Personal stories

My expe­ri­ence as a junior tech­ni­cal assis­tant (JTA) in Sene­gal, the land of Ter­aan­ga, began in Octo­ber 2022. How­ev­er, I had found out about the JTA pro­gramme at the age of 19, when a mem­ber of my fam­i­ly saw the adver­tise­ment in the news­pa­per and sent it to me. Since that day (and in fact always), I had want­ed to work in the field. So far, I have changed coun­tries every three to four years. Despite some ini­tial dif­fi­cul­ties, I have always enjoyed arriv­ing in a place where every­thing is new, where I feel com­plete­ly out of my ele­ment. It is at those times, I think, that I give the best of myself and learn the most. When I first saw the JTA job adver­tise­ment, I was still too young and in the mid­dle of my stud­ies, but I knew that recruit­ment took place every year and that I would have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to apply when the time came.

Once I arrived in Sene­gal, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly touched by the warm wel­come of the Sene­galese. Every­one could learn from their way of being, and it’s some­thing I won’t for­get. Whether at home or at work, there are no lim­its to the gen­eros­i­ty of Sene­galese, espe­cial­ly when it comes to shar­ing a meal or chat­ting over a glass of tea (‘ataya’). A smile and a lot of mutu­al respect makes every­thing pos­si­ble. Since my arrival, I have dis­cov­ered many dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al fea­tures. For exam­ple, I quick­ly realised that work meet­ings are con­duct­ed in a total­ly dif­fer­ent way from what I was used to. I had been warned that meet­ings could be late in start­ing, but you have to expe­ri­ence it to real­ly grasp what that means, because the times set are often just an indi­ca­tion. That is how I learned that it is always wise to leave room for the unex­pect­ed and for impro­vi­sa­tion. Anoth­er strik­ing expe­ri­ence is linked to being left-hand­ed. Hav­ing lived in sev­er­al Mus­lim-major­i­ty coun­tries in the past and being aware of the sym­bol­ism asso­ci­at­ed with the right hand and the left hand, I realised that this dis­tinc­tion is even more pro­nounced in Sene­gal. When I eat with oth­ers, the use of my left hand can prompt some com­ments. When I’m on a mis­sion, I fre­quent­ly find myself the only woman, as well as being for­eign and not speak­ing the local lan­guage. This reg­u­lar­ly puts me out­side my com­fort zone, and ulti­mate­ly that’s what I love, and what I’m look­ing for.

This JTA expe­ri­ence has been every­thing I hoped for, because every day, as soon as I step out­side, I learn an enor­mous amount. I work on the health and social pro­tec­tion pro­gramme, so I have an office at the LuxDev Sene­gal premis­es and anoth­er office at the Min­istry of Health and Social Action. I am there­fore in con­stant dia­logue with local part­ners for the imple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of pro­gramme activ­i­ties. My tasks include mon­i­tor­ing the pro­gram­ming of the pro­gramme, design­ing and facil­i­tat­ing capac­i­ty-build­ing work­shops, mon­i­tor­ing agree­ments, prepar­ing diag­nos­tics, learn­ing lessons or pro­vid­ing sup­port for the for­mu­la­tion of the new Indica­tive Coop­er­a­tion Pro­gramme between Lux­em­bourg and Sene­gal. To car­ry out some of these tasks, I go on mis­sions on a very reg­u­lar basis, giv­ing me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it all the regions of Sene­gal in a short peri­od of time.

The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty makes me par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned, and every day I am inspired by the com­mit­ment of the Sene­galese peo­ple to a just polit­i­cal sys­tem and to main­tain­ing Sene­gal as a bea­con of democ­ra­cy in the region.

My inter­est in diplo­ma­cy and devel­op­ment emerged very ear­ly on, and I knew from my stud­ies that I want­ed a career in this field. That’s why after my first degree, I took a master’s degree in inter­cul­tur­al man­age­ment at ISIT, fol­lowed by a sec­ond master’s degree in inter­na­tion­al rela­tions and human­i­tar­i­an action from ESCD3A in Paris.

Dur­ing my stud­ies, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do an intern­ship in the cul­tur­al ser­vice of the Embassy of France in Lux­em­bourg, after which I left for a six-month intern­ship at the Office of the Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al for Chil­dren and Armed Con­flict at the Unit­ed Nations in New York. Hav­ing enjoyed this first expe­ri­ence in the world of diplo­ma­cy and devel­op­ment, I con­tin­ued at the Unit­ed Nations, work­ing as an intern and then as a con­sul­tant in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences Sec­tor at UNESCO head­quar­ters in Paris.

Before becom­ing a junior pro­fes­sion­al offi­cer (JPO) for UNAIDS in Rwan­da, I had already worked for LuxDev, the oper­a­tional agency of Luxembourg’s bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion, as a junior tech­ni­cal assis­tant (JTA) on the Employ­ment and Employ­a­bil­i­ty pro­gramme in Cabo Verde. That reward­ing expe­ri­ence gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to famil­iarise myself with the work of the Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and, in par­tic­u­lar, the JPO programme.

As part of my work for UNAIDS in Rwan­da, I sup­port the local office in their knowl­edge man­age­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tasks. In par­tic­u­lar, I help to pub­li­cise this joint Unit­ed Nations pro­gramme in the coun­try by pro­mot­ing the activ­i­ties of the office with insti­tu­tion­al part­ners, civ­il soci­ety part­ners and all those seek­ing to com­bat HIV in the coun­try by com­mu­ni­cat­ing, among oth­er things, about the var­i­ous key process­es that have enabled Rwan­da to achieve the UNAIDS95−95−95 tar­gets (95% of peo­ple liv­ing with HIV know their HIV sta­tus, 95% of peo­ple who know that they are liv­ing with HIV are on life-sav­ing anti­retro­vi­ral treat­ment, and 95% of peo­ple who are on treat­ment are viral­ly suppressed.)

I sup­port the office to organ­ise high-lev­el events, notably dur­ing the ​“Women Deliv­er” con­fer­ence, one of the most impor­tant gen­der equal­i­ty con­fer­ences in the world. As part of this con­fer­ence, we had the priv­i­lege of organ­is­ing a vis­it for the ​“Elders” group, a group of lead­ers cre­at­ed by Nel­son Man­dela and com­posed of for­mer pres­i­dents and min­is­ters such as Mary Robin­son, Graça Machel and Ellen John­son Sir­leaf. They par­tic­i­pat­ed in the vis­it to a clin­ic deliv­er­ing care and treat­ment to HIV patients.

I am in charge of organ­is­ing aware­ness cam­paigns around key dates for the UNAIDS man­date, such as 1 Decem­ber, World AIDS Day, 1 March, Zero Dis­crim­i­na­tion Day, or 17 May, Inter­na­tion­al Day against Homo­pho­bia, Bipho­bia and Trans­pho­bia. These days are cru­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­vey the UNAIDS mes­sages of pre­ven­tion and com­bat­ing the stig­ma that affects the most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions and those affect­ed by HIV.

By cre­at­ing infor­ma­tive con­tent and dis­sem­i­nat­ing it on the var­i­ous social net­works and media, I make my con­tri­bu­tion to the glob­al fight against this pan­dem­ic, which con­tin­ued to affect 39 mil­lion peo­ple in 2022. And every advance not only in treat­ment (includ­ing long-act­ing injectable treat­ments) but also in pre­ven­tion and pro­tec­tion of the rights of the most vul­ner­a­ble (chil­dren and girls, sex work­ers, peo­ple in prison and peo­ple who inject drugs) is, for me, a col­lec­tive vic­to­ry and yet anoth­er step on the road to erad­i­cat­ing HIV as a pub­lic health threat by 2030.