It’s been a very busy few weeks, both in and out of work. The biggest change for me is that I have moved to another apartment – I’m now sharing a large 3 bed roomed villa in Mermoz, which is a bit further out of town from where I was before, but it’s only an extra 5 minutes on my nippy little scooter. It’s a much bigger place, with a nice garden, large terrace and, best of all, air conditioning (I only had a fan at the last place) – real luxury! The only downside is that it’s under the flight path for Dakar airport – sometimes feel I could reach out and touch the planes as they come in to land.
I’ve now finished my French classes – the next set start in October but I will probably wait until January before starting again as October and November already look very busy. I’m getting even less chance to practice my French now, as my new flat mate is an English speaker from Uganda – speaks even less French then me!
What else – well I’m still swimming quite a lot – I’m hoping I might be able to do the ‘Ile de Goree’ swim in early November. Regular readers will know the Ile de Gore is a small island just off Dakar. Each year there is an organized swim from Dakar to the island – about 5km in some pretty polluted water – should be fun! I’m also playing some tennis, although my game seems to be getting worse rather than better, age and dodgy knees catching up with me.
Ramadan ended last week – so we had a long weekend. It’s traditional to have a friends and family around for a meal to celebrate the end of Ramadan – Alpha invited me to his house, lovely meal and a chance to meet some interesting new people. I also seem to have become an honorary member of the local Swiss club, thanks to a Swiss colleague, Lucas. The main activities of the club appear to be focused on eating and drinking as well as possible – so I’m very happy to have made their acquaintance – very nice people (no, really!).
Next week sees the annual regional IT meeting – where representatives from the WFP IT teams in each of the 19 countries in the West Africa come together for a bit of bonding and sharing of experiences etc. The meeting will last all week and is being held in a resort just south of Dakar, so I get a week in a nice luxury hotel by the beach – but there’ll be plenty of work to do as I’m running a workshop for a couple of the days. After that I’m taking some time off as my wife will be here in Senegal and we’re going to travel around and see a bit more of the country – I’ve been here 3 months and haven’t been out of Dakar yet, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what the rest of the country is like.
And straight after that I’m planning to travel to Burkina Faso for a few days. The aim of the trip is to find out some more about Food Voucher programmes (see earlier blogs) – a voucher programme is currently underway in Ouagadougou, which is the capital of Burkina (but I’m sure you knew that). I'm talking to the Senegal office about using mobile phone technology to support a Voucher programme that they are introducing at the end of the year, so am interested in finding out as much as I can about the practicalities of these programmes beforehand.
In addition to working on the voucher programme my main focus over the past couple of weeks has been in preparation for the IT regional meeting, plus continuing to push forward with a number of other projects, which has meant there never seem to be enough hours in the day – which is my excuse for having neglected the blog again – I promise to try harder!
Monday, 28 September 2009
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Reflections during Ramadan
It's the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and also the height of the rainy season here in Senegal. Although this is a predominantly Muslim country, it is not a place where everything comes to a complete halt during the day in Ramadan, however things do seem to slow down a bit, which in some cases means going from slow, to almost stopped. And then of course everything livens up once night falls as people on fast are free to eat and drink again. Where I live currently I can hear the call to prayer, particularly the one just before daybreak, which is the signal for the last meal before starting the day's fasting afresh, and also the one as the sun goes down - the signal to start eating again. It’s a daily reminder that I'm not home in rural England, where the equivalent would be the sound of church bells ringing.
And, as I say, it’s also the rainy season, during which, it rains - a lot. Usually the rain is heavy but short lived, although there have been a couple of days where it has rained for most of the day. The result - lots of flooding. I'm guessing they call it the rainy season because it rains like this every year. However this doesn't seem to have prompted much in the way of taking measures to deal with heavy rain, and as a consequence the TV news and newspapers are full of people in abject circumstances, waist deep in water, surrounded by their few possessions, presumably ruined. In addition it's a been a month of power cuts. A reasonably regular occurrence here they became much more frequent for a couple of weeks, with many people being cut off for days on end. Luckily where I live was not too badly affected by either floods or power cuts, although we did have a share of both. But the situation in other parts of Dakar was bad enough for people to take to the streets, with ominous talk of bringing down the Government. The president meanwhile had decamped to Biarritz for a few weeks, where I'm guessing there were few power cuts or floods.
The situation in other parts of the region has been even worse, with, for instance, severe flooding in Burkina Faso which affected the WFP country office.
Meanwhile at the office we have been preparing for the annual Regional ICT meeting, which will be taking place in early October. I'm going to be running a 2 day workshop as part of this - so will be quite busy over the next few weeks preparing that, as well as for a trip to Burkina Faso at the end of October, fact finding about Food Voucher programmes which is one of the projects I'm currently involved in. Between the two I will be taking a bit of a break as Raksha (my wife) is coming over and we hope to spend some time seeing a bit more of the country - which I'm really looking forward to.
And, as I say, it’s also the rainy season, during which, it rains - a lot. Usually the rain is heavy but short lived, although there have been a couple of days where it has rained for most of the day. The result - lots of flooding. I'm guessing they call it the rainy season because it rains like this every year. However this doesn't seem to have prompted much in the way of taking measures to deal with heavy rain, and as a consequence the TV news and newspapers are full of people in abject circumstances, waist deep in water, surrounded by their few possessions, presumably ruined. In addition it's a been a month of power cuts. A reasonably regular occurrence here they became much more frequent for a couple of weeks, with many people being cut off for days on end. Luckily where I live was not too badly affected by either floods or power cuts, although we did have a share of both. But the situation in other parts of Dakar was bad enough for people to take to the streets, with ominous talk of bringing down the Government. The president meanwhile had decamped to Biarritz for a few weeks, where I'm guessing there were few power cuts or floods.
The situation in other parts of the region has been even worse, with, for instance, severe flooding in Burkina Faso which affected the WFP country office.
Meanwhile at the office we have been preparing for the annual Regional ICT meeting, which will be taking place in early October. I'm going to be running a 2 day workshop as part of this - so will be quite busy over the next few weeks preparing that, as well as for a trip to Burkina Faso at the end of October, fact finding about Food Voucher programmes which is one of the projects I'm currently involved in. Between the two I will be taking a bit of a break as Raksha (my wife) is coming over and we hope to spend some time seeing a bit more of the country - which I'm really looking forward to.
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