A favourite ‘working with EPOS’ memory

Here are my memories. Forgive me if they are a bit too personal. But that is me, Anne Christine, who once thought she was ‘EPOS’. It was in July 1994, when I started my new work at GOPA; at the same time, when Robert Gaertner started at EPOS. While Robert’s job was that of EPOS’ managing director, mine at GOPA was an ‘experiment’, as expressed by Michael Müller, my supervisor. The experiment consisted of a hybrid position which had never existed before at GOPA. It comprised besides the position of a junior Consultant (nicely called ‘wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin’ in the German contract) some percentage of secretarial work which I was meant to do for my much older male colleagues in the department of ‘agricultural development’. As the youngest and only female member of the team, I felt very much respected and well integrated. So I had no reason to complain nor to look for other work.

Then, why did I move to EPOS?

That is easy to explain. It was Mr. Otto who brought Dr. Gaertner and me together: Dr. Gaertner urgently needed somebody to help him preparing an assignment in Russia. At that time, Dr. Gaertner’s Russian was still in the making and EPOS’ only employee, his secretary, had many useful skills, but amongst those was not the command of Russian language. It must have been in October or November in 1994 (ups, already 20 years ago), that I accompanied Dr. Gaertner during an assignment to Russia. I do remember Dr. Gaertner’s wife escorting him to the Frankfurt airport, though naïve as I was, I did not read anything into it. It was Dr. Gaertner himself who revealed to me during the flight that the only reason for her accompanying him to the airport had been to convince herself that I was not his ‘type’ (as he expressed it in German). Though Dr. Gaertner was not my ‘type’ either, I think we worked very well together, respecting each other’s talents. He did not quite understand, as he frankly stated on several occasions, how I could be that successful, not being trained as medical doctor, being quite young and after all, a female. He allowed me much more freedom at work and decision-making than I would ever have had at GOPA. Yet, it was not without me having to fight for it. In those days, I took hardly any leave. And why should I have taken? The many trips I undertook to our projects in Eastern Europe and Central Asia could well be regarded as ‘holidays’ as said Dr. Gaertner. I liked his humor, though I was not always sure whether it was meant to be humor.

I will give you another example: In 1998, I had finally come to the conclusion that I needed to undergo some formal training in Public Health (remember, my professional background was agriculture, and in his not so sunny moments Dr. Gaertner would remind me of my great ignorance in health affairs). When I announced my plan to leave EPOS for a year to do a full-time MPH in England, he became quite agitated, blaming me for letting him and the company down. In his own words, it was ‘geschäftsschädigendes Verhalten’ (business-damaging behaviour). So I did not leave. It was thanks to Dr. Dornheim’s suggestion that I enrolled in an MBA course in hospital management, which was much later, in 2004. This time Dr. Gaertner approved my plan, as I did not have to leave the company while I was doing the course.

It was then two years later when I left as head of department - but not fully, as I still continued working for EPOS, though not based at its head office in Bad Homburg, but in the Ministry of Public Health in Sanaa, Yemen. When I think back of the good old days at EPOS, I do it with respect and with a smile at the same time. I do recall the many hours of overtime, but also the generosity, and that the work I did was compensated and acknowledged. I do remember my colleagues and the brilliant team I was working with. That was the little mystery that was so difficult to comprehend.

We loved our work and were workaholics. Probably, we still are.

1994
Anne Christine Hanser

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