A week of growth

I’ve had an incredible week and thought I’d share it with you. This week my supervisor has been out of town and nearly all of our senior and mid level management are out of the office.

So, on Monday I had to help my team make final preparation before they headed out on a 3 week interview schedule. They are all now in various camps interviewing refugees and preparing their paperwork to be presented to DHS.

Tuesday I got to go meet the interviewing DHS officers. For the next 3 weeks DHS has a team of officers here to conduct interviews for several camps. They will interview about 970 cases. The officers come from various locations in the US. When they come we get a chance to sit down with them to go over their interview schedule and tell them what to expect. So, I went to meet the new group of 10 DHS interviewers. I told them about the camps they would visit, about what to expect from our interpreters, about how we had to transport all of the cases being interviewed from the most remote camp which is nearly unreachable during the rainy season to another camp for the interviews (a HUGE undertaking). Basically I just prepared them for what to expect.

That afternoon I sent a staff member off to a remote island to interview several cases. We were having to also send a Burmese interpreter since there wasn’t one available on the island. They got to the airport and despite what we found on the internet about visa requirements the airline wouldn’t let our Burmese passport holding interpreter on the plane without a visa (we were under the impression it could be obtained upon arrival). So, I had to scramble to figure out another solution (I was really missing my supervisor at this point!). I finally told the caseworker to go on ahead without the interpreter and I’d pray really hard another solution would come. I think we've found a workable solution! Interviews began today…I’m holding my breath until everything works out there.

Wednesday when I got to work there were riot police all around the office building. A nearby intersection was being blocked and traffic was at a standstill. With the protests that have been taking place here I was a little nervous with all the police. We talked to the police to determine if it would be good for us to send the staff home early. They told us that as long as it was just the police around we were fine, but that as soon as the military shows up we needed to get out. Luckily the military never showed up and everything was fairly calm and peaceful so we were able to get through the day and let staff leave an hour early as most of the staff travel over an hour to get to the office each day and traffic was very heavy.

Thursday I had to arrange more DHS interviews in the region, finalize trips for caseworkers to other asian countries, and I didn’t even get to most of the work that needs to be done this week. Unfortunately, the grenades that exploded in Bangkok last night too close to our office has forced us to keep the office closed today, Friday, so there is no hope of making any further progress this week.

It's been a super busy week but I've learned so much as I've been forced to deal with situations and make presentations which have stretched my knowledge.