Friday, October 3, 2025

Protests, Furloughs and Needy Mutts – Oh My!

For those paying attention to this end of the world, the country is dealing with protests due to power outages. We basically went on lockdown last week, not because the protests are directed to U.S. staff in any way, but because protesters are clogging roads, especially downtown, and no one (especially local staff) can get in to work.

Because we’re pretty much secluded in our excusive neighborhood, I haven’t seen any protests close and personal. Last week, however, I had been hosting a class (which they’ll never let me do again, I’m sure) and on Wednesday we learned there’d be protests Thursday.  My poor class – 15 people in from all over Africa, plus Prague and Kathmandu (who, of course, had their own country issues) – had to go to their hotel and finish in a conference room.

Credit Xinhua

That evening, looters (which, at this point, we don’t know if they were regular citizens or people were on the take somehow) really got to the area where the hotel was. I mean, really got to it. The class was eating dinner around 6 p.m. and the hotel came back over and said to go to the rooms, lock the door, close the curtains and turn off the lights. The hotel staff stayed overnight and barricaded the door while the area around was pummeled.

That’s class they’ll never forget, that’s for sure. Everyone’s flights were messed up. One of them had to cancel a three-week vacation in Madagascar and two others (the two from Kathmandu) were the last two be able to get home, but they finally made it.

It was interesting, though. The continent is not immune to intra-country issues and when we told the two class facilitators (from Zambia and Niger) that we’d have to hold the class at the hotel, they didn’t bat an eye. It was like, “Oh, OK.”

With the exception of Tuesday (or maybe it was Wednesday), I’ve been working from home. My God, my dog is needy. She’s a sweetie but she wants her ears scratched 24/7. I’m not the only person home, so she has taken breaks to hassle the housekeeper, the people working on my leaky kitchen ceiling (again) and a colleague who’s been using my kitchen. She likes lot of people in the house but in the end I’m the one she wants to entertain her.

Credit: AFP

It's hard to explain to her that although I am home, I am working and unable to walk her all 8.5 hours of the working day. She has also been feeling off her game and growled at the housekeeper, which she has never done before.

Everything is off-kilter. Today I went to the grocery store for the first time in three weeks and it was like hurricane prep. I bought more today than I have in forever. Much of it focused on junk and dog food.

The furlough has thrown even more off-kilter. My boss kept asking me to mark people excepted or not, and I was like, uh, this is above my pay grade, but here’s my recommendation. We also have to consider local staff, whom it may or may not be able to be legally furloughed. And people want information, of which I have none.

I picked a heck of a tour to go HR, that’s for sure.