Marie’s morale is very low at the moment. While we knew that her contract was unlikely to be extended and the embassy is certainly under no obligation to do her any favours, their treatment of the issue has been less than professional.
All embassy staff, including the volunteers, got together in Delhi a few weeks ago and Marie formally put forward her request to extend. The ambassador, in front of everyone, told the scientific councilor to take care of it and make sure it was extended. Yesterday, Marie talked to a newer member of the staff to find out what the status of the request was. She was told that the ambassador had made the decision more than a month ago not to extend and the request wasn’t even being forwarded to the Ministry.
Again, given the additional cost of keeping Marie, which would make her a highly paid Technical Assistant, we didn’t really expect it to be extended, but we at least expected the courtesy of being told so we could make other arrangements. It seems this ambassador has a lot to learn about diplomacy.
If you cannot extend, where will you go?
Right now, we have 4 options and all have Marie looking for a job and me continuing to work on finding clients.
– stay here (one of us needs to find voluntary work)
– go to France
– go to Australia
– Marie to France, me to Australia