USAID picnic

As today was the original date we were all fired, a picnic was planned for today for USAID and contractors. 

On the one hand, so many people are laughing when they hear we are crying or traumatized, that many of us don’t want to tell anyone.

On the other hand, it turns out that some people at USAID are not only spontaneously bursting into tears with no provocation, but are losing clumps of hair. 

I met two people that I would like to help me implement work if I win it in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

One of them made me remember that the DRC is freaking dangerous now and, as a teeny little company, we have no protection infrastructure. I will have to think on this with the people I talked to today.

I had the telephone screening today. I think I answered all the questions well, but her last one was, “And why are you looking for a job change.” “Because they destroyed my agency.” But as I was walking away from the conversation I thought, “DON’T YOU READ?!” 

Almost every single company out there has a list of all the categories of discrimination they don’t do. Gender. Race. Religion. Disability. Almost all of them include sexual orientation. This company does not include that one. They include genetics! They do not include sexual orientation. 

Driving home tonight I decided that if I do get that job I’ll continue the business because I don’t feel confident that they will survive the recession. 

A company I really liked working for laid off 95% of their employees and recently told them to keep their laptop computers. This makes sense. If they ever manage to build back their company the computers will be ancient by then. It would cost labor and storage to take the computers back now. 

Today we learned that USAID has come to the same conclusion. We were all told to keep our government issued equipment, from phones to computers. They said they will remotely wipe them. The computers will then have no operating system and will be trash and we will have to dispose of them ourselves. 

I learned that Maryland was so swamped by all the laid off employees working for contractors that maybe 60% of the ones fired in January have yet to receive any unemployment insurance. 

We all hurt for MCC which has been shut down. MCC was such a brilliant and innovative approach to development, developed, actually, under Bush. Countries have to get their act together and when they meet certain criteria, the MCC goes in, analyzes what the key barriers still are, and, based on what the country wants to accomplish, develops a plan and works with them on it. USAID is often done “to” countries. MCC is done “with” countries. 

On the way home my friend and I talked about the US being the bad guy vis a vie Ukraine and Russia, and how devastating this is for so many people at USAID. 

We have now deported a 2 year American citizen with no due process. 

“A high-ranking Russian military official was killed Friday in an explosion in a suburb of Moscow, in what authorities are treating as a case of murder. The incident coincides with the meeting of President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow for high-stakes talks with President Vladimir Putin.”