The Linguist

by Jim Mohan

My entry into the Africa Section in PDFS was totally unexpected. Sometime after having received my UNICEF supported degree from the Harvard School of Public Health, I was happily doing my new job at a P-5 level in the Program Funding Office with Marco Vianello Chiodo. One day Fouad and I met on the 6th floor of the Alcoa Building. To my surprise he invited me to be a member of his team to deal with the turmoil in Africa. I quickly said yes for several reasons including my high esteem for Fouad, my four years of experience in Sudan (Khartoum and Juba) and my eagerness to respond to the humanitarian needs of Africa.

But I had one condition. I wanted to bring with me my highly competent, multilingual Austrian assistant….Marina Kmentt. He met Marina and said…”certainly!” We promptly moved down the hall to the “Open Africa Section” to join the team of highly experienced Program Officers that had been assembled to work under Fouad's direction.

Right from the start, everything was a new and exciting challenge in a close professional family atmosphere. Marina and I huddled into a little corner of the open platform within eye contact of “the Chief" Fouad. Under Jim Grant’s leadership, the “Child Survival Revolution” was the rallying call for UNICEF. The focus of the biggest challenges was clearly on Africa. Based on my earlier experiences in Sudan, I was eager to be back on the frontlines of child survival in Africa.

Rather than spending most of our time analyzing the problems of Africa from Headquarters, I was thrilled to be assigned coverage of the conditions of children and women in French, English and Portugese speaking countries of Central and West Africa. Guided by the indicators for assessing health conditions, I was constantly traveling to these countries, some of which had little or no UNICEF physical presence on the ground. I took copious notes on assessing the status of children and I frequently managed to dictate by phone to Marina the basis of my field report before arriving in New York. Fouad as Chief of the Africa Section and Samir Basta in the Evaluation Section were important sounding boards for the reports I produced.

Gathering information in the field entailed many discussions with UNICEF health staff and local officials. That was relatively easy. The challenge was more difficult in small countries like Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Gambia and São Tomé and Principe. Needless to say my learning curve skyrocketed and I was thrilled to make a contribution to UNICEF’s effort to address the basic health challenges for the survival of children in the most impoverished countries of Africa.

However large or small, the local officials in all countries were aware of and appreciative of UNICEF’s work. It was a privilege to be acknowledged and appreciated. The international reputation of UNICEF had been generated from the decades of dedicated staff that had laid the foundation of the organization from World War II onwards. My several years with the Africa Section were among the most rewarding of my entire 28 year career with UNICEF. In addition, my personal relationship with the staff of the Section has lasted a lifetime.


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