When Russ Thomas joked to an old friend after the election that he might be looking for a job in January, he never expected to get a call inviting him to work in east Africa.
But the call came around Christmas, with the date of departure less than three weeks away. The company, Gossamer Crossing, needed a quick decision, and so the former Calaveras County supervisor is spending his last weekend in the foothills before leaving Tuesday for a six-month contract in Somalia.
“I want to go see what things are like on the other side of the world,” Thomas said by way of explanation.
Gossamer Crossing, a Sacramento-based firm offering a variety of services to humanitarian and disaster-relief organizations, has been concentrating its efforts in Mogadishu, the capital of the struggling nation.
Thomas will head a project to build security features around an international airport near the coast.
“Beachfront,” joked his wife, Gloria Luna.
One of his roles will be liaison with officials from the United Nations and local government, a type of interagency coordination not unfamiliar after four years on the Board of Supervisors.
“When they asked if I’d be comfortable going to meetings like that, I sort of laughed,” Thomas said.
The work will be “fencing and gates and stuff like that – a lot of it,” Thomas explained, and not without some danger. He said perimeter fencing was likely to be the riskiest part of his task.
“We’ll definitely have dedicated daily troops assigned to make sure no harm comes to us.”
The African Union has created AMISOM, a peacekeeping organization with the goal of supporting the Somali Transitional Federal Government, which has several thousand troops in the country. The AMISOM troops guard the airport.
The soldiers represent an assurance of physical safety, but also something bigger.
“The most encouraging thing to me is the commitment on the part of the international community to make this government work,” Thomas said.
Despite any possible danger, Luna has remained stoic and supportive, ushering her husband through her carefully composed lists of tasks before he leaves, like rounds of inoculation against yellow fever and hepatitis. Fortunately, his only side effects thus far have been some muscle soreness: “I think it was the yellow fever,” he observed, rubbing his left arm.
“I realize and understand fully what the dangers are in going, but you weigh the risk and the benefit and I think overall that’s going to be in his benefit,” Luna said.
“Part of his commitment to life has been involvement in the community and giving back, and that’s really a cornerstone of his being. In addition to that, I’m very excited for him to be going to this place ... where his background, his knowledge, his skills are going to be utilized.”
Her confidence is bolstered by her own experience with the Peace Corps, and from growing up with her father in the Navy.
“Communication in those days wasn’t anything like it is today,” she recalled, where monthly letters might be the family’s only connection. With a reasonable expectation of a regular Internet connection, the couple hopes to correspond almost every day using Skype and e-mail.
“I’m not concerned with the drudgery of the time,” Thomas said. He hopes to devote his spare energies to independent learning, including mastering some design software.
After his six months, he said, who knows? He may return to Somalia to work on some upcoming concrete block construction projects, a construction method with which he’s intimately familiar and has developed some personal techniques he’d like to contribute. Thomas said he’s open to more work abroad, but more so to work that’s interesting, wherever it may be.
“I don’t see myself sitting in a rocking chair any time soon.”
