Chasing Carly

Oh Development Ryan Gosling....

2012-01-24T02:00:00.001+10:00

...how did you know??

Courtesy of http://developmentryangosling.tumblr.com/

Holly, Sandy and Lara

2012-01-24T00:31:00.005+10:00

I was thrilled to pieces when I found out I'd be in the UK for my friend Charmaine's 30th birthday. On the weekend I journeyed 4 hours to get to Kent, for one of the best costume parties I've ever been to. With a Hollywood theme, there was a wonderful array of movie characters, including Harry Potter, the boys from Brokeback Mountain, ABBA, Catwoman, and of course:

Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Sandy from Grease, and Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. It was so great to catch up with Chaz (whose Sandy impersonation was superb) after a good 5 years at least and to have Jules there as well (who actually did fly all the way over from Australia) was brilliant!

There was much reminiscing about high school, and it's nice to know that some things never change.

Letter to and from the NYT Public Editor

2012-01-21T04:16:00.005+10:00

Recently, the internet was up in arms over an article that was published in the New York Times by a reporter who stopped at nothing to get 'the scoop' on a young Afghan girl who was brutally tortured by her husband and his family. A scoop that had already been reported by another news organisation. The reporter, Graham Bowley barged his way into her hospital room to further interrogate her to tell the story that had already been told.

The team over at Wronging Rights brought the reasons (and there are numerous) why this was a horrendous practice to the attention of many, and included a form letter (or email rather) to send to the editor to express our anger at this, which read as follows:

Dear Public Editor,
I recently read your reporter Graham Bowley’s description of his attempts to interview Sahar Gul, an Afghan girl in her early teens who was the victim of horrific abuse at the hands of her husband and in-laws. Bowley states with apparent pride that he “pushed past ‘no,’” and interviewed her after hospital workers informed him that she did not wish to speak to reporters, and was too psychologically fragile to repeat her story.

It’s difficult to formulate a response to this story that does not begin with the words “what the…” As Bowley notes in his article, Gul had already been interviewed by other news organizations. Her story had been told, and was already available to the press and public. Bowley was not adding substantial new information through his reporting (the mango juice does not count). Rather, he appears to have returned to the hospital to soothe the burns to his ego from getting scooped by the AP.

How is it possible that this was not only acceptable journalistic behavior for a Times employee, but that Bowley and his editors saw fit to crow over it by publishing a blog post about the reporter’s heroic success in overcoming the resistance of a traumatized child?

Once again: what the …?
Sincerely,

I sent off the email, and have just now received the following:

Thanks  for your message about Graham Bowley's coverage of Sahar Gul, the young  Afghan girl. I am concerned about the girl's privacy as well and have  raised the question with the Foreign Desk. I do concur that news  organizations should be careful to respect the privacy of crime victims.  This is a case where, I believe, the benefits of doing a story were  outweighed by the potential harm to the girl.

Best,

Art Brisbane

public editor

hmmmm

A cold change

2012-01-18T02:02:00.004+10:00

I was all geared up for a two month stint in HQ, prepared to enjoy the benefits of being based in a nice city, with (very necessary) hot showers, and drinkable tap water and a whole crew of good mates. Unfortunately it turns out due to visa restrictions I'm only really allowed to be here for 2 weeks.

So I'm heading off to Nairobi (as some of the work I'm doing involves a couple of countries in the region) to sit in the office there - I wasn't prepared to fly all the way home and manage a 10 hour time difference. Now I have to squeeze in all of the things that I wanted to do in 2 months into the next week (well, Stonehenge is out of the question now)...can't say I'm going to miss the freezing temperatures in the UK!!

Off I Go...

2012-01-05T18:34:00.002+10:00

After about 70 days at home (probably the longest stretch since the great unemployment of 2009) it's time to say farewell to the home cooked meals, family and friends and pleasant weather and choof off to Oxford for 2 months. Well it might be 2 months, it might be less...who knows!

Spare a thought for me, I've got 24 hours on planes and a couple of hours on buses ahead of me before I hit the cold of Oxford!

What a year!!

2011-12-31T15:04:00.001+10:00

It seems that the years are flying past more quickly these days, and that I'm packing more and more into 365 days. 2011 has been no exception.

This time last year I knew I'd be starting a new job and there was a lot to look forward to. Eleven months into the job and I've been to England (3 times), Mexico, Guatemala, Liberia, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya and Ethiopia for work (and a nowhere near enough break in Zanzibar!). It's been a year full of learning and initiation (and initiating) and stress and pressure. 12 hour days cramped up in a little meeting room in Liberia, trying to navigate a certain government (who may or may not somewhat rhyme with myopia) screening and controlling our communications, and also determining my own role and how it best fits in a sea of international internal politics.

But within that (by no means exhaustive) list of challenges have also been far too many rewarding moments to list; colleagues, both local and internationals, who made all the long hours and politics enjoyable through either their friendship or their competence (levels of which can differ greatly) hands down top the list. I have made so many new friends this year from all corners of the world, a wonderful, inspiring bunch, and even more luckily, great housemates too!!

So I move into 2012 with just as much excitement as I did 12 months ago, as I now know what I want to achieve in my role and how to improve certain things to do that. While I'm starting the new year in a not-so-exotic deployment of 2 months in Oxford, I'm keen to try my hand at something a little different and do some work from a HQ perspective. And after that, well nobody knows where I'll be sent...and that's exactly what excites me the most.

I wish you all a safe, healthy and prosperous 2012,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

A home remedy

2011-12-20T11:15:00.007+10:00

Are your hands feeling tired and in need of refreshment after a tough year of touch typing? Follow these simple steps and your hands will end up feeling deliciously soft.

1. Wash your hands with soap and water

2. Sprinkle a fair bit of dessicated coconut onto a plate

3. Combine the following in a large bowl:

- 250grams of crushed Milk Arrowroot biscuits

- 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

- 1/2 cup of dessicated coconut

- 2/3 cup of sultanas

- tin of condensed milk (395 grams)

- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence

- 1 1/2 tablespoons of rum

4. Once everything is combined well, roll the mixture into balls as small or large as you choose and then roll in the coconut on the plate to coat completely

5. Continue rolling and rolling until all the mixture has been used

6. Now wash off the mixture that's all over your hands and between your fingers and they'll be lovely and soft!

(And of course, the bonus is you're also left with a plate of rum balls!! Put the plate in the fridge for a few hours and enjoy the deliciousness. Also - you can leave out the rum if you don't drink alcohol.)

Happy Festivus!!

2011-12-20T10:48:00.003+10:00

Whether you're celebrating Christmas, or a Festivus for the rest of us, this little video will make your holidays!

Cleaning out

2011-12-13T11:31:00.004+10:00

I'm going through piles and piles of old papers that definitely don't need to be kept (like training manuals from courses 3 years ago) but pausing on a few bits and pieces here and there that bring back memories.

One such piece of paper was folded up and at the very bottom of a drawer. It's the post description of my job in Lebanon, but that's not why I kept it or why it brought back memories. On the back are scribbled the phone numbers of my friends in Lebanon, which I hurriedly jotted down when I had to hand back my work phone, just in case. And it was a very lucky thing that I'd done that, because on my last day in Lebanon I managed to get locked in the apartment. Locked IN.

So there was some climbing over the balcony onto an air-conditioner and down onto the lower balcony, then in through a window in the stairwell and finally outside (good thing we were on the 1st floor), to find a friend to borrow a phone to call my housemate to see if she could come back with the key (she couldn't). There was a lot of rigmarole involved, including sign language with the guys across the street at the vegetable stall to borrow their phone, talking to strangers who fortuitously knew my landlord (he was a well known man about town obviously) but the landlord never answered his phone in the mornings and was therefore no help, racing up 9 flights of stairs to my friend Oli's house as the power was out only to discover that they weren't home, to finally remembering the folded up piece of paper and calling my friend Chadi to come and rescue me.

And that's the short version of that story, but suffice to say, without Chadi I have no idea how I would've gotten my luggage out of the apartment had he not broken the lock, gone to the hardware store and installed a new one!

Ah, memories!

Work's a beach

2011-12-09T12:57:00.003+10:00

This working from 'home' gig is tough. Here's the view from today's office:

and the cappuccinos weren't bad either.

Planning your next holiday?

2011-12-09T12:43:00.004+10:00

A Lebanese friend of mine has been involved in the Lebanese Mountain Trail for some years now. Watching this video brought back some lovely memories of some beautiful hikes (ok, strolls) in the countryside in northern Lebanon. If you're looking for a holiday destination and you like rambling around, a month walking from the north of Lebanon to the south should be at the top of your list!

Check out the video to cement your decision!

"The Help" and SWEDOW

2011-12-06T13:57:00.004+10:00

I finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett the other night. Having come highly recommended from more than a few friends, I finally got it on my kindle and really enjoyed it a lot. And because it's a kindle edition, I can't tell you which page the paragraphs below come from, so if you have a chuckle now, you'll just have to go and read the book for yourself.

If you're not familiar with the (fiction) book (or the recent film adaptation), it tells the story of a white woman who convinces a number of the maids in Jackson Missippi in the early 60s (where segregation was still in full swing) to tell their stories anonymously in a book that scandalises the town. Most of the stories the maids tell are sad and awful (though beautifully written), and reading through I couldn't believe that, while fictionalised, such things were still happening only 50 years ago; how the attitudes back then were so ill-informed and how far we've come since then. Until I got to this part...

And Hilly's behind a podium telling sixty-five women that three cans apiece isn't enough to feed all those PSCAs. The Poor Starving Children of Africa, that is. Mary Joline Walker, however, thinks three is plenty. "And isn't it kind of expensive, carting all this tin across the world to Ethiopia?" Mary Joline asks. "Doesn't it make more sense to send them a check?"

Hilly rolls her eyes. "You cannot give these tribal people money, Mary Joline. There is no Jitney 14 Grocery in the Ogaden Desert. And how would we know if they're even feeding their kids with it? They're likely to go to the local voodoo tent and get a satanic tattoo with our money."

When it comes to SWEDOW, we definitely haven't come that far...

The Two Carlys

2011-12-01T23:57:00.006+10:00

My Dad thinks I may have two personalities, and I'm starting to think he's right. The first is the exciting Chasing Carly you're probably really missing right now - the one who finds crazy statues to photograph and drinks gin and is adventurous and has lots to write home about. The second is the less exciting Chasing Carly you're stuck with for another 6 weeks at least - the one who hasn't picked up her camera in weeks, only eats ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch and doesn't necessarily leave the house during the day and has nothing to write home about because she is at home and it wouldn't make sense to write home about being home.

But I'm going to start trying to bring more of the first Chasing Carly into second Chasing Carly's current lifestyle. I left the house not once but twice today. I took my Mum to a Zumba class, which was actually good as it was just as daggy as jazzercise (which I miss immensely) and a fun way to start the day. Unprecedentedly I left the house again to meet up with one of those 'small world' friends for an exotic dinner (tofu! weird little seed things!) at a vegetarian restaurant staffed by a "hunky Hare Krishna waiter" (not my words).

I can feel Carly #1 making a comeback already...

Working from home - video fun edition

2011-11-22T15:48:00.006+10:00

My first batch of leave is now over, and so I find myself turning on my work computer, clearing out my inbox, and deciding how to best tackle the sticky information management issues I want to write simplified guidance for over the next month.

And the best way of doing that is putting it aside and concentrating on my new video editing software!! How could this possibly be considered working from home? Well, I'm trying to be a bit more creative with the information products I create, and video is one aspect of that, which I need to improve my skills on. Hence the work time and the new software!

To see what it (Adobe Premier Elements 10) can do, I decided to use the "instant movie" function with the clips I filmed in Zanzibar. It took a very long time (and the software decided to include a clip of complete darkness that I'd forgotten to delete, so its recognition of good clips isn't the best...) but eventually it finished processing and, as I expected, it's pretty terrible.

So I present to you "Zanzibar - Obnoxiously auto-created."

I'll attempt to make a better version on my own (minus the horrific graphics) and will post at a later date, but am going to tackle a tougher subject first with my next hard hitting video report; my dad's veggie garden...

Sam's 180

2011-11-14T17:53:00.002+10:00

I house and cat sat for Rowan in Canberra last week. I made sure to find out where the cat brush was, because once upon a time Sam the cat wouldn't come near me unless I had the brush.

Times have changed...

Sam wouldn't leave me alone...ever!

A complete personality change - I guess he's matured in the past 4 years!!

Here and there

2011-11-14T17:36:00.005+10:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks for me. I was home for less than 24 hours before I jumped on a plane to Sydney to get down to Woollongong for little Audrey's 1st birthday party (along with cupcakes there was fairy bread!!)

and a couple of days later, a Melbourne Cup day function with some pretty gorgeous girls!

The following weekend it was off to Canberra to see Rowan (who looked absolutely beautiful) marry Sergio (who looked dashingly handsome) in some lovely surrounds on the edge of the ACT (might have even been in NSW).

The rest of the week was spent hanging out with Jez and Em, who came up from Melbourne especially!

So we did arty farty things like go to galleries and stuff

and also caught up with some other friends from Bangers, Pierre brought his lovely new wife and Lindy brought her lovely new bub (as well as her lovely husband that we know from the 'desh) so it was fantastic to catch up with them and find out how differently life has been for them the past few years!!

I rounded the two weeks off with a debrief on my year in Bangladesh - most of the other people there had returned home in the last six months, so everything was still really fresh for them. It was nice to reminisce with old friends and new, but now I'm looking forward to not being on a plane until after Christmas!!

Ashtastic - A gig review of sorts

2011-10-26T20:45:00.009+10:00

Yesterday was a mad mad day in London. After being a bit overwhelmed in the new Westfield mall in Stratford (it's the biggest shopping centre I've ever seen) I was off on my way to Kentish Town to check out the soundcheck for my favourite band of all time, Ash. Since I don't get to see them live very often, I forked out for a VIP ticket which included the soundcheck, meet & greet, the concert and an after party. (and a t-shirt and a couple of old singles with some cool B-sides and a pin and a fancy laminate that was cool to flash around)

The soundcheck was cool, they played my second favourite song!

After that was the awkward time where you stand around waiting for an opportunity to get something signed and have a quick chat with the band...and they were all lovely. It must be so odd having to make random conversation with complete strangers who know all about you. Rick (the drummer) was chatting about his newborn baby

Mark (bass) was trying to extricate himself from an intense discussion with another fan

Charlotte (guitar, keyboard, vocals) who left the band a few years ago, but reunited with them for this tour, was simply one cool chick

and Tim (lead guitar, vocals), my rock idol was overrun with other people so I didn't really get to talk to him at all!

Between the soundcheck a little group wandered down to get some dinner and it was lovely chatting to people who'd come from Reading and Newcastle, but also Sweden and Finland!! And then back to the venue where we got to flash our VIP laminates to jump the queue (unfortunately the queue wasn't very long) and the first support band were The VIRGINMARYS.

They were a lot rockier than I usually listen to, but geez they were good. The lead singer has some serious pipes and the drummer was quite the showman...you may notice the gong in the middle of the stage, it got quite a beating in one song. I couldn't understand a word the singer was saying, but I've been humming a certain riff all morning.

Futures were next, and they were also really good...I could understand some of the lyrics! They were definitely more melodic with some lovely harmonies and their set seemed to be over too quickly. But none of us had come to see them, the feeling in the crowd was electric! And my friend Adam showed up just in time.

Ash were playing their "Free All Angels" album in its entirety, plus a best of set, so it was a total showtime of an hour and 45 minutes. Super! Free All Angels is a brilliant album with some kick ass singles, but also a number of tracks they'd never played live before this tour, so it was interesting to hear them live. What I love about watching Ash live is how much fun they appear to be having - the 3 guys formed the band when they were teenagers (if not before) and in their mid-30s now they've been together for a long time. And yet, they just look like they're having a ball. And Charlotte is awesome - if I'd actually been a good guitar player, I would've wanted to grow up to be just like her...hell, I still want to grow up to be just like her! :-)

The 'best of' set was insane. I kept hitting Adam on the leg every time a new song started, as they seemed to be playing all of my favourites (and I guess, everyone else's favourites too!) From memory (and in no particular order), A Life Less Ordinary, Girl From Mars, Goldfinger, Oh Yeah, Kung Fu, Wildsurf, Projects (I think), Warmer than Fire (with the guy who wrote it coming out on stage to sing it, VERY different to Tim's version!), Starcrossed, and Orpheus. There are not enough superlatives to sum up what was the best Ash show I've seen!!

The after party was a bit weird really. I hung out with my new friends and one of the guys was pointing out local 'celebrities': radio hosts, other bands - all people I'd never heard of! It was fun meeting different people from around the world, talking about random things and having a laugh, but it was a bit awkward!

If you've never heard Ash and have somehow made it to the end of this post, then (a) I hope my enthusiasm has swayed you to check them out and (b) go and check out their official website.

And now, it's time to go home for the first time since I left for Liberia in April - got a jam packed schedule of social engagements to get through in the first two weeks, can't wait!!

Admitting Failure

2011-10-18T23:50:00.007+10:00

The inimitable J. over at Tales from the Hood has started a regular forum for aid bloggers to discuss a particular topic. The latest edition is Admitting Failure, and I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts which may or may not come together into a single outcome.

Story 1 - admitting programme failure internally
When I worked in Bangladesh for a large INGO, my job was to cruise around the field sites of their biggest programme (which Incorporated agriculture, women's empowerment, humanitarian response and a fourth element I can never remember) and produce case studies on the successes and failures of the programme. Once staff understood what I was trying to do, the success stories came flooding in. "Come and visit this programme, it's very successful," etc etc. Of course, different people had differing ideas as to what 'successful' meant, and it turned out that a couple of the so-called success stories were more like failures. Not one project manager put their hand up to say they had a failure. I guess that's to be expected, but even though these case studies were primarily for internal learning (though I'm sure the success stories were used with external audiences) no one wanted to admit to their colleagues that things hadn't gone according to plan.

Basically, I thought this was crazy. I understand why people keep quiet. But when you're talking about programmes that can change people's lives for the better (as I saw over and over again) or really cause harm (which I didn't see thankfully) then shouldn't we want to communicate what NOT to do within an organisation?? Seems pretty logical to me...

Story 2 - admitting individual failure internally
I had a debrief with my manager this morning and somehow we got onto the topic of people making mistakes and then denying they had any part of it (which is really a bit of a joke when their name is on the piece of paper in question). What my manager said was that the courage of an individual to come forward and say that they'd made a mistake and that they'd either rectified it or had a proposed solution, is actually highly respected in the department. It's never easy to say that you were wrong about something, but while you may get your head chewed off momentarily, in the long run it's better to come clean.

Story 3 - admitting failure externally
It's not really a story, just another conversation that I had a couple of hours ago with a person from donor relations. I asked that when reporting beneficiary numbers that a caveat be included to say that we can never be 100% sure that some people haven't been counted more than once, and that any single number that reports beneficiaries can't give an indication of the quality of the service/s those people received. My colleague told me that such a statement would be difficult to include in an update to donors, as we want to present ourselves as best we can. She then said, "but we shouldn't treat our donors as if they're stupid. They pay very close attention to what we do, and understand a lot more than many give them credit for," and she's absolutely right.

Actually, now that I think about it, there is a story in here. I spent a year as a donor reporting officer, and the thought of being completely honest with a donor was not one that was often entertained. Even though they'd already given the money, and we'd already spent it, I didn't want to let them know that there may have been, for example, delays in spending the money etc etc. I'm not talking about financial reporting, but reporting the progress of implementation. And yet, now that I think about it, wouldn't ECHO want to know that we'd had a rough time doing something, but had managed to overcome those constraints to deliver what we said we would? I don't think anyone actually believes that aid work is smooth sailing all of the time, and we shouldn't pretend it is in our reporting.

So I suppose if I were to try and sum my thoughts up on admitting failure, I'd have to simply say that I'm all for it. For both internal and external actors there's a lot of value in admitting failure, particularly if you're able to demonstrate that the failure has acted as a catalyst for learning, and that the 'lessons learned' don't just remain as 'learned' but are acted upon and changed. What's the point of admitting failure if it doesn't act as a change agent?

I haven't answered any of J.'s proposed questions, but if you head on over to the collection of links to other people participating in the forum, I know you'll find lots of interesting insights into admitting aid failures.

Giraffe videos

2011-10-17T19:53:00.001+10:00

I'd completely forgotten that I'd taken some video while at the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi. Enjoy!

Gintastic

2011-10-16T20:06:00.002+10:00

A few weeks ago in Nairobi my friend Cynan mentioned a gin bar outside of Oxford that had 50 different gins. Knowing that I'd be ending up here, we agreed that a mission was in order to check it out. Yesterday was a lovely sunny day (it's odd, everyday since I got here on Wednesday has been sunny) and I quite enjoyed the 20 minute bus ride out to the quaint little village of Woodstock.

Feather's is a posh hotel and as I got there first I made my way out to a nice little courtyard in the back, denying myself the option of looking at the bar before Cynan and his lovely wife arrived. And then, the fun began. We were presented with a ring binder (a classy one) which must have been two inches thick. We weren't sure what to do with it, so we ventured inside to the bar.

Cynan was wrong. There weren't 50 different types of gin, there were close to 150!!

While I've enjoyed a nice G&T for a few years now, I had no idea of the many different varieties - like wine, you can smell the different bouquets and they can taste completely different. And I also had no idea that tonic water could be so delightfully different.

I started with a glass of Oliver Cromwell 1599 (GBR), which the book told me has a "big nose packed with distinct, clean juniper and good support from the traditional aroma. Big rich, full mouth, with all the flavours from the nose with juniper definitely in charge. It's wonderful aromatics in big, bright finish." (I had many concerns over the grammar in the gin book.) It was suggested that I match it with a Fever Tree tonic, and in a nutshell, it was terrific.

My second choice was a cheeky French gin called G'VINE Nouaison which was "fruity and rich, intense and complex aromas of cinnamon bark, baked citrus, floral juniper follow through on around silky, zesty and robust entry. Very sharp with solid character. Amplifies the aromas of spices, yet retains the sensual and silky grape base as well as the subtle floral note." With a little bottle of Fentiman's tonic it was again, superb.

Of course the whole expedition was slightly pretentious and I was reminded of the scene in the book Brideshead Revisited where Charles and Sebastian are drinking (copius amounts of) wine and as they get more and more drunk their descriptions of the wine get more ridiculous, like it being an 'intelligent' wine or a 'promiscuous' one. I wish I could remember the exact quotes, but I did feel a bit like that!

Afterwards we walked down the street to a little pub and, well, English pub food is really quite perfect for an early evening where the temperatures have dropped a bit!!

With 150 gins to go, and only 6 sampled between the 3 of us, I think it's a good thing I'm here next weekend as well!

Close encounters: giraffe edition

2011-10-11T22:01:00.006+10:00

I've just gotten home from the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi, and what a fantastic way to spend my last morning!! There are 12 giraffes in the herd, and there's a viewing platform at head height (for the giraffes) where they come to be fed. And who does the feeding?

Moi!!

I've never been slobbered on as much, and while I was quite happy feeding my new friend from my hand, I just had to get a kiss. There's nothing like a gigantic head approaching your face and a massive black tongue reaching out for the pellet pressed between your lips!

It was really great to see the giraffes so closely, they really are beautiful creatures.

Perhaps not as traditionally beautiful, there were also a few warthogs running around. Though this one wasn't running as his front legs were lame.

I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone travelling through Nairobi (more photos here). I had lunch with a friend from Senegal afterwards, came home and managed to pack everything up (very glad I made the decision to buy a new carry-on size waterproof bag yesterday) and now there are just a few hours left until I have to head to the airport.

It's been a pretty magical few months!

Zanzibar wonderful wonderousness

2011-10-11T21:45:00.006+10:00

I can't say enough how magnificent my holiday in Kendwa, Zanzibar was (well I can, but I won't). I did exactly what I wanted to do, which involved a lot of lounging, reading (6 books finished), swimming, napping, eating and drinking. And in surrounds such as this:

and this:

I really felt like I'd found utopia. I even managed to write 5,000 words of my long ignored novel, so not only a relaxing little spot, but a productive one as well!

I stopped in at a spice farm on the way back to Stone Town and really enjoyed learning about all the different plants, roots, flowers and fruits that create the little spice jars that Masterfoods sell. This one was especially cool:

They call it the lipstick plant, because if you squish the little berries you get a very flattering (!) orange paste that you can smother on your smackers.

I wasn't too fussed about Stone Town and wished I'd spent my final night at the beach. I did enjoy strolling around the old town taking photos of all the wonderful doors. This was the best blue one I found:

and the rest were quite stunning.

There's so much I could say about how fantastic Zanzibar is, but I don't quite have the energy to write an essay on it. You can see all the pictures here.

Paradise found

2011-10-03T22:30:00.001+10:00

Am emailing this post through my Kindle, Amazon Whispernet is the only
availale internet here at my little touch of paradise in
Kendwa,Zanzibar. SoI will not be checking facebook or twitter for the
next 5 days, I will simply do as Ive done since i got here an hour
ago:gaze out across the white sand to the stunning blue water, dive
in, and the sit with my book and sip a G&T! Life is bloody brilliant!

Last day

2011-09-30T20:21:00.004+10:00

Wow. 3 months has certainly flown past! Today marks the end of this deployment. It's been an interesting experience, particularly the month I spent in Ethiopia. I do wish I could've gotten out to see some of the sites in Kenya, but not to worry (there's always a chance I'll end up back here next year...) I've really enjoyed meeting so many different people; with three country programmes and a regional centre, there has been no shortage of interesting, dedicated and friendly people to work with, and a couple of pretty great housemates as well!

As with most last days at the office, I'm just tidying up a few things, clearing out my emails, planning my holiday...the usual! I'm off on an adventure next week, then I'll head to Oxford for a couple of weeks, and finally home at the end of October, 6.5 months after I left for Liberia!

It's amazing how much work has been accomplished in the last three months, we've reached close to two million people with different services, including emergency water trucking, cash, repairing boreholes and distributing household necessities. 2 million people is a pretty impressive number, but there is still much more that is needed. If you haven't already donated any money to the crisis in the Horn and East Africa, please do so if you're able to!

Meat Fest

2011-09-26T21:00:00.004+10:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to Carnivore, a restaurant which is a tourist institution in Nairobi (and elsewhere) where you eat as much meat as you possible can, and once upon a time used to serve up all sorts of exotic game meat. Thankfully the Kenyan government put a ban on that a few years ago, so it only gets as exotic as crocodile, ostrich and camel. I went with a couple of old friends who were in town for work, and had a lovely evening being entertained by the servers carving bits of massive hunks of meat.

Yep, it's a touristy touristy place, but it had its charms, like the open roasting pit that greets you on entry. On your table is a little flag, and when it is up it signals to the servers to bring you every type of meat; while I drew the line at chicken gizzards, I did have a bit of an ox testicle, which flavour wise wasn't so bad, but the texture was weird - to be expected really. When you put your flag down, they stop offering you meat.

Last night a bunch of us went to Fogo Gaucho, a Brazilian restaurant that operates a similar way. Noticeable difference: we each had individual little tags that we could flip over to signal if we were ready for more or not.

Final result: Fogo Gaucho wins on quality of meat. The range wasn't as extensive as Carnivore, but the cuts and cooking were much better. Atmosphere wise, Carnivore takes the cake as "The Gauch" (apologies if that means something totally offensive in Portuguese!) is a bit too stiff and formal (though the servers do wear awesome trousers).

Either way, Nairobi is the place for a Meat Fest!

Fun with editing

2011-09-21T01:51:00.003+10:00

When I first started this job I acquired a little video camera (Kodak Zi8 for those playing at home). I had a short, sharp introduction to video editing by the in house specialist, who told me to make a short film of my first deployment to Mexico and Guatemala. Yesterday I was given a hot tip on some free editing software (Camtasia), while I await an order that's been placed for another program, so I decided that it was finally time to have a crack at it. A little caveat - I did have weekends while I was there, so it's a mixture of work and play!

You'll want to make it full screen (or maybe you won't); for some reason I can't make it any bigger than this!

What do you think?

Existential

2011-09-19T15:15:00.003+10:00

It's about 8:15am and I just sat down at my desk, well not my desk exactly, but the person who the desk belongs to is away for the week so I decided I'd like to sit next to the window for a change. So anyway, 'my' phone has gone all gotten all existential on me...it's a bit early in the morning for such questions no?

Sex strike in Mindanao

2011-09-19T02:09:00.001+10:00

This is awesome!

Not something you see everyday

2011-09-17T23:28:00.003+10:00

I went for a 5 minute stroll to the ice-cream store to meet a friend. We sat outside, marveling at the sunshine which has been a bit of a rarity the past month of so. After an hour, I strolled home again, holding my breath down the little alley way near our apartment block that had such a stench to it.

I knocked on the gate and the guard opened it up smiling. "Hello!! We have a horse!" "We have a horse?" I asked, not sure if I'd heard correctly. He opened up the gate and let me in. "There are two horses! he exclaimed. And sure enough there were two horses. "What are the horses doing here?" "They're giving rides to the children." "Just around the carpark?" "Oh yes, just around the carpark."

So I patted one of the horses on the nose, and watched as a little boy was lifted onto a horse. His mother said that he would love it. But after a few steps she changed her mind and said he didn't like it. He was holding on quite tightly to the neck of the horse's owner, who was slowly leading the horse around the parking lot. And sure enough, a smile broke out and the little boy squealed with delight.

"Not something you see everyday," I commented to the guard. "No, not every day," he said with a smile.

How many continents are there?

2011-09-17T02:20:00.001+10:00

Not as simple as you first thought...

An ode to Sandwich Man

2011-09-16T19:29:00.002+10:00

Oh office Sandwich Man

you bring such welcome delights

when I don't think I can,

you get me through til night.

You spell my name as Cally

but you say it with a smile

and over receipt writing you dilly dally

it always takes a while.

Oh office Sandwich Man

I really shouldn't compare

but when I think of my dear Shwarma Man

his skills you do not share.

The baby elephant orphanage

2011-09-12T16:25:00.006+10:00

I only had one thing that I really wanted to do in Nairobi this time around, and that was a visit to the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage. I'd planned to go around my birthday, but instead, extended the anticipation by waiting for a friend to arrive. Our antipodean crew of 4 traipsed out to Nairobi National Park and the surprising lack of traffic on a Sunday morning got us to the orphanage about 40 minutes early. There were already quite a lot of people there, but we hung out at the entrance and when it was time to go in we were very close to the front. Friends had advised us where to stand (in front of milk bottles or a water barrel) so we had a prime position.

We stood around a roped off area, anticipation building as to where the little ellies would come from, and then seemingly from out of nowhere, they came trotting into the 'arena', ready for a feed...

and boy did they suck down those gigantic milk bottles quickly!

It wasn't just milk they enjoyed, big slurps were taken from the water barrel in front of us.

I'll just have to say that I find elephant bums (and fronts) adorable.

One of the keepers gave a lengthy speech about the work of the David Sheldrick Trust, and introduced each of the elephants to us.

With the keepers spending 24 hours a day with their charges, the bonds between them are really evident.

The elephants were brought out in two batches of 6, the first group (above) were slightly smaller so as the second older group came out, we could see that they were quite hungry indeed!

A couple of the older ones gave themselves dirt baths, but I was a bit disappointed that none of them seemed to want a mud bath.

It was a wonderful experience, we even got to touch a couple of the little ones (their hair is quite wiry and they were very dirty!) and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I managed to take an awful lot of photos of basically the same thing over and over, so if you're interested, the photos are here.

We rounded off the afternoon with a lovely lunch at Talisman restaurant in Karen, which not only had a lovely atmosphere but the food was delicious as well. Perhaps next week I'll head back out there to the Giraffe Sanctuary and get pashed by a giraffe!

To set the scene

2011-09-12T16:07:00.001+10:00

I suggest you listen to this while I'm organising my latest post..

Back in Kenya

2011-09-05T21:52:00.005+10:00

My month long sojourn to Ethiopia has come to an end, and I am now happily back in Nairobi. Unfortunately I seem to have brought the grim Ethiopian weather with me, with grey clouds and thunderstorms marring the weekend. With only about 4 weeks left of this deployment I'm trying to figure out what needs to be done, what can be done and how best to do it, which is at the same time frustrating and exciting. There is no lack of work when one thinks for more than a minute.

Someone on twitter linked to an article by Thomas Keneally, the Australian author, on the famine and food crisis. It's a great read, and I think it's summed up perfectly by the following:

Perhaps we must try a new theorem: to try to get the Somalis and the Ethiopians fed precisely because their governments have not yet created societies in which supply and support are taken for granted.
Aid agencies could be given breaks from endless pie charts about administration costs and aid delivery per donor dollar and stop pretending that they will be permitted to go everywhere they like and to do all the good they can. They should simply invite us into the general struggle to deliver aid as energetically, cleverly and well as the malign circumstances on the desolate ground permit them.

Hear hear! And here's the link to the article "War and corruption are responsible for famines, not droughts".

aidlolz

2011-08-30T20:36:00.003+10:00

I'm a huge fan of lolcats/loldogs/lolwhatevercuteanimal, so I'm super excited about the latest LOL* range, aidlolz. Hilarious stuff!!

One of my submissions has already been put up...it's handy knowing who the lolrus is. And more importantly, getting (in the words of the lolrus itself) the "seal of approval. SEAL GEDDIT SEAL." Puntastic stuff!

*note for those not in the know: LOL stands for Laugh out Loud, not Lots of Love!

Tweet up IRL

2011-08-29T17:30:00.004+10:00

Last night I had the absolute pleasure of dining with two twitter/blogging pals. I'd met Cynan, who blogs over at LaVidaidLoca for the first time earlier in the year and our mystery guest was none other than Michael Keizer (A Humourless Lot) who had disappeared off the map for quite a number of months, which caused the creation of his own twitter hashtag: #FindMichaelKeizer. Cynan had also dubbed him Michael Keizer Soze (if you haven't seen The Usual Suspects go and find it now and watch it so you understand the reference!) so we were very happy to hear from him and head out for dinner.

The three of us met at a nice little Italian place; as Michael in town for a bit of a holiday from the wilds of Somaliland a pizza and a couple of beers were a welcome treat. It was super to finally meet Michael, having followed his blog and twitter for ages, and we had quite a nice evening discussing annoying donors, annoying requests for information, and aid work more generally.

It's nice to find out that the people you admire and respect online are just as interesting, funny and entertaining in real life. We have a great little online aid community and I really hope I can meet more people around the traps (perhaps discover the secret identities of some of them!) in the near future!

Waiting for water

2011-08-25T01:16:00.008+10:00

We drove for about 2 hours on dirt roads this morning - we'd left at 6:30am and the sun was rising over the red dirt. Little dik diks darted across the road. I spotted a couple of gazelles; it was kind of like being on safari, just with more donkeys and cows and less lions and elephants. So on we drove, the red dirt turned to black dirt, then to grey dirt, then to sand. We were heading to Dillo, a place where we've been trucking water.

Most of the journey was relatively green, but the last half hour or so I really noticed how dry the land was. We cruised through Dillo town and arrived at the local government water authority. This was the view.

Somehow, these bright pink flowers bloom in the middle of nowhere, when nothing else is green.

We picked up a local government official and drove off into the bush. We stopped at a small village to pick up one of the senior community members so he could take us to the well. It was in pretty bad shape.

You can see bits of wood in the background there - the whole well is supposed to be covered over with concrete, and is fed from a smaller opening off to the side. It's been in disrepair for some time, and this means that only one household can use the well at a time. There are 96 households in the village that use this well...sometimes the women have to wait for 8 hours.

With the water level so low, each household is allowed to fill one jerrycan (20 litres) every second day. With household sizes ranging from 6-10 people this really isn't much water. And it's not a quick process. The young girl above would drop the USAID tin into the well, clanging against the sides as it dropped, then pull it back up. She would then tip half into the smaller yellow container as her elderly grandmother couldn't hold it properly if it was full. The grandmother would then tip the half full yellow container through the funnel into a jerrycan. The men stood around and watched. I asked my colleague if they carried the water back to the village, and thankfully she said yes (which is so often not the case.) I asked whether the men ever filled up the jerrycans from the well as that seemed to make a lot of sense to me, but no, culturally the women fill the water containers and the men carry them.

The next well we visited was worse - well better in that it was properly covered, but worse because it was completely dry. The government worker seemed to be a bit shocked by this.

We went and spoke to some of the community who use that well. One woman told me that if it weren't for the water trucks that we operate they would be in "serious trouble." I thought that was a bit of an understatement really.

The thing with water trucking is that it's a last resort measure. It's expensive, it's not sustainable, but there really is no other option for these communities. It hasn't rained in 2 years.

Pancake Palava

2011-08-20T18:22:00.004+10:00

I love pancakes. I loved in the guesthouse in Nairobi that Florence would make pancakes for breakfast at least twice a week. In my hotel in Addis there are usually pancakes; they're more like crepes and you get two thin ones on a plate with syrup. For some reason, they're always cold, but that's ok. The problem is, because there are only two and they're very thin, it really only takes a minute to devour them and I don't feel particularly full afterwards.

Today is Saturday. There's no lunch in the office on Saturday, so we thought we'd be strategic and order some extra pancakes to get us through the day. By the time I got to the hotel restaurant, my colleague S had already had her 2 pancakes, so she was going to order another 2. I thought 4 thin pancakes was the best way to go. So we asked the waiter for an extra 2 for S, and 4 for me. He came back a few minutes to clarify, and we said the same thing.

45 minutes later, a massive stack of pancakes was presented to me. There were about 13 pancakes on the plate. It made no sense. Well, it kind of made sense - we soon realised that he'd thought I'd meant that I wanted 4 orders of 2 pancakes...but I definitely had more than 8 on my plate. While we thought this was quite hilarious, it was nothing compared to the staff who thought we were absolutely crazy. I palmed off half of my stack to J and made my way through the rest as best I could. There was no way I was sending any back to the kitchen, so we sheepishly had to ask for a take away container.

There is a take away container now sitting in the middle of the conference room table; none of us can bring ourselves to look at it. Pancake coma....

Visiting Lucy

2011-08-16T01:33:00.005+10:00

This is Lucy (sort of). She's 3.2 million years old and lived once upon a time in Ethiopia.

Why it's not really Lucy is because it's a cast of Lucy's bones, and the real bones are locked away in a vault somewhere in Addis to keep them safe. But they're very good casts and reading about Lucy was the most fascinating part of the National Museum of Ethiopia.

The rest of the museum is pretty grim. It smells manky. There's a weird assortment of bits and pieces, with explanations that are as detailed as "ceremonial dress" or "pottery jar ?" (far too many questions marks for my liking in a museum!) The second floor was an art gallery of sorts - a strange collection of religious paintings (including what must have been 5m x 2m painting from the 17th century that was just leaning up against the wall, though there was a rope in front of it to stop people getting too close) and then graphic depictions of the struggle against the Soviets. On the plus side, the small entry fee for locals (about 10 cents) meant that there were lots of fathers with their kids roaming through the museum.

As I was taking the photo of Lucy, two little boys ran past and stopped to remind me "no flash" which I thought was utterly adorable (and of course, I followed their instructions!) Further into the lower level where Lucy lives are all sorts of fossils and vague explanations of how fossils are made, and paintings of animals that may or may not have lived around Lucy's time, which included a mammoth that had tusks that pointed down (it was disturbing) and this:

which looked to me like the My Little Pony of pre-historic antelopes...

For a rainy morning, it was a wonderful choice of entertainment, which was followed by a leisurely lunch in the restaurant next door, aptly named Lucy, during which the sun came out and became very pleasant. And of course, what better way to top off a Sunday than with a massage at the Boston Day Spa. Super!!

Every morning

2011-08-13T01:57:00.003+10:00

there's a mini goat market on the other side of the road to the guesthouse. The weather has been quite miserable, but the goats are usually outside unless it's really pouring down.

I don't know where they go when it's really pouring down.

Greg meets Julz

2011-08-11T01:41:00.012+10:00

I've never really thought about the Gregorian calendar too much. The days come, the days go (and more and more it seems, the years go by too) and that's that. 30 days has September, April, June and November etc etc. Life has always made sense with the calendar that I know. I suppose I did stop to consider the Gregorian calendar when I lived in Bangladesh, as they work on the Islamic calendar, which puts them about 600 years behind (I think.)

But in Ethiopia, they use the Julian calendar. I'm still not sure on the details, and I can't get onto wikipedia to check it out, but it's something like 6 years behind the Gregorian calendar - so it's around 2005 here. And it goes further. A colleague mentioned it to me in passing, along the lines of 'and you know how the hours are different here..." It was my first night here, I was tired, I didn't really think anything of it until a few days later when around 4pm I asked what time dinner was served. The waitress replied 1:30. I was a bit thrown. I asked her to repeat the time, and she changed it to 1pm. I looked at my watch. 4pm. I looked back at her. She noticed my confusion and said 7pm. Ah yes, the hours are different here.

So I mentioned it to a different colleague last night, in a casual off-the-cuff kind of, 'you know how the time is different here' and he gave me the same confused look. I tried to explain it to him. He wouldn't believe me and thought I was talking about the time difference between Ethiopia and somewhere else. I finally had to settle it by asking the waiter what the current time was (at 9:40pm). He said, "in Ethiopia? It's 40 and 3." I looked triumphantly at my colleague, who nodded in acquiescence. But then we were both thrown when the waiter said "yes, 40 and 3, almost midnight". I need to get onto wikipedia...

Info management is media, is IT, is what the?

2011-08-06T19:42:00.003+10:00

I introduced myself to a colleague yesterday. The exchange went a little something like this:
"Hi, I'm Carly, the regional information manager for the response."
"Hello, I'm such and such, let me tell you about what I do..." blah blah blah
"Ok, great. Well let's talk in a couple of weeks about any 'capacity building' I can potentially do for your team."
"Yes, that would be fantastic. So is your speciality media? video?"
"No, I do information management, data stuff."
"Oh, so you're the I.T. person."
"No, not information systems, information management. Um, I write sitreps and try to figure out the numbers of beneficiaries."
"Oh, so you're a comms person."
"Well, sort of."
"So can you give some training on media?"...

Head, meet wall. Commence banging.

The stark truth of fluros

2011-08-05T17:49:00.004+10:00

Last night I went out for dinner with my colleague J, who I'm filling in for while she's away. We talked about the challenges for information management in this response, we talked about the personalities, the dynamics and all the other things that are going to make this work so interesting. We sat in a restaurant called Hill Top, but it wasn't actually at the top of the hill, but was high enough to see the lights of Addis, though they were muted through the clouds.

As we left we spotted a film crew. An attractive couple were sitting at a table outside engrossed in conversation as the cameraman moved around them. It was only when we had made it to the bottom of the stairs that we realised there was no sound - they'd been miming their lines to be dubbed in later.

We stopped at my guesthouse, as J had about 45 minutes to kill before she had to go to the airport. The power was out, as as neither of us fancied walking up the 5 flights of stairs to my pokey little room, we sat on a couch in the lobby. Lit by candlelight, J commented that it seemed really cosy and nice. There was a huge map of the world on the wall beside us, so we played games of how many countries we could name that started and ended with the same letter, and my favourite parlour game; there are 10 countries that only have 4 letters, what are they? (No googling allowed!) So we geographied our way through about half an hour, paying no attention to the three people sitting on the couch opposite us. There were two elderly Italian men and an Ethiopian woman.

Suddenly the lights came back on. The 'cosy and nice' atmosphere of the candlelight was replaced with bright fluorescent lights. A water feature of a cherub pouring water out of a vessel came to life, as did the neon rope lights that were strung around it. And the old man's hand on the young woman's leg became very noticeable as well. The door opened and another young Ethiopian woman strode in, followed by another elderly Italian gentleman. She greeted the receptionist by name and took a key and was followed up into the lift. When I went up to my room later I opened the drawer on the bedside table and noticed the condom.

So while my guesthouse may be a bit of a brothel, at least they encourage safe sex. I was asked to move out this morning as a room had opened up in another guesthouse that some colleagues are staying in - who knows what I'll find there!

I'm in Ethiopia

2011-08-05T00:33:00.002+10:00

I arrived in Addis Ababa early this morning (after my flight left Nairobi at 3:30am) and found it much easier to get out of the airport than this time last year when I missed my flight, had no money and had to practically beg my way into a transit visa! So easy (and particularly without luggage) in fact, that my scheduled taxi was not waiting for me. After walking the length of the terminal looking for the taxi office (which someone had informed me was indeed inside the terminal) I asked a guard where it was. He pointed outside into the darkness (it was about 6am). "Where exactly?" I asked. He waved his hand again into the general direction of the darkness. So I followed a couple of air hostess into the darkened carpark and was relieved to see a number of men wearing brightly coloured Taxi vests. It took a while to find the man who was supposed to have been waiting for me, he exclaimed that I was too early, I managed to keep my mouth shut and not tell him he was too late.

It was a very short drive to my guesthouse, which I would class as a basic hotel. It's clean, it has a building site about a metre away from the window, but thankfully it looks like nothing happens there. It was the noise of the city traffic waking up that really hampered the couple of hours I had to sleep! But after all that, it's been an exciting day in the office, figuring out exactly what needs to be done in the next 10 days, and potentially longer than that, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands a bit dirtier than they've been in Nairobi (but certainly not proper dirty, I'll be spending the majority of my time in rainy, grey Addis).

A painting in a Cuban-inspired bar in Nairobi...

2011-07-31T21:30:00.002+10:00

Granted, I didn't get to actually watch the royal wedding as I was in Liberia and at work, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't a zebra or a giraffe involved...

Birthday shout-out

2011-07-29T16:01:00.002+10:00

It's my big brother's birthday today! Happy birthday Greg!!

This time last year we were celebrating in Japan...how quickly a year goes!!

A very happy birthday

2011-07-28T15:39:00.002+10:00

Phone calls from friends, heaps of wishes on facebook and email, a trip to the cinema to see Harry Potter (a 45 min late taxi and bad traffic caused us to get horrible seats down the front and to the side which made the 3D a bit difficult!) and then some wine and cheese at a swanky bar all made for a lovely birthday yesterday.

As did the complimentary tiramisu from the restaurant after overhearing it was my birthday!

Nom nom nom.

Happy Birthday to me!!

2011-07-27T16:09:00.002+10:00

I'm not quite sure how it feels to be 29 yet, I've only been up for a couple of hours but they have been a couple of excellent hours. First there was the unprecedented level of water pressure in the shower, then my hair dryer didn't cut out until I'd actually finished drying my hair (something that can't always be counted on), then there was a lovely phone call from Ems, and THEN there were pancakes for breakfast! And that was all before 8am.

Hoping to see the new Harry Potter movie tonight which will top off the day nicely...now all I can do is hope that the working day is as good as this morning!!

And before Steve, James or Rowan make a comment on how old I am, may I remind them all that they remain years older than me!! :-)

Famine in Somalia

2011-07-21T02:18:00.003+10:00

The UN declared famine in two areas of Somalia today. It's hard to believe, that in the 21st century, such a situation can exist. Responding in Somalia is of course complicated by the lack of control of the Transitional Federal Government and the widespread presence of the terrorist organisation Al Shabaab. So preventing the famine from spreading will be extremely challenging for the humanitarian community, even with Al Shabaab's recent statement allowing access for muslim and non-muslim humanitarian organisations.

More money is needed: of the $1 billion needed by the UN to address the needs in East and the Horn of Africa, only $200 million has been "stumped up." What concerns me is the prevalence of 'starvation pornography' that has accompanied different agencies' appeals for this crisis. Katy Migiro has written an article for alertnet entitled "Starvation Pornography: how many skinny babies can you show me?" which accurately sums up how I feel. As signatories to the Red Cross Code of Conduct, NGOs commit to 10 principles, the last one being:

In our information, publicity and advertizing activities, we shall recognize disaster victims as dignified human beings, not hopeless objects.

Obviously, there are some not holding up their commitments. You may not remember, but I certainly do, that I did a story on Pakistan about malnutrition. I saw the 'skinny babies', I sat with their mothers, I held back the tears at the sight of such sick children. And I think it's despicable to try to raise money by using such images. 2.85 million people are affected by the food crisis in Somalia; yes, they are victims of war, of poverty, of starvation. But they are humans, with dignity and strength unimaginable to most of us - could you walk for 10-14 days, carrying your children with little food to eat, and avoid the wild animals and armed men along the way, only knowing that the situation in Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp, can't be worse than where you've left? I couldn't. But thousands of people are making that journey every day. And their suffering shouldn't be objectified.

It's been a busy week

2011-07-15T21:16:00.003+10:00

Not a lot to tell really, my life is get up, enjoy eating our cook Florence's pancakes or eggs, go to the office, many hours later come home, eat more of Florence's good food, read for a little while, sleep. Rinse and repeat.

So in the absence of anything exciting to tell you, here's a video of a dog and a rock.

That being said, I am hoping to get along to the Gor Mahia game this Sunday...

Gor Blimey!!

2011-07-11T05:07:00.004+10:00

I was invited along to a soccer match today, and we threw our weight behind Gor Mahia, described as "the Liverpool" of the Kenyan Premier League. We dressed in whatever green we had and made our way to City Stadium - not the usual home venue for the Gor, but apparently they'd been kicked out of the nicer stadium because the fans got a bit rowdy last time and started throwing rocks. We were assured that this week would be better, because it was highly unlikely that any of the Thika United supporters would be in the crowd.

For some reason, we'd been advised to arrive around 12:30...2.5 hours before kick off, which was absolutely unnecessary, save for the fact that the friend of our colleague who had the tickets was running very late. So we made some new friends in the meantime...

"The General," "The weird one with the horrifying baby doll that will give us nightmares," my colleagues E and C, and "The GORilla." We'd been told by the colleague that invited us that The General is at every single game, always dressed to the nines. From a distance, I thought he was an older gentleman, and up close, it was difficult to determine how old he was. E asked him when he first started going to Gor Mahia matches...he said 1968, and it took us a second to realise that he meant that was when the club started. Turns out he'd been going to games since 2005 - that was a bit disappointing really!

From our vantage point in the VIP zone (tickets for which cost 400 shillings - $4, rather than 100 shillings - $1) we'd noticed some of the spectators climbing up the towers for a good view.

And perhaps 15 minutes into the match, play was suspended as it was demanded that they all climbed down. So that was the first delay.

There were a few injuries, and the ever safety conscious Kenya Premier League made sure to run on stretchers to take the injured players off the pitch. Both times this happened the player immediately stood up without assistance once reaching the sidelines, and walked off.

Another sterling delay to play was one of the goalkeeperss stripping off mid-play to get a bit of a back rub and stretch. I'm not sure if he was kind of injured or just having a laugh, but he got a yellow card for it, which reinforced to me (as someone who really hasn't watched soccer in many years) that this wasn't the norm.

It must have been about half way through the second half, still 0-0 when the vuvuzela salesman was pointed out to me. I'd said that I wanted one, and buy one I did. We'd already purchased some Gor Mahia t-shirts, but now I felt like a true fan.

It's not as easy as it looks, and it really hurts the outside of your lips, but I managed to make some pretty decent buzzing noises.

We won the match 1-0, the crowd went wild and all was well. While I did promise my housemates that I wouldn't use the vuvuzela as an alarm clock for them, it's going to be mighty tempting tomorrow morning, knowing that I'm usually up a few minutes before them...

Independence Day

2011-07-09T19:09:00.004+10:00

South Sudan officially became the world's newest country today. One of our staff in South Sudan has written a beautiful piece about what this day means to her.

“This weekend we will go to the celebrations, we will dance. There will be dancing from all the tribes in South Sudan, and together we will show the happiness we feel for this new country and a new beginning. Independence Day for me means that my children will not have to live like I lived. I grew up in fear, I slept nowhere and everywhere, I ate quickly – always on the move. Now my children know that they can be whatever they want, and they don’t live in fear. Before there was nothing, now we have a future."

You can read Aguet's story here.

Bye bye Wendy

2011-07-09T18:38:00.002+10:00

Had a great time with Wendy while she's been in Nairobi waiting for her Senegal visa

Such a shame that we only got a week and a half of overlap instead of being in the same country for the first time in 3 years!!

From the horse's mouth

2011-07-06T06:32:00.003+10:00

People who know me, or who have been reading this blog for a while will know that whenever I'm working on a particular response, I encourage people to donate to the particular agency I'm working for. Instead of writing that this time, here's something a bit different...

I wish I'd worn make-up that day! But seriously, this is a massive crisis that requires a massive response, and contrary to what some may think, donations from the public do play an important part in helping us deliver essential services to those affected by the drought.

So if you can, please donate to the East Africa appeal.

Gear up

2011-07-06T02:08:00.003+10:00

Been doing a lot of editing today, a lot of copying and pasting, and a helluva lot of typing. And when that happens, there's one song that particularly gears me up.

Incidentally, the title track from one of the greatest superhero movies of all time!!

Chained to the desk

2011-07-05T03:22:00.002+10:00

Well, not really. I'm hopping up and down every few minutes to track someone down to talk about Kenya, Somalia or Ethiopia. I've almost been in Nairobi for a week, and the response to the regional drought is going to be massive. Thankfully for me, two of our country programs (Kenya and Somalia) are in the same building as our regional office, which makes chasing after people so much easier.

There's been lots of press coverage of the situation in the region; if you haven't heard, this is the worst drought in 60 years. So there's a lot of work to be done, and I'm looking forward to the challenge of not only looking after three countries, but working with other affiliates of the organisation. Yup, it's going to be VERY challenging!!

Birthday shout-out

2011-06-29T23:11:00.000+10:00

It's Rowan's birthday! Happy birthday Rowan!!!

A super day

2011-06-26T08:26:00.004+10:00

There was breakfast at the patisserie and some shopping - thankfully the early morning rain had scared away a lot of the harassing men that usually latch onto us at the market!

There was some culture at the Artist's Village - after a Chinese company finished building the stadium in Dakar, artists lobbied the government to give them the barracks to use as workshops and display areas. There's a big gallery that was unlike any gallery I'd been to before - see if you can spot why...

And also see if you can spot what else is in this picture

I saw a painting that I was particularly drawn to, which I thought was a pretty good deal. But I left without it. If I'm still thinking about it in a week then perhaps I'll figure out a way to acquire it.

Finally there was dinner was a friend, at the western most point of Africa, Point Almadies.

A super duper day!

Disappointment in Cote d'Ivoire

2011-06-25T23:58:00.004+10:00

I'd never really spent much time thinking about Cote d'Ivoire before I got deployed to Liberia. All I really knew about it was that there'd been conflict for many years. I had no idea how developed it had become, how it had been a massive exporter of coffee and one of the most (if not the most) developed countries in the region. The view from my hotel window in Abidjan didn't really tell me much about how cosmopolitan the city once was.

As I mentioned previously, it was a small UNHAS plane that took us to Man in the north west.

I didn't know what to expect of Man, but it was a nice little town, with a bustling market place, and the hotel must have been quite the luxury option in years gone by, with a spectacular view.

And by the time I left, the pool was full and about to undergo some serious chlorination.

So it was quite the contrast when I spent a day with a WASH (water and sanitation and hygiene) team, in Guiglo and Doueke - a good hour and a half drive from Man. The roads were impressive, it was no problem going 100km/hr, something I'd never been able to do in other places I've worked. We visited a few of the sites, starting with the Mission Catholique, where there are about 4,000 people. We then headed to the Carrefour camp for internally displaced people - no-one could tell me how many people were staying there, but it was pretty cramped.

I was inpressed with some of the latrines that had been installed, and we picked up a 'calligrapheur' who was going to do similar artwork on latrines at a nearby school.

To round off the day, we stopped in at the new camp that's under construction by UNHCR and Caritas. It's massive, 24 hectares, and with a huge wooden fence the whole way round. The concern of the displaced people who are to be moved to the new camp are the surrounding forests.

They call the forest "the slaughterhouse;" anyone who goes in, doesn't come out. So understandably, they don't want to move here, and this is when it became particularly obvious that protection is a major gap in the humanitarian response.

Earlier, I'd been walking down a street off the main road with my colleagues, as they needed to check on a couple of wells. I noticed the burnt out structures, but people had simply set up small stalls in front of them to carry on their businesses. The colleauges I was with didn't speak much English so I couldn't communicate very well with anyone. We walked past a muddy empty lot, it just had a few stakes sticking out of it. My colleagues were trying to explain what it was, but I couldn't understand. Finally I came to realise that it was a mass grave. I was a bit shocked at how they seemed blase about it, but I guess if you don't accept it then you can't move on. It was a sobering moment for me.

What struck me most about what has happened in Cote d'Ivoire is how disappointed the Ivorians are with what happened. My colleagues told me about how much potential there is, how educated people are, and how it will take years to recover from the conflict. Reconciliation is not going to be an easy or quick process - how can people really be expected to forgive their neighbours for murdering their family members? There is so much history to overcome, more than just the post-election conflict, but deeper issues surrounding ethnicity, religion, politics, land...the list goes on and on. And yet the continuing theme was not one of anger, or hatred, (of course these are present) but mainly of disappointment.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to visit, but unfortunately I won't be able to incorporate any of what I saw and learned into my work. I'm being moved to our regional office in Nairobi on Monday, to take over (perhaps establish is a more appropriate term) the information management for the drought/food insecurity regional crisis. It's a shame to leave Dakar and the friends I've made here, but I think the work will be much more challenging in covering Kenya/Ethiopia/Somaliland/and probably some other countries as well. I've not been keeping up with the situation there, so there's a lot of reading to do this weekend. But I won't soon forget what I saw in Cote d'Ivoire.

In Abidjan

2011-06-23T07:07:00.003+10:00

Well, it certainly was an interesting week in Cote d'Ivoire. I've put up some of the photos but there are a few more that will have to wait until I get back to Dakar tomorrow and charge my camera batteries. I'll try to write something about the field visits I did in Man as well.

The big news is that I'm being moved to Nairobi, to the regional office to look after the information management needs of the regional drought/food insecurity. It's going to be a huge job, as there are quite a number of countries affected, and of course some of those are also in protracted conflict situations. So I'm very much looking forward to the challenge, but dreading having to pack up my bag again!!

Written on Thursday

2011-06-19T03:02:00.002+10:00

I always had this idea of aid work as being a mad rush to an airport after a disaster strikes, but in my experience, there have always delays in actually being recruited, then getting flights and visas organised etc etc, so it’s not like I’ve ever shown up on Day 2. But the past couple of days, I’ve had a taste of what that’s like.

I found out on Wednesday that there was a meeting in Cote d’Ivoire on Monday that I should really participate in. I had expected that it would be later in the week. Of course I should have applied for a visa for Cote d’Ivoire as soon as I got to Senegal, but I hadn’t, so it was a mad rush to get an application in on Wednesday and hope that it would be approved in time for the flight the next day. I showed up for work on Thursday with a bag half packed at home, the rest of my clothes drying outside, not knowing whether I’d be getting on the flight to Abidjan in the afternoon. I found out at about 11am that it would take until 2pm to find out whether my visa had been processed. The flight was at 4pm. The day was getting on, and so I rushed home to finish packing and rushed back to the office. There was still time to wait, but suddenly there were forms to complete, and the discovery that the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) flight had not been organised for me – I should know that I’m supposed to do that...

Many frantic unanswered calls and emails still left me unsure as to whether I’d have anywhere to stay in Abidjan (if I got there), or a seat on the UNHAS flight to Man the following morning. Finally, at 2:15pm, one of my colleagues rushed in to the office with my passport in hand. I packed up my computer and was in the car 5 minutes later, hoping that I could get to the airport by 3pm. The adrenaline continued to flow as I rushed to the check-in desk and there was a massive line. But then I figured, if all of these people are waiting to check-in, I’ll be fine. I spotted my sort-of-boss, whose BlackBerry was beeping – there wasn’t a seat left for me on the UNHAS flight.

We ran into our other colleague at the boarding gate, she also didn’t have a seat on the UNHAS flight, so we’d be spending the weekend in Abidjan, and getting the flight on Monday morning together. Barring the fact that this would mean missing half of the meeting I wanting to participate in, I wasn’t too fussed, as my colleague had worked in Abidjan (and Man) before and was excited to show me around. It only took 2.5 hours to get to Abidjan, which has a pretty damn swanky airport and the fastest immigration process I’ve ever experienced – no forms to fill out at all! What did take a long time was for my lone little bag to come around the conveyer belt, and even longer to present my baggage receipt to get through to the baggage x-ray queue, to get outside.

When we pulled up at the hotel we spotted a woman I’d worked with in Liberia, who’d come in for the meeting, and was settled in on the patio with a cold beer. It took about 5 minutes to dump my stuff, walk back down the 3 flights of stairs and have an icy cold Flag in my hands.

As I knew I didn’t have to get up too early to catch the UNHAS flight, I was a bit surprised when my phone woke me up at 8am. “There are plenty of seats available, get yourselves to the UN base airport as quickly as you can.” “What time is the flight?” I asked, desperately trying to sound awake. “45 minutes, but I’m sure we can hold it for a little longer than that.”

I sprung into action-Carly mode, banged on my colleagues door and told her that we had to go. Since she’s going to be based in Man, she had a lot more luggage than me, and since we had expected to stay for the weekend, she had also pulled lots of stuff out of the suitcases. I rushed back to my room and stuffed the few things I’d taken out of my bag back in. Two minutes later, I was done and went downstairs and managed to communicate that I needed my bill, her bill, and a man to help her with her luggage. I also managed to organise a taxi. En Français. And the minutes ticked by, and I waited, lamenting that in all this time that I’d been waiting I could have had time for a shower. 40 minutes after I received the phone call, we were finally on our way.

We were stopped at a checkpoint into the military base where the UNHAS flies from; only military or UN vehicles are allowed to enter. We groaned, as my colleague had quite a bit of luggage, that we didn’t fancy dragging through the dirt around a military base. But then, a text message arrived, the boss had organised a WFP car to pick us up, and 2 seconds later, there it was. As we drove through the military base we passed what appeared to be an inspection parade. This was particularly amusing as half of the ‘soldiers’ weren’t wearing uniforms, and some of those in uniform weren’t wearing shoes.

And on we drove, finally pulling up outside a pretty shabby building. Our other two colleagues were standing around. “Is everyone else on the plane?” I asked. “The plane isn’t here yet.” And so we waited, and waited and watched the luggage get loaded into a van and driven away. And then another van pulled up and in we piled. I was a bit shocked at the plane we pulled up to. At this time I thought that barring the fact that it had propellers on the side, and not the top, it could have passed for a helicopter, but looking at the photo, I realise it was slightly bigger than that. The boss turned to me and said, “they cancelled the flight yesterday because of bad weather, but the pilot said he’s going to try today and see how far we get.” This was not comforting. But in we climbed, into the smallest plane I’ve ever been in, and off we took, flying over the coast line and over the palm trees and into the clouds. Yes, it was a bit bumpy but nowhere near as bad as I’d expected. The co-pilot had given us earplugs (quite possibly the best earplugs of all time) and I managed to drift off, only occasionally awakened by a slight bump here and there (more often a result of my chin hitting my chest rather than turbulence).

An hour and a half later, we descended through the clouds and I was amazed at how lush and green and hilly Man appeared to be. We walked across the tarmac to the little waiting hut, passing the blue helmets facing outwards, guns across their chests. A Senegalese friend who’d been in Liberia was waiting to get on the return flight, so it was lovely to see him again, albeit briefly.

The drive into Man was easy, the roads are wonderful. My colleague who had worked here before was pointing out the signs of progress since the fighting stopped; the timber mill was operating, the street stalls were open, the pharmacy that was once called “X Pharmacy” was now called “X Pharmacy New Version.” There were generally just lots more people out and about, though we only passed one or two cars on the road into town.

And so now, I’m in the office, which has no internet (we have to come to WFP to use their connection). There’s a cow mooing somewhere behind the fence. The hotel we’re staying in has a deep pool – there’s no water in it. Then again, we were told that the rooms have only just had water connected because the hotel was finally able to pay the water bill with all the humanitarian workers staying there. Who knows, maybe in a couple of months, those still here might have a pool to play in.

Where the wild things are

2011-06-15T04:35:00.005+10:00

I've been having a certain feeling of late. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly, but it's sort of a cross between "where am I?" and "I can't believe this is my life." Exhibit A:

This is where I spent most of my long weekend, a nice little resort in Saint Louis, under a nice shady umbrella, with gin and tonics at my beck and call. It didn't take long for that feeling to wash over me, as it doesn't seem like that long ago that I was traipsing around refugee camps in Liberia, or wandering the grounds of a stately home in England. So to suddenly be sitting beside a pool, at a resort, was frankly a little bit weird.

Then again, so was the seven hour bus journey to get there:

I didn't count how many other people were in the bus, but I'd put it around 30. It was hot and sweaty and a bit smelly of course. What could've been a 3.5 hour trip (apparently) was a long, drawn out process, but on the upside, a great way of seeing the Senegalese country side. I was a bit surprised at how dry it is here, miles and miles of sandy/dirty plains, with a few baobab trees dotted among smaller bushes.

Saint Louis is a quiet little town, which was converged upon by hundreds of foreigners (and well-to-do Senegalese) on the weekend for the International Jazz Festival. I can't imagine there's much to do there normally, we spent an afternoon wandering around, marveling at the colourful buildings

and trying to avoid the touristy shops.

There were lots of interesting doors and doorways,

and you all know by now how much I adore blue doors!

The resort we stayed in was a good 10 minute drive out of town, over a bridge, and past an extremely smelly fish market, and past a big rubbish pile that was being taken care of by a mob of bearded goats. But the life along the way was so vibrant and active.

And then there was the music. We saw a few groups on the main stage, one of which had a soprano sax who was pretty damn amazing. And dotted around the town, in little restaurants and cafes, little trios or quartets would be playing - a pretty great time and place to be having a glass of wine! Later on in the evenings, or better put, the early hours of the mornings, people would spill out onto the road between 3 of the popular bars - it was a bit of a wild crowd, a bit of a meat market, and more than a bit like Schoolies Week, or Spring Break.

But before we knew it, it was time to come back to Dakar, and thankfully the return trip only took about 4 hours in a sept plus (a station wagon that has an extra bench seat put in the boot, so it can carry seven passengers plus the driver) with just three of us. Much more comfortable than the group who got the same bus back - we passed them on the road an hour and a half into our journey, they'd apparently left 2 hours before us!

So yes, a weekend in which I more than once had to pinch myself to believe that I was really there, in the north of Senegal, at a Jazz Festival. Life is surprising, and I don't think I'd want it any other way.

Long weekend

2011-06-10T20:54:00.003+10:00

I'm heading off this afternoon to a place up the coast called Saint Louis, home of the Saint Louis International Jazz Festival, which just happens to be this weekend! So I'm sure there'll be plenty of photos and stories to tell next week.

Bon weekend everyone!

Supper by the sea

2011-06-07T22:31:00.005+10:00

Saturday feels like a long time ago, but it was quite a day. After a bit of a sleep in I wandered down to the corniche and did some shopping. I then rushed home to meet my new french teacher for the first time to figure out a schedule etc. Before I knew it, it was time to head to Magic Land...

well, we didn't go into Magic Land, which is one of those slightly run down fairgrounds that would be the perfect setting for a spooky Scooby Doo episode. I was with my colleague V, another colleague's wife B and we met up with the lovely HR intern A, at this nice little place next to Magic Land. There were endless things happening to keep our attention:

The smells of barbecuing meat wafted up temptingly to our table (which was particularly frustrating as our dibi [grilled lamb] took ages to arrive)

Then there was the wrestling. My office welcome pack had already informed me that wrestling is the national sport of Senegal. What started off as just a couple of guys practicing,

into probably 20 men and boys wrestling all over the sand.

We sat for a few hours, enjoying the sea breeze and our late lunch/early dinner (lunner?) but eventually it was time to go. As we were negotiating for a cab, I noticed this at the roundabout:

You can't really see, but on each side there are scales, I'm guessing the Justice department is nearby...

Saturday night was spent at a party on the other side of town. The house was gorgeous and right on the beach...and that's the difference between UN and NGO salaries!! It wasn't a particularly late night out, but I very much enjoyed doing a whole lot of nothing on Sunday.

Special congratulatory shout-out

2011-06-07T18:19:00.004+10:00

My dear friends Oli and Sara (and Maya the dog) welcome their little boy into the world yesterday.

Congratulations you guys!!

Waggadabbadooo

2011-06-02T23:20:00.001+10:00

A few years ago I went on holiday to Cambodia. Out the front of the marvellous Angkor Wat we were accosted by children try to sell all sorts of things. Each of them had their own little trick to entice you to buy. There was one kid selling postcards and his method was naming capital cities. We started with the easy ones, America, England, Japan, Australia. We then moved on to slightly less well known capitals and he easily got them all. I finally stumped on him on the capital of Burkina Faso. The look on his face when I told him it was Ouagadougou was priceless.

Some time later, I was watching the remake of "St Trinians," in which the unruly schoolgirls take part in an interschool quiz (hilariously hosted by Stephen Fry) and one of the questions is, what is the capital of Burkina Faso. Amazingly, the ditsy blond posh totty knows the answer and exclaims, "Oooowagadoogo!" (See 09:22)

I was never entirely sure how to pronounce Ouagadougou, but I shared my apartment with two lovely men from Burkina Faso this week so I asked them. I'm happy to share with you, that the correct pronounciation is "Wagadugu". Simple really.

Birthday shout-out

2011-06-01T18:51:00.002+10:00

Happy birthday Ems!!

It's hard to believe that it was 3 years ago that we got photobombed at the Dead Sea in Jordan!

Out and about in Dakar

2011-05-29T03:53:00.002+10:00

What a day. I spent the morning wandering about my neighbourhood before going for quite a disappointing massage. I was surprised at how quiet the streets were for a Saturday morning.

At least there was a little bit more action around near the swimming pool...

After the massage I wandered down to Sea Plaza, which was about a 15 minute walk, to meet my colleague V. We wandered around the ridiculously expensive shops for a while, and then settled in at a lovely outdoor restaurant for lunch. Not such a shabby view!

From there we jumped in a cab and headed for an absolutely fantastic ice-cream shop, called N'ice Cream...crazy delicious. And it just happened to be on the outskirts of a big market place, so we wandered around there for a while.

I guess this is where all the people go on Saturdays!

Dakar, not Dhaka

2011-05-28T00:09:00.003+10:00

Six days in Senegal and there really isn't much to tell. I have a nice apartment, which I'm by myself in at the moment, but you never know when that will change. It has a nice balcony which overlooks a relatively bustling street, and every so often I hear the clip-clop of horses hooves and along trots a horse pulling a man on a cart. So far all the carts I've seen have been empty, so I'm not sure what they usually lug around.

I have a short walk to the office in the mornings. Apparently winter is on the way but for me, the temperature of around 26 degrees with a nice breeze is perfect. I'm looking forward to exploring the fabric markets and having some clothes tailored.

But first, I need to line up a French tutor, I'm getting very good at saying "je ne parle pas francais"!

Camps for refugees in Liberia

2011-05-21T22:30:00.008+10:00

It's a bit hard to reconcile that it was only just over a week ago that I got in a car for 5.5 hours to a place called Ganta. The roads were bitumen, but potholed like nothing else; it was easier to drive on the dirt shoulder than the actual road. Ganta is the "Kiss" point for travel to Zwedru - the point where a car from Zwedru meets the car from Monrovia and swaps passengers. While we were waiting for the other car to show up, I spotted a guy pushing this down the road:

Nobody ever says beef, it's always "cow meat". The next four hours were even rougher, as the road was mostly dirt. Granted, the Chinese peacekeepers have compacted what must have been 50-70km of it, so the final stretch into Zwedru wasn't so painful...hitting my head twice on the ceiling kind of hurt! We checked into the only "hotel" in town - a pitiful place, of which the name escapes me, which was drowning in mosquitos and not so much in water - I had to use the hand pump to fill up my bucket with water for my bucket shower, which was actually a bit of a novelty as I'd never used a hand pump before! I have the upmost respect for my colleagues who have already been there for 3 months...particularly when I spotted this enormous Rhinoceros beetle!

The next day I set off with the Emergency Food Security and Livelihoods coordinator, and one of his team members to go and visit two of the communities currently hosting refugees from Ivory Coast. A distribution of rice, seeds and tools was going to commence later in the week so they wanted to make sure everyone was clear about the process. After driving for about 1.5 hours, the first village wasn't too far off the main road.

Lots of representatives from the community gathered around to hear our Liberian colleague explain the process and answer their questions. The dialect he was speaking was even more impossible to understand than Liberian English and it took all my concentration to try to keep up.

The next village was a bit of a hike. Literally. After driving down a very narrow dirt road for a good twenty minutes, we discovered the bridge was out.

So out we got and crossed the makeshift pedestrian bridge.

We followed this goat for a few minutes, until it got a bit too skittish and darted off into the bushes. It was probably only a 15 minute walk to the village, and I was happy to stretch my legs. Again, we met with the community, who had designated 5 representatives. They were all young farmers and they will receive some training on agricultural practices to improve their harvest, which they will then pass on to their community. It was quite something to hear about the numbers of refugees they'd taken into their homes, one woman had 29 refugees in her home, but she did admit that she had a large house!

The next day I went with the Program Coordinator to visit the Dougee and Solo Town camps. At this stage, many refugees are still living with host families, and deciding whether or not they want to move into the camps. In Dougee, there are about 1000 refugees.

We wandered around, talking to various people we came across, including a man who'd become a sanitation volunteer. He spreads messages about good hygiene practices, and also rounds up the kids for their special sessions. These kids started their session with a song - in French, so the only words I recognised were "Cote d'Ivoire", but they were having fun clapping along. Our hygiene promoter then used a range of picture cards to teach them about hygiene, including how to use latrines and not defecate in the open.

And these guys were busy at work constructing more frames for latrines.

You can't see it, but this lady had a tiny baby strapped to her back, only three weeks old. He'd been born in the forest as they'd fled to the border. The mother was doing quite well selling some small vegetables, but of course was finding it very difficult to manage with such a young baby.

We drove back down the road to Solo Town camp, which has about 1,200 people at the moment and is likely to become a permanent camp.

The noise of chainsaws followed us wherever we walked, as more and more land is cleared to accommodate more tents.

This is a latrine pit under construction - the locations of which are carefully selected to be a certain distance from the tents, but not too far away that it's dangerous for people to use at night. In other places, latrine and garbage pits have had to be decommissioned as the number of tents grew and became too close to the pits.

I could hear a bit of commotion further into the tree line, and there was a little body of water that children and women were swimming and washing in. Young men were also shoveling up the sand to transport back to this well construction site, to make the bricks.

It was hot, it was dusty and I was covered in red dirt by the time we got home - red dirt that I couldn't seem to get off me for about 2 days. It was a great experience to see some of the sites and communities that we're working in, and to have a clearer picture in my mind as to what the challenges are - not just for the work, but for all the families that will be calling these places home for the next weeks, months and possibly years.

Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like

2011-05-20T03:29:00.001+10:00

I submitted a post to Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like a while ago and I was chuffed to get the notification on twitter yesterday that it had been published.

If you're not about to sit down to dinner (or if you're an EAW yourself then you won't mind!) go and have a read of #57: Talking about poop! :-)

Waiting for Mr Darcy

2011-05-20T03:08:00.007+10:00

I've been put up in Eynsham Hall, somewhere in Oxfordshire, for the past few days. It's been fantastic to meet so many of the other roving specialists and eat such wonderfully English comfort food!

And in a place such as this, I can easily imagine Elizabeth and Mr Darcy lounging in the evenings (after a long hard day of kicking zombie butt of course!)

And there are lots of tiny little bunnies, who I can't seem to get a clear photo of as they dart away too quickly!

Laid back

2011-05-09T04:48:00.003+10:00

It's been a pretty great weekend, short as it was. By the time Friday rolled around, we were very keen to get out of the office, and even attempted to leave an hour early. The sun was already setting as we waited for the car situation to be sorted out.

And as I was fiddling with my camera to get the sunset, the clouds didn't cooperate and I missed the best part. But I did spot this on one of the cars...

We finally headed for a place downtown called "Tides" which had a big deck that looked out onto the water. It was interesting looking over to the other side of the water - it's a bit hard to see but it's a big slum.

After a couple of drinks there, we headed to my favourite place in Monrovia, the Golden Beach hotel, and I met up with a friend from Lebanon and had a great time catching up. But even with the extra hour sleep in, it was a bit of a struggle at work on Saturday, and a couple of us snuck out an hour early...rebels...

This morning I spent some time with Korto, one of the guards from our office. She'd told me about her family and it was nice to spend some time with them. Her 4 year old daughter Lila was fascinated by me, her little boy started screaming at the sight of me and cried himself to sleep in Dad's arms!

This afternoon we headed for an unknown restaurant overlooking a lagoon, finding out its name was Lagune suddenly made a lot of sense. We waited a good hour for our food (which for me was way too spicy) and had a couple of beers. The cool breeze was a welcome respite from the humidity.

We'd already asked for the bill when two older gentlemen at a nearby table sent us over another round of beers. We politely thanked them and carried on. When the waitress finally brought over the bill, she said the men would like to buy us some more beers. We tried to refuse, but she convinced us that we should accept them, and take them with us. She was quite the schemer!!

Tonight I'm throwing a few things in a bag - I'm heading out to Zwedru in the east for a few days to try and cement the information systems I've developed, and more interestingly, see some of the sites we're working at. I'm really looking forward to getting out there and seeing what's going on, but not looking forward to the 9 hour car journey!

Salaam walikum, kemon achen?

2011-05-07T02:51:00.004+10:00

One of my colleagues is from Ethiopia; we greet each other in Arabic.

One of my colleagues is from Bangladesh; the look on his face when I greeted him in Bangla was priceless. He always asks me how I am in Bangla when we speak on the phone, and I wish I could remember more than just a few words.

Now if only I had colleagues from Spain and Japan I could roll out my entire repetoire!

Changes are afoot in Liberia. I'm moving to the regional office in Dakar, Senegal to take on the information management for the emergency responses in Ivory Coast and Ghana. I've also just found out that I'll be heading back to Oxford for a week to attend the annual learning forum for roving staff. But before I get there, I'm heading out to one of our field bases next week for a few days. Can't wait to see the program in action!

Moving in

2011-05-03T20:19:00.004+10:00

My friend Nicole just sent me some photos of the first families moving into the reconstructed Nahr el-Bared Camp. While there's still a lot of work to be done, it's great that at least a small number of people have a nice, new place to call 'home'.

Life's a beach

2011-05-02T20:41:00.003+10:00

Went to the beach yesterday...

The water was actually pretty rough with a strong undertow so I didn't go out too far, but the temperature was perfect.

I got away lucky with a bit of a scrape of my knee from being dumped by a rough wave, and sunburnt legs - my colleague is being medi-vacced out today after busting his shoulder.

Better car photos

2011-04-29T18:05:00.006+10:00

Slightly better quality this time around, here are some shots from the drive from Mamba Point back to the office.

Pretty idyllic (if you look past the parking lot)

One art please.

I've seen lots of little shacks on relatively big blocks of land

You can't read this, but I promise the temperature gauge says "outside 36 inside 46"

another great billboard

I don't know why all schools don't have animal statues out the front

I retract what I said yesterday about no real traffic signals, lollipop men do exist!

To get to the other side

2011-04-28T18:52:00.002+10:00

The driver who picks us up every morning is lovely. He struggles with reading and writing so whoever sits in the front seat fills out the vehicle log for him. He's a very cautious driver, which is something to be cherished, but most of the time he's a little too cautious; almost coming to a complete stop to go over a little bump in the road. This is a bit of a problem. When we head out of our little compound onto a dirt road, there's quite a steep step up onto the bitumen main road. Normally that wouldn't be a problem for a big old four wheel drive, but it is here. You see, it's a four lane road. We need to cross two lanes to get to the other side. There are no traffic lights. There are no stop signs. It's a matter of pulling out when there's a bit of a gap - people will stop. So for our dear driver, who seems to be a bit hesitant about going over bumps, the step up to the road is a tough one, particularly when as soon as you've made it over the bump you're in a lane of traffic. The past couple of days a lovely bus driver (I couldn't say whether it was the same guy or the same bus) has stopped for us, waving his hand out the window to signal the other lane to stop. That's very nice, we can at least get to the (almost) middle of the road. But that's when the next challenge arises. Our dear driver won't put his foot down and get into traffic. So we sit, waiting, in the middle of the four lane road, blocking two lanes of traffic while he waits for a gap big enough, or someone takes pity on us, flicks on their hazard lights and in we go.

It's an adventure, the 10-15 minute drive. We pass yellow taxis packed with women dressed in bright colours, pass men in ties waggling their hands to hail the taxi, pass children in brightly coloured school uniforms holding hands on their way to school. I watch with nervous anticipation as pedestrians dart out in front of cars. Two days ago we saw a man get hit by a car. By the time we were level with where the accident had happened he was standing up, brushing himself off and looking for the shoe he'd lost. It was a very lucky escape. We pass some great billboards and signs, telling us to "pay taxes to develop Mama Liberia", and a church which demands that we "win the lost at all costs." At 7:30 this morning the temperature gauge in the car said it was 33 degrees outside and I internally urged the driver to go faster to get a breeze come through the window; a particularly important luxury when I'm in the sideways facing seats in the very back.

When we pull off the main road back onto the dirt we get back to the jerky braking of our driver as he goes over the bumps. I look into the houses and see mothers hurrying their children out the door, chickens pecking in the grass, and a yard full of broken down cars - one that has been cut in half and is standing on its nose. When we pull up to the big green gates at the office and beep the horn we wait for the guards to come out to check who it is. More little children walk past and wave and smile.

It's an adventure, the 10-15 minute drive.

Golden Beach indeed

2011-04-26T23:00:00.003+10:00

So far I think it's safe to say that I'm not doing it tough in Monrovia. This was the view from last night's restaurant...

and the food was just as good as the view!

Presented without context

2011-04-25T23:53:00.001+10:00

"Last month he was criticised for raiding a suspect's house with several armoured vehicles and a tank carrying Steven Seagal."

Source

The most fantastic statue

2011-04-24T10:07:00.005+10:00

We went out for sushi tonight, and I must say it was some of the best sushi I've ever eaten! Who would've thunk it? Anyway, my dream came true on the way back home. We decided to stop off at the Embassy Nightclub, as a statue outside had captivated us all. Turns out it was $10 to get in and we only had an hour before curfew, so we didn't bother. But at least I got to take this...

What a few of us initially thought, from driving past at a relatively high speed, was a statue for a campaign on violence against women, is actually two people dancing.

I thought I'd seen the pinnacle of odd statues, but I was wrong. I'm now very curious to witness the dancing that goes on in the Embassy nightclub. Maybe next weekend...

Car photos

2011-04-23T03:33:00.005+10:00

With today being Good Friday the power was turned off in the office at 2pm, so the 7 internationals here working on the response decided it was definitely time for lunch. I didn't care where we went, I was just excited to see more of Monrovia. I'd been impressed with the quality of the main road, and was keen to see how many other roads were paved. The answer is not many. Drive more than 20m off the main road and it's dirt. As the title says, these are photos taken from the car, so I apologise for their crappiness!

I spotted this little guy and was impressed with his show of colours. I recently read somewhere that lizards communicate by doing (what looks like) pushups. And that's exactly what he was doing!

We finally ended up at a place run by Lebanese so I figured that was the best choice on the menu...the beef shwarma made me miss Shwarma Man like crazy!

I'd seen this billboard on the way to work - I wonder how effective this campaign is.

Further along the road from this billboard are some dusty soccer pitches. I noticed a guy on crutches playing in a match which I thought was interesting, until I saw that all the players were amputees on crutches, except for the goalie who only had one arm. And they had mad skillz!

So there you go, a few introductory photos to Congo Town, Monrovia.

I'm in Liberia

2011-04-21T03:50:00.001+10:00

I left for Brisbane airport more than 48 hours ago, discovering along the way that I had 2 extra stopovers I hadn't known about. It was a pretty epic trip. On one leg I sat next to a photojournalist who'd just left Kabul and was heading for Lamu. She had some extremely interesting stories to tell and man I wish I were in Lamu right now! In Nairobi airport I had a chat with an aid worker headed to South Sudan, and again, she had plenty of interesting experiences to share (because what else is there to do at 6:45 in the morning at the airport cafe?)

And now I'm finally in Monrovia. First impressions: lush, green, good road from the airport, room with air conditioning is a wonderful surprise luxury!! Apologies, grammar is not my strong suit when I'm this tired. The flight term "red eye" literally applies to me right now.

Modern art frivolity

2011-04-18T17:00:00.006+10:00

I'm flying out of Brisbane tonight, so Julie and I decided to check out the Gallery of Modern Art since they have the slippery slide exihibition (it's two big slippery slides inside the museum). I saw it at the Tate a few years ago but the line was too long so I didn't bother sliding down. Of course, Julie and I didn't realise it was school holidays and since it was a rainy day the place was absolutely packed out with kids, so again, I missed out on sliding. One of the exhibits I did like was the "Make a wish wall" (or something like that). You write down your wish on a little square piece of paper, roll it up and stick it in a hole in the wall. Then you can choose one of hundreds of different ribbons that have other peoples' wishes; picking one that speaks to you. So I chose:

Another one of the fantastic school holiday installations was a giant glass room filled with big purple balloons. It looks like so much fun, but the line was going to take an hour so we didn't bother. I joked to Julie that we should just go home and fill her shower with balloons...

Such fun!!

Sunset on the street

2011-04-15T17:30:00.001+10:00

Pretty spectacular this evening!

To pack or not to pack...

2011-04-13T15:25:00.003+10:00

I just had the following conversation with myself:

-Should I really pack my Gore-tex rain jacket?
- It's coming into the rainy season in Liberia
- Yeah, but the last time I packed it I didn't use it in a whole year
- But you just don't know with rain
- That's true, but how much time am I going to spend outside anyway?
- Yes, a very good point. Probably not that much time, and don't you have an umbrella?
- Of course I have an umbrella, it's got a penguin head on the end of it (and yes it's from Japan) and that would probably be sufficient for someone who's going to be sitting at a desk for many, many hours a day
- and isn't your gore-tex jacket a bit bulky? Could the space be used for something else?
- well I wouldn't call it bulky, it rolls up to almost nothing. Then again, I'll probably need to pack my other Gore-tex jacket, the slightly thicker one, just in case it gets a bit cold. And I might need it for warmth in the UK. Gore-tex is a funny word isn't it? Gorrrrrrrre-tex. Goretex. Gore-texxxxxxxxxxxxx.

I'm taking it out.

First impressions of the kindle

2011-04-11T16:48:00.005+10:00

My new little kindle arrived today. I went for the smaller version 3, with free 3G (apparently) and wifi on sale for $189. With postage to Australia it didn't come to much more than that. First impressions are so good (I haven't actually read much as yet, there might have to be another post on that at a later stage), it's lovely and light, the magic screen does sort of look like paper, and the fact that it has a web browser is super.

But back to the weight (also, notice the lovely screensaver when you put it to sleep; one of many literary related pictures):

only 233 grams (I do this because the weight is advertised in ounces on the amazon site which means absolutely nothing to us metric folk)! But what is 233 grams really Carly?

Well, it's really light!

It's less than two small tins of tuna, and only slightly more than two normal sized phones.

You can't really make out the quality of the text in this image, but what you can see is that it's 19cm long in total, the screen is about 13cm tall. Which puts it at a size that could fit into any handbag I own, and it would be swimming in the bag I usually use for carry on. The text size is adjustable - I have it on the second smallest, so you could fit even more on the screen if you wanted to.

Navigation is pretty straight forward, though at this point in time I think it's easier to search for books on my computer and wirelessly transfer them than do it on the kindle. I've just been browsing through the Limited Time Offers section of the kindle store to see what other free books are available (besides the classics which of course I will steadily make my way through!) and boy is there a lot of crap!! Whenever I need a romance novel fix (like if it's been too long between chapters of Disastrous Passion) I now know where to find a selection of the trashiest books including "Hot Moon Rising" and "Maui Heat" (I haven't read the blurbs but you can trust me on their trashiness).

I've quickly looked at the annotating which is extremely simple to do, and the immediate link to the dictionary may come in very handy. I'll also have to investigate whether the kindle will play mp3s and let you read at the same time, but I probably won't bother with that since I have a perfectly capable ipod to play music!

I think the kindle is going to be fantastic to travel with and the text really does look like a book. It looks like a display model that is never switched on, that someone's printed out and stuck a page onto. That's how good the text display is.

Colour me impressed.

A Carly for Bathrooms

2011-04-10T16:55:00.004+10:00

You will of course, remember my not-for-profit service "A Carly for any Occasion" and my previous foray into painting for Julie. Turns out, I'm somewhat better with a roller and a paintbrush than a spray gun though will happily leave painting bathroom ceilings to the more experienced - I'm sure chiropractics was invented to treat Michaelangelo.

Julie, being the good girl that she is, let me paint a picture on the wall (which will be covered by a mirror later) while she was doing something more technical involving architraves. I had to play with the contrast and fill light to get it to show up on screen, so please don't think that Julie has decided to paint her bathroom paua shell colours!

Yes, you are seeing that correctly; it's a llama on a tropical island with a treasure chest, some coconuts and a skeleton. A happy carnivorous llama! This is why painting isn't my hobby. Obviously.

Good thing I'm going to Liberia soon, I have too much time on my hands...

Flashback to NBC

2011-04-07T18:48:00.005+10:00

I was searching my brain, trying to think of something to blog about but was coming up empty. Then I hopped on twitter and saw a tweet from Aramex "If you're in #Lebanon and would like to donate books and games to a library in Nahr Al Bard, drop us a line! http://bit.ly/f66L3K"

Not long before I finished up my job with UNRWA in Tripoli on the Nahr al-Bared camp (NBC) reconstruction project, my boss made me the point person for this project with Aramex. At that time, Aramex were going to donate money to create a mobile library for NBC. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and um-ing and ah-ing and it turned out that my time was up before any real progress was made. So I was delighted to read that a (stationary) library has been established for the residents of NBC, which you can read about on the link above. There are so many smart young people living in the camp that don't have access to many books, so this library will hopefully provide a safe space where people of all ages can learn, whether for school or for fun. I know there are a few people who read this in Lebanon, so if you're able to donate some books to the library I'm sure they'll be much appreciated!

And while I'm on a bit of an NBC flashback, the documentary "Nahr al-Bared: Checkpoints and More" is a year old now, but it's an interesting look into the difficulties of recovery in the camp. If you've got a spare 30 minutes and you're interested in Palestine refugees then I'm sure you'll find it to be a good insight.

Though I only left Lebanon about 8 months ago it seems like it was a different lifetime. But every so often when a warm breeze catches my ankles, I think back to afternoons spent on the balcony watching the Mediterranean with an icy Almaza in hand. Life in Lebanon was good for me, if only it were as good for everyone.

UPDATE: Yassmin just put the following link up on facebook, to an article in the Daily Star (with one of my favourite colleagues pictured on the far right, he's an absolute champ) about the progress of the reconstruction. I can't wait to see some photos of the first finished package (remembering that there are 8 in total, with funding only secured for three) and hope the publicity from the opening of package 1 will lead to an increase in funding. It's almost been four years since the residents of NBC were forced to abandon their homes. Four. Years.

This and that

2011-04-04T19:42:00.004+10:00

One of the great things about having my own blog is that I can put whatever I want on it. So if, for example, I wanted to say that my friend Pierre in Canberra is a dag, but a dag that can be counted on to read and write what he says he will, I can absolutely do that right here. Great huh!

There's not a lot going on at the moment, as I'm just sitting at home waiting for my boss to let me know where and when my next deployment will be. In between doing a bit of work I've been enjoying the warm weather (I swear it's hotter now than it was at Christmas) and catching up with friends. Today I spent a couple of very enjoyable hours with Dr J, an occasional commenter on this blog, reminiscing about the good old days at Fenner Hall in Canberra. From dancing on the mobile bar to "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton" being our most successful movie night, there were a lot of happy memories for us to dig up about life in college.

I'm getting stuck into one of my new hobbies...re-watching The West Wing from the beginning. It's funny how a show written 10 years ago can mirror the events of today, like this quote from Leo McGarry about Col. Khaddafi in the very first episode: "You're spelling his name wrong. What's my name? My name doesn't matter. I'm just an ordinary citizen who relies on the Times crossword for stimulation. And I'm telling you, that I've met with the man twice, and I've recommended a preemptive Exocet Missile attack against his airforce." If only Leo McGarry and co. were real we probably wouldn't have the problems we have today!

Career advice

2011-03-31T19:55:00.002+10:00

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon at the Bond University career fair, manning a stall for the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program. Many of you will remember that I went to Bangladesh as an AYAD and think the program is a great way for young professionals to get the field experience they so sorely need to get a job in the aid world.

For two hours, I repeated my little spiel about the program and tried to emphasise the need for students to gain work experience while they were still studying. This wasn't something that was ever discussed during my time at Bond, and I could see that many of the students had the impression that they could walk into any job (or volunteer program) they wanted to as soon as they graduated. Is it wrong that I took some pleasure in telling them the average age of the people in my intake was 28 and therefore unlikely that they'd be selected straight out of uni?

It was nice to share my own experiences about Bangladesh and reminisce about some of the challenges as well. My old housemate Lily was looking down at me from a poster on the wall, and Pierre was in the magazine on the desk in front of me, so it was a lovely trip down memory lane.

Another day in paradise

2011-03-23T19:41:00.002+10:00

I may complain about Australia being so far away from everywhere else in the world, but there really is no better place to come home to!

To have a hobby

2011-03-20T15:59:00.003+10:00

I realised the other day that I don't really have any hobbies. At least no hobbies that are out of the ordinary. I read. I blog. I take photos, but nothing that's really interesting. I have friends who scuba dive, and paint, and sew so I decided it was time to come up with a new hobby. The first thing I did was discuss this with my friend Vardy on the drive down from Brisbane. We determined that hobbies fall into three categories: sports, arts and crafts, and plain weird. So we didn't get too far in actually determing a hobby I could take up. The second I did was google hobbies. The lists that came up didn't really interest me: candle making, cross-stitch, sketching, rubber stamping, collecting coins or stamps, casino gambling (this really was listed as a hobby), gardening. All a little arty and crafty (or weird - gambling? really?) for my taste.

My next step was to pose the question on facebook. I considered the merits of each:

Kirsty in Iraq suggested whittling - I'm more likely to take off the top of a finger than actually make anything that can be identified, plus Australian quarantine would probably confiscate all of my pieces of 'art' on return to Oz.
Chaz in England suggested horseriding - could be an occassional hobby, but the term 'saddle sore' exists for a reason that I'm not keen to experience again. She later suggested chocolate tester, which I consider to be a lifestyle choice, not a hobby.
Adrian in Germany asked about TV, namely bad yet addictive reality TV - I love bad yet addictive tv, but it's usually not reality tv. And, not really something I want to admit to people at dinner parties...
Kristen in Pakistan suggested photography or film making, which are probably the only things I could properly claim as a hobby now. I was so inspired by her comment that I thought I'd try to get into some filmmaking and put together the clips I took in central America. But windows moviemaker didn't like the file extension and wouldn't let me import the clips so I gave up on that.
Moutushi in Bangladesh said that I could try to write about different experiences from different countries - which is what I do here, so I guess that's another hobby I have.
Wendy, lately of Darwin, thinks that online stalking to impress my friends with random details of their pasts is a neat idea. Why she's telling me to do something that I've been doing for years....j/k :-)
Rowan in Canberra gave me one word. Jazzercise. Yes, jazzercise is an excellent hobby and one that I miss terribly. But not enough to put on the Jazzercises DVD that I took with me on my recent travels - it's just not the same by yourself.
Finally, Greg in Japan said, and I quote directly "Throwing stale croissants at preschoolers is the first thing that comes to mind." With a pre-school just around the corner, I figure I can try this one out tomorrow and report back.

So, to sum all this up, it would appear that I do have a couple of hobbies, but I'm still on the lookout for something a little bit different, a little bit unusual, that I can do no matter where I am in the world. Thoughts??

Song ja vu

2011-03-17T16:12:00.004+10:00

Everybody knows about deja vu, and I've talked about smell ja vu before, but I thought it was time to discuss song ja vu. It's pretty obvious really, when hearing a certain song takes you back to a certain time and place. I love song ja vu, so much that I always try to create a playlist of the music that will forever remind me of a certain place.

For example, I will never hear Justin Timberlake's My Love,

without imaging Jez and Pierre choreagraphing a dance routine to take place in Old Dhaka, which included weaving in and out of rickshaws and CNGs. (Unfortunately the home made music video never made it into production)

The importance of song ja vu was something that was recognised by many of my colleagues in Pakistan, so much so that we all contributed songs to a mix cd. Someone put Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" as it had some sort of significance to their time in Islamabad.

But for me, I'll always be reminded of a party at Ingebjorg's house in Tripoli, sitting beside my dozing boss on the couch, who when this song came on, opened his eyes, raised his glass of whisky and sung along with gusto.

I've always managed to find great albums to accompany long bus rides and the one that got me through what amounted to weeks on the road between Chittagong and Dhaka was the Barenaked Ladies' "Rock Spectacle" album. I always made sure I timed it for this track to play as the bus hit the city limits.

Listening to a bit of Take That also reminded me of an important virtue to have on a 6 hour bus ride:

The bus to Beirut from Tripoli didn't take anywhere near as long as in Bangladesh, and I'll always associate Natasha Beddingfield with staring out into the Mediterranean.

When I was travelling around South America there were quite a number of lengthy bus rides, and thankfully many of the buses playing music videos played Julieta Venegas. Youtube won't let me embed this song, but I seriously recommend you go and listen to "Lento".

But what happens when you mix different worlds together? I was walking to the office in Oxford a few weeks ago and decided to put on "Good Songs from the 'bad", our Islamabad mix. Yes, I was taken back to the balcony of the Horizon Guesthouse, singing along to Gavin playing the guitar, but it all felt like a dream. It was hard to reconcile the memories I have to actually being real experiences.

I then tried it again in Guatemala, by playing Mashy Hadi my favourite song by Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram,

and instead of being weirded out, I was taken back to my Arabic dance class, where I thought the steps we were taught would be a perfect fit for the song

There is a danger to song ja vu, sometimes it's songs you just don't really like. I know I complained once or twice about the boys in Lebanon who'd drive up and down the street blaring out awful music. As such, Yassmin and I would get certain songs stuck in our heads...so this one is for her!

Along the same lines, my time in the Philippines was marred by one thing - Miley Cyrus on the radio. And when you spend at least four hours a day in the car, you can bet that you'll hear the same top 40 songs more than once. More than twice. More than enough times to drive a person mad! I won't subject you to that video (you're welcome), instead I'll leave you with one last song, that will never fail to bring a smile to my face - special shoutout to the crew still sticking it out in Pakistan!!

Birthday Shoutout!!

2011-03-16T14:42:00.000+10:00

Happy Birthday Dad!!

A request to all airlines

2011-03-15T16:20:00.001+10:00

More penguins in the aisles please...

A week in Guatemala

2011-03-12T10:09:00.006+10:00

What a week! When we landed in Guatemala on Sunday morning, all we knew is that we were accompanying a colleague to attend a workshop in Sololá. We had a bit of a wait in the airport and found some brochures, in which we discovered there was a massive lake with volanoes just outside the city. We started scheming as to how and when we'd be able to make it there, and were delightfully impressed when we found out that the workshop was actually going to be held there. Not a bad view huh!

On Tuesday we drove for about 2 hours to Comon Og, a remote area in Santa Catarina where the emergency program has been operating. For a few months of the year, the village is completely cut off, with the only access being by foot. I didn't realise until afterwards that the driver had put chains on the wheels, just in case!

One of the programs was a Food for Work, in which the community reinforced the pretty hairy road with sandbags (a lot of sandbags!).

It was an interesting conversation with the few people who were around, as my questions were translated into Spanish, and then from Spanish into the local dialect Kitcheh, which was extremely gutteral and clicky, and then of course, all the way back through the language chain again. It was a long and slow process, but definitely good to hear the thoughts of the community. We then headed back up the hill to meet with representatives from Pakawex. We met them at the local school, as their homes are dotted all over the hillside. And since we were at the school, we were joined by some very inquisitive kids, who were able to understand my extremely poor Spanish.

On Wednesday afternoon we had a long and arduous drive back to Guatemala City, and frantically spent the evening preparing for our workshop. I was a bit nervous about the whole thing, as we didn't really know who the participants were going to be, but then again, I didn't have to do much of the presenting as it needed to be done in Spanish.

We were both a little wary about today's session, as we were delving into the complicated world of counting beneficiaries (which is a lot harder than it sounds!). After some initial confusion, the participants got right into it. So much so that when we called time on an exercise, and I put the results up on the screen, they simply refused to look at it until they'd worked it out for themselves. A proud moment for me! In the end, our little evaluation sheets told us that we did a pretty good job. I've got a fair bit of confidence now that there are a few people here who'll be able to improve the information management practices in an emergency. In fact, they're so enthusiastic that they're adding a session on information management to a workshop they're holding with partners in two weeks time!

So now it's time to shove everything into my bag, enjoy one last night in Guatemala and head to the airport tomorrow morning. I'm not looking forward to transitting through the US, but definitely looking forward to getting home and getting to my Chinese massage man!!

Morning office/Afternoon office

2011-03-08T07:09:00.004+10:00

Lake Atitlan and its three volcanoes were the view from the workshop I spent the morning in

The only wifi available in the place we're staying happens to be beside the pool, so this is where I'm working this afternoon.

Guatemala is pretty sweet!

Pimp My Aid Worker

2011-03-05T01:20:00.002+10:00

Twitter was abuzz this morning, thanks to a link put up by @shotgunshack. This video made my morning!

Go on and have a look at the full Pimp My Aid Worker site.

What is Grameen if there's no Yunus?

2011-03-03T04:27:00.007+10:00

A former colleague in Bangladesh posted a link on facebook to a BBC article on the attempted sacking of Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank. Numerous reasons for this were given, one of which being that he is over the compulsory retirement age of 60. You might have noticed in my twitter feed that I pointed out the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, is herself 63. Now it's not the PM who is calling for Yunus to be sacked, it's the central bank. However Hasina is no fan of Yunus, after he publicly considered establishing a rival political party in 2007.

On pondering the potential dismisal of Yunus, I began to wonder what Grameen will be without him as a figurehead, and with the knowledge I have (which is based solely on my own experiences in Bangladesh), I believe that nothing will change. There is no denying that Yunus changed the world with a simple idea and I've discussed in the past the goliath that Grameen has become, and as such I don't believe for a second that the bank couldn't function without Yunus. Anbarasan Ethirajan states in a side bar of the BBC article that, "supporters of Prof Yunus warn that savers and borrowers might get the wrong idea - and that some people might withdraw their savings from the bank." Rumours travel much faster than accurate news (and I'm sure many people would say "accurate news" in Bangladesh is an oxymoron) particularly in rural Bangladesh, and with many of the beneficaries of Grameen loans classed as 'rural poor' and therefore somewhat distanced from the media, the possibility of the scenario above definitely exists.

To illustrate: I was in Bangladesh at the time when avian flu was making the news. Colleagues of mine came across a number of villages that had destroyed all of their livestock because they had heard that avian flu would kill the birds and the people. What they hadn't heard was that it was not a risk in their particular region and that there was no need to cull their poultry. Misinformation and rumours caused them to lose their livelihoods. So to bring this back to Yunus being sacked, there could easily be a flow of incorrect information about the impacts of this, causing people to remove their money, or stop repayments if they believe that Yunus is synomous with the Bank - i.e. If Yunus is finished, Grameen is finished.

But in reality, in 10, 20 or 50 years time, long after Yunus is gone, the Grameen Bank will remain. Even with 25% of the Bank owned by the Government, with Bangladesh's history of political turnover I'd happily wager that Grameen will outlast any political party. When you think about it, Grameen became an independent bank in 1983, which is only 12 years after Bangladesh became independent, and it has been a much more stable institution than the political system. If at 70 years of age Yunus is still capable of running Grameen, then he should continue to do so, and consider how to ensure that when the time does come for him to leave that this is communicated properly.