In the course of my work I had four direct counterparts, a bookkeeper and administrator in Lagos, and a bookkeeper at each of our projects.

All of them were well-qualified university graduates who approached their work with a great deal of professionalism. This made my job much easier but I still had to spend a lot of time auditing the financial books, monitoring project budgets, and scouring receipts for signs of fraud.

A typical day involved the preparation of reports, such as budgetary or staff overviews, for our Amsterdam office while juggling an endless variety of smaller administrative matters, such as staff salaries, health insurance, cash advances, or contractual matters. Aside from the time I spent at our Lagos office and the project sites, I was occasionally asked to go to the official capital, Abuja, to deal with duty exemptions and customs clearances for medical supplies.

This was one of the most tedious tasks because it involved endless hours of chasing functionaries in the customs and finance ministries to find out the status of our paperwork. Generally, workers in the ministries showed up late, took leisurely extended lunches, and, since many of them were Muslim, took several prayer breaks a day. So, any trip to Abuja usually involved taking along an interesting book to pass the time until you could corner a worker as they slipped out for one of their various breaks.