When the COVID-19 pandemic started unraveling itself in Africa, AFROHUN had just received approval of the Year 1 Workplan of the One Health Workforce-Next Generation project, by USAID. With a good number of our activities planned around meetings, gathering of many people and field-based training and other activities, all teams at country and regional level had to re-strategize on how best to deliver without compromising on safety.
In this article, we share some of our individual stories with you; how we were impacted and how we coped, what we have learnt and what we plan to do differently.
My story: Dr. Samuel Wanjohi – AFROHUN- Kenya Country Manager
The COVID-19 pandemic threw a curve ball at the ongoing learning curve. Being new in the network and at the same time trying to learn and understand the workings of the new project, COVID-19 called for a re-organization of activities. This brought in a new norm that I quickly had to adapt to while still getting a good grasp on the project. It was the typical “baptism of fire” saying for me.
With all the restrictions that were being placed around movements and meetings among other aspects of life, I kept wondering how the implementation of most of our activities that called for movement and conducting meetings, was going to happen. Additionally, there was the element of team members not being available to pick calls, responding to emails, etc. which greatly hindered communication and brought to fore some moments of anxiety.
The situation called for a delicate balancing act, with the lines between family chores and office work being blurred at times. However, it also afforded the time to appreciate working without outside interferences and exogenous encumbrances like traffic jams, that would erstwhile exert unwanted fatigue both emotionally and physically.
What was your suite of copying mechanisms? Creating a working space; sharing my work schedule with my family to ensure that they understand when am working inasmuch as am at home; sticking to a work-day schedule and utilizing my work breaks as health breaks; trying to utilize the 80-20 Pareto Principle while working with the team, to achieve the team objectives.
What lessons did you pick up? How does this mean to future planning? The COVID-19 pandemic brought in new dynamics that one had to quickly adapt to. It demonstrated that working from home can work. As a network we responded swiftly, with the support of our partners to modify our activities to fit the situation. Going forward, considerations should be made for innovations that can enhance the efficient achievement of activities and their objectives. Another important lesson is that it is important to identify team members who would be willing to change with you and adapt to the changes & circumstances, to achieve the set objectives, and work with those.
There were positive outcomes out of this, certainly. These were not lost on out teams. The adoption and uptake of technology to maximize the execution of activities. The evolution and adaptation to technological change was rapid and commendable.
My story: Angella Musewa – AFROHUN -Uganda Country Manager
Most of our activities are University-driven (involve faculty and students). When the President of the Republic of Uganda announced the closure of education institutions on 19 March 2020, we had several activities to implement during that month but unfortunately we had to cancel them. This was a major hinderance but of course we had to innovatively think about how best we can implement them.
I got fear in me that we could not be in position to implement thus our country funds were going to be returned. This being a new project, I myself being new in office, I was worried. However, every challenge gives one an opportunity. As we were selecting activity leads, we had to be very careful, we needed people that could adjust to the new working norm.
What made me most anxious was fact that we had to make re-alignments among other things.
What was your suite of coping mechanisms? I learnt to adjust; am one person who loves working in a very quiet environment. I had to adjust a little bit to the noisy environment. Children in my neighborhood would always make noise, I had no control over that. It was play time for them. There was no movement outside the home. Life rotated only around one’s Zoom calendar. It was quite an experience!
What lessons did you learn? What does this mean to future planning? Working virtually is possible, albeit with challenges. Also information overload can be disastrous (especially about this pandemic, panic alone was not a good thing).
Moving forward we need to be prepared; the faculty need to be prepared. We need to empower them to support trainings on-line. There is a very big gap in E-learning across our member institutions.
The positive for me is that weidentified other means of working and implementing activities innovatively, so all was not lost.
My story? – Juvenal Kagarama – AFROHUN-Rwanda Country Manager
Frankly, it was very frustrating not to be able to do what one had planned to do. So I was like ‘Oh my God’, what is going to happen with all those activities we had planned to do? What will it look like turning in zero results come October? Inability to use the allocated funds was another issue. Earning a salary without turning in results was very worrying and frustrating indeed.
As we came to terms with the realities of COVID-19 and the new norm of working from home, we had to embrace working online and I soon started enjoying it. With good internet, I found myself working even more hours per day- I was able to a large extent communicate and engage my team easily and comfortably with zoom conferencing. We were in agreement as a team to innovate on how to implement some activities; we agreed to convert many of our field activities in online “theoretical” training packages that would be loaded on university Moodle platform. The good thing about this is that it would benefit a wider student population and it is cheaper.
Japheth Killewo – AFROHUN-Tanzania Country Manager
It was very frustrating. We had to re-think how we can go around the pandemic in Africa when the worst impact by the pandemic was affecting USA and Europe. Activities we had planned so well had to be reorganized or postponed and this was a lot of work; leave alone those who were to review our work and approve. Luckily for Tanzania there was partial lock down so that some activities could continue though approval had not been received for fear of compromising safety. When approval was finally received we held our first face to face meeting on 30th June 2020 and ‘Oh, what a sweet moment!’. We painstakingly observed all the safety precautions recommended by the government, WHO and USAID.
What lessons did you learn? How does this mean to future planning? The use of the Zoom platform was excellent. We learnt a new way of communication which became very useful and will become even more useful in future. The Zoom platform became handy even for meetings other than AFROHUN’s. I was able to give three lectures using the ZOOM platform to between 15 and 300 students.