed laptop from sliding off the empty seat next to you without looking up from your book.

The first thing you check on the long-distance flights is whether there’s an electric socket at your seat, and if so, whether it has juice.

You not only know your passport number by heart, but also its issue and expiration dates.

Of the movies on offer during flight, you’ve seen every one that might be remotely interesting – and did so while flying.

You not only grab just the right number of trays at the security checkpoint to smoothly pass through that process, you get annoyed at people who don’t.

You don’t mind the small room, the ex-broom-closet bathroom or the lack of a gym or pool in the hotel, because hey – it’s got a stable WiFi connection.

For ten or more cities, you not only know the name of the airport, but its three-letter acronym (today I’m flying IAD-FRA-CDG).

But I digress. This trip to Paris is – weird. At first glance, it feels much like a vacation. The weather is simply gorgeous. After arriving on Sunday, knowing how good sunlight is to get into a different time zone, and needing some caffeine to keep me awake after a very short night on the transatlantic flight (sleeping in the afternoon would increase jet lag), I sit in an outdoor café with a cappuccino – strictly to make sure I can work the next day, right, no hedonism involved. ;) I also jog for a bit, down to the Seine and the Tour d’Eiffel and later spend an hour of the evening reading a book at the Seine.

Of course we work on Monday (and I’ve had a good bit to read up on – again – on the way over here to make sure I’m up to speed), but we only start at 9 and the OECD is only a 15 minute walk from the hotel (which is why I picked a small hotel way below the maximum rate for this trip). So I sleep until 07:30, which is practically a week-end for me. And I’m still back out of work by six in the evening or so. On Monday evening I go to the Tour d’Eiffel – I’ve never done this before. It really is quite impressive (though the flashing lights they put up there for the last celebration and re-installed after locals protested their removal don’t really do it for me).

The Seine at night (from the river bank)

and from higher up...

Tuesday we have a team dinner after our work – we meet at eight, which allows me to go for another small bit of jogging before we do. And dinner is nice. And fun.

And on Wednesday we’re done early as well, so I manage to write up all my changes (and hand them to our team leader) before leaving the OECD, and still manage to spend two hours with a book at the Seine before – supposedly – meeting two of our team for a well-deserved decompression beer in the Hard Rock Café. Sounds great. What’s to decompress, I wonder?

The talks actually went well. There was very little antagonism, lots of useful information. We had our stuff together, and when somebody needed to look something up for a bit, somebody else could smoothly step in so we never wasted time. When the other side asked for a run-down of everything they’d asked to be changed in the report that was NOT changed even though they requested it, and why it wasn’t, I could even do that – with enough clarity so no questions were left open, with enough firmness so no one started arguing the points, with enough diplomacy no one got angry (much) and with about five minutes preparation time. I actually impress myself and it seems I wasn’t the only one that was.

So everything worked just fine, like a well-oiled machine doing its thing. But I guess the lack of friction (which allowed us to get so much done so quickly) is due to intense preparation and focus, which is also pressure. I note my gut is more tense than it should be given what little obvious stress I feel (at home everything seems fine as well, yay!). And one of the two I was supposed to meet in the Hard Rock Café doesn’t show up because his back cramped up. I take it that’s a stress symptom, too. I don’t know what became of the other one, but I don’t find either one of them. I do find two people from the other delegation, and have a pleasant evening (and a few beers and a tequila) with them.

I get another dose of stress when I choose to take public transportation to get to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, rather than a taxi. I mean, 8.50 EUR vs 50 EUR – that’s just stupid. I’m not so spoiled that I need to be chauffeured around at the unit’s expense, now am I? Though even the tail end of Paris rush hour in the metro is no fun with luggage. Nor are the many stairs for the two train changes (no moving escalators here). Nor is the local train which brings me to CDG – slowly.I’m just lucky that I start this journey with the intra-European leg, and the concomitant shorter check-in and cutoff times. Everything’s all right. I’m coming home. J

The Gambia - Impressions from the Ground

We were picked up at the airport and brought to what shall be our hotel for this week. It’s a beach resort hotel. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Which brings to mind, as I walk towards the little building which contains my room, how much one’s perception is coloured by one’s needs. Apparently some people find this place nice enough to have their weddings here (there are two during the couple of days we’re here). And if I was on holiday, the signs exhorting me not to feed the monkeys might get a different reaction from me. There is a pool with a bar next to it, but the pool closes at sundown. Given that we work for most of the day, a pool that’s open 24/7 would be much nicer for me, even if it wasn’t outdoors. Heck, I’d trade most of the amenities for a fast internet connection. I can’t get one with my laptop. WiFi access is so spotty that half the time (I don’t try it that often) I can’t even get to a log-in page. This has been recognized by hotel management, so they rent out USB sticks that operate as cell phone modems. One of these should work anywhere in the Gambia, we’re told, which is really neat – only that it requires installing a program, and my system will *not* let me run executable files. So I’m stuck with the “business center” near reception. Internet access is slow even so, but I can check to make sure I stay on top of the more urgent stuff from work, and chat with my wife a bit every day. So far, so good. But it does mean we’re rather cut off from the real world.

Now that’s not all bad – mentally, it tends to happen to me on these trips anyway – enough stuff to focus on. We do a whirlwind tour of the institutions and quickly rack up a meeting record that would befit a full-fledged Mutual Evaluation. Of course our point, this time around (Horst was here during the last ME) isn’t to find all the possible flaws in the country’s anti-money-laundering system, but to find out which of those can best be addressed with a bit of help from the World Bank. And we make good progress. People absolutely do not work much past four in the afternoon here, so we tend to be back in the hotel by five. The standard day has me finishing my notes for the day, then swimming in the pool for a bit, followed by us having a beer near it and later (after I’ve had a chance to shower and get dressed again) meeting up for dinner in one of the restaurants close to the hotel. Which are dirt cheap and serve okay food. Except for the Bennechin Chicken to which Horst introduces me, which is a local specialty, way better than “okay” and hereby strongly recommended. Really good stuff.

Then it’s another day full of meetings. Work progresses apace. Our counterparts from the central bank have been (and continue to be) very effective at securing meetings for us. I realize on Tuesday afternoon that the Ministry of Finance isn’t part of the meetings we have scheduled so far, and ask if that could still be arranged? And on Thursday morning we meet the Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Finance. Good stuff.

We are so fast, in fact, that we should be able to finish a day early. I’d asked our counterparts to frontload our meeting schedule – to keep Friday, and as much as possible even Thursday, free so that we could schedule additional meetings or make-up meetings for some that fall through (generally something one needs to expect in the region). But we seem to be lucky (and have sufficient support from the Central Bank) – the (very few) people who don’t want to meet with us and claim other urgent appointments send a clueless stand-in, which just makes the meeting that much shorter. Remember, this isn’t an ME, we don’t need that many answers – really only the answer to how can we help? And you can’t help someone who isn’t interested in help.
So I realize on Tuesday evening that we can almost certainly get out of here on Thursday. Which is nice, because you can’t get out of Banjul on a Friday – our original plan therefore had us flying back on Saturday evening. Back when I was working at BaFin (certainly in the early years), needing to stay another day at a Beach Resort (maybe compiling a few notes and drawing up a Concept Note by the pool to ease the conscience) would have seemed quite the cool thing. These days it seems poor compensation for another weekend spent without the family.

So I ask AmEx to shift our departure to Thursday. It’s a little more expensive, but once you subtract the hotel expenses thereby saved, not so much. Still, it’s Wednesday afternoon before I know we can go home on Thursday.

Only on Thursday, during a meeting with the police, my cell phone rings. What the … ?! Noone here has my number. And the number that’s calling me isn’t one I know. So I suppress the call and get a text message shortly thereafter. When I check it the moment we’re out of the door, it’s my wife asking whether the volcanic ash would interfere with my return? What? The Gambia has a couple of hills way upriver. Senegal, which surrounds the Gambia, doesn’t even have those. The closest volcano I’m aware of is Kilimanjaro. What is she texting about? I compile a brief answer that I’m not aware of volcanic activity and currently not expecting delays.

Back at the central bank office, Horst checks his emails and notices, as a number two news item in small print beneath the headline of “how to dress slim” on msnbc’s website, a volcanic eruption in Iceland. If I hadn’t mentioned my wife’s text message to him, he wouldn’t have clicked on it (agonizingly slow download speeds having the effect of severely reducing curiosity) – and I would not have been on the phone minutes later. A *long* overseas call later (at least I’m not paying roaming charges on this one – the cell phone calls from Ha Noi came out to over 260 USD) we are now supposed to take the same flight, but only to Dakar, where it stops before continuing to Brussels, and take a United flight from there into DC. Phew.

We get back to the hotel after our closing meeting, where I ask hotel staff to call the airport and make sure that Brussels air will go as far as Dakar, if it can’t go on to Brussels. The answer is that the plane in question didn’t even make it out of Brussels on its way here.

Another *long* conversation from the hotel. Only 40 USD this time, which end up on the hotel bill (the Bank reimburses these costs without fault) and now we’re scheduled for a Virgin Nigeria flight, after midnight, to Dakar, going on to JFK with South African at 2:45 in the morning. I go on from there to DC, Horst has to take a taxi to La Guardia airport to take a plane to Toronto and then to Ottawa. Phew.

Our plane is late leaving Banjul (and unkempt and uncomfortable and not reassuring in appearance at all) – the lady at AmEx did mention that they usually don’t use this airline. I can see why.

And we get into Dakar late. Dakar airport is not nice. And we’re in a hurry. And spend some time arguing with the airline guy, because we get to the check-in desk only 40 minutes before scheduled departure, with 45 minutes being their scheduled cutoff time. They want some form of confirmation of our e-tickets, which is rough, seeing as these were issued over the telephone only a few hours ago. I asked whether a confirmation could be texted to my cell phone, but AmEx isn’t equipped to do that (which I consider a fault, text-to-mail and mail-to-text conversions are very much solved problems these days). They did email confirmations, and Horst’s blackberry finally finds a network it can work with. Which it couldn’t in Banjul. Which means that now the 170 emails or so of the last week (he’s officially retired, so doesn’t get as many as I do) are being pushed into the unit, while he’s trying to scroll through all that to show the confirmation to the airline guy. While I stand behind him and check the Lonely Planet guide for accommodations in Dakar (it seems the likelier option at this point).

But lo and behold, he finds it, the airline guy is happy with it, we spend some exciting time running after the guy through the airport (with all our luggage) (which is hand-searched), jump into a nearly empty bus which takes us across the airfield while two airport employees fill out manual baggage tags, hand luggage and boarding passes to the crew and get on board. And off we go. Phew.

South African has full-flat seats. And they’ve served dinner on the way from Capetown to Dakar, so the moment the seatbelt lights are off I go to sleep (it’s three in the morning local time, after all). And get what feels like a full night’s sleep and still wake up at six in the morning local time where we land. Going West sure is the easier direction of transatlantic flights. Supposing you manage to get on the flight in the first place. ;)