I'm still in Nairobi, and we finished our "board" meetings today. I'm the Secretary of that board, so I sorta have to be paying attention the whole time, and can't play solitaire or hearts on my computer whilst listening, because my computer screen is always projected onto the screen in the front! We usually have 2 meetings per year, and this is the second year I've been doing the whole Secretary thing, so I feel a bit like I actually know what I'm doing now! At the conference next week, the members of our branch will elect a new 'board'. I'm hoping not to be on it, but I'm not sure if I will continue in my role as secretary or not... I guess it depends on who becomes the chairperson and if they actually want me to do it or not! Anyways, a little change never does any harm, does it? But at the same time, it's been really interesting to get into a bit more of the "nitty-gritty" of how the branch works and what's going on to keep us all running along the right track.
But I also just really like being in this city! Lots of stuff going on, nice weather, things are clean and the electricity and water have been on with no interruptions! And this guesthouse is really nice, too. Clean, comfortable, good food. Only complaints I have are slow internet (but at least there's wireless!) and they want you to be on-time for breakfast at 7:30am every morning. If you sleep in, no breakfast for you! So if you were to come here, say, on holiday, you'd have to get up for breakfast at 7:30am or else wait until 1pm to eat your lunch (or go out to Java House for brunch... which is what I'm planning on doing tomorrow!).
I also like this town because I have friends who live here. I've seen some of them already, but tomorrow I will see some more of them :) And by staying in this guesthouse, I've met quite a few folks that I know from elsewhere, as well. In fact, I met one of my "relatives" (by African standards!) who works in the same country that I do, but I've never met her before. We were eating our breakfast at the same table this morning, and quite easily put two and two together to figure out who we both were! It was really nice to finally meet her.
Tomorrow, it's play time, with friends. Then Sunday we all head out to the next conference center where we'll have our Branch conference for 6 days. I'm looking forward to that - it's a great time of getting together with all the folks from our organization who work in our country. Because of the situation in our country, I don't get to travel to see the majority of the members of our branch, so our conference, which is held every two years, is the only time I get to meet with some of my colleagues from different parts of the country! Otherwise, we just depend on email to get everything done, and that's certainly not as nice as getting together face to face once in a while - at the very least so we all have a face to put with the name of the person we're emailing!
So all in all, it's been a pretty good ease back into work. I'd like to be going back to my home, and back to my Zane. But that will come, all in due time...
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