Still here

Sorry, been quiet lately. Not that there's nothing to say. In fact, there's too much going on at the moment that I just can't keep up. I've even been taking pictures of some of it!  But.  My computer battery is about to die, because I was wasting time on facebook, and I'm too lazy to get my computer cord out of my bag, plug it in, and fight with the cord inside my mosquitoe net (which is an incredibly wonderful thing these days - the mossy net, that is. There are a TON of mossies around because we've been having a bit of rain. And in between the rain, some seriously hot and humid weather.  Exaclty what the mosquitoes like.  A lot.).

But all is good.  I'm still alive and kicking.  This week, we're having 3 days of "Crisis Management" training.  So, we spent half the day talking about doom and gloom and all the things that COULD go wrong in this place and cause a crisis.  We filled 4 sheets of flip chart paper.  But actually, it's not all that bad.  Hopefully, though, tomorrow, we'll learn a bit about how to actually reduce some of the risk of some of those things!

In the afternoon, though, we had a fascinating presentation about media and our culture of "fear".  It was really a great presentation and discussion on media and its effects on our culture (it was all from a Western sort of culture, which is fine, because the workshop was for International folks, who are, by and large, from a Western context).  I don't know if everyone else was so interested, but I really enjoyed what this guy had to say about how the media shapes us, and how we've been affected by the media, and social networking and all that, and then linking it up with how we view "risk" and "fear".  Fascinating stuff.  But it was a bit of a different topic for most of my colleagues who spend their days talking about other sorts of topics!  I think we lost Wes at the beginning, because he nodded off for the entire afternoon.  And those who like to work with their hands were looking a bit confused, too.  But it is quite a welcome change for me, to get to sit in a workshop and be the participant, and get to learn something new from someone who has come from outside our organization... rather than being the one teaching and hearing the same song and dance over and over again :)

Tomorrow, we get to hear more.  I must remember to bring my pillow, though, as my plastic lawn chair is lacking any padding.

A wee party

Here are the makings of a good party:

 A table full of fresh baked cookies (including pumpkin bread made from home grown pumpkins), tea and coffee fixins...

 ... lots and lots of cold sodas (a few diet versions in the back for those among us who have blood sugar issues)...

 ... a stack of plastic chairs...

 ... a few speeches (in both local Arabic and English), along with prayers...

 ... a speech from an organization's Director... (who seems to refuse to stand on her feet for this blog!)...

... and 60 of your favourite friends and colleagues.

As you see, we had a little shindig today at the office!  Good times were had by all, as we celebrated a momentous occasion in this country (just a wee bit late... but there were good reasons for that :) )

Today's party was a great mix of Western style office celebrations and local style shindigs.  I think we captured pretty much the best of both worlds, and everyone had a good time.

Yup, still in Africa :)

This afternoon, I got to go out and about once again.  After spending the past two weeks cooped up on the compound in meetings, it's been a welcome relief to have a bit of time to go out and about.  Today, our Director wanted to see the sights of the town.  She's been living elsewhere for the past several years, so hasn't really spent much time in this town, and figured she should see some of the sights, if she's going to be a good Director.

So a few of us jumped in the truck, and off we went, to see what we could see.  I enjoyed it, because I got to see parts of town that I hadn't seen in several months.  And around here, that's like a life-time!  There were new paved roads where I didn't imagine there could be a paved road.  Roads that were pretty decent relatively recently are terrible now because of the rain and heavy traffic.  Everywhere there are new houses, shops and signs of development.  So it was good to see how things are moving along.  It also never ceases to amaze me how you can get lost around here because the landmarks are constantly changing!  Part of our cruise today included driving back and forth trying to figure out which road/track actually would lead us out of the various residential areas that we toured.

I also got to see parts of the town that I have never been to before, which was really nice.  The highlight of the whole trip, though, was seeing an ostrich running down the street!  Yes, that's right, an ostrich.


Unfortunately, I didn't get my camera in time, but it was so crazy to see an ostrich running his little heart out through the residential area!  We have no clue where it came from, nor where it was going.  But they don't actually live in the bush around the town (though they are found in other parts of the country, I'm told), and we were in the middle of the city, so it's not like he was going to find some lunch one day in the forest and accidentally made a wrong turn into the town!  Anyway, I just hope he finds a happy home.  I wanted to bring him home to our compound so he could join the guinea fowl and her keets and the chickens and the ducks on the compound.   But no one else in the LandCruzr at the time thought that was a very good idea :(