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.

Scootering aound Dakar

I’m mobile now – finally bought myself a scooter (see pic), so now every morning rather than negotiating with a taxi driver I just get on my scooter, drive along the corniche and into town. Its only about ten minutes into the office, and so long as the rain holds off (which it has so far), very pleasant, with nice views of the Atlantic ocean off to my right. Just have to be aware of the trafiic around me – apparently my scooter has a special feature which makes me completely invisible to taxi drivers! After work I can drive straight from the office to the club Atlantique for a swim, before going home again along the corniche, with views of the sun setting over the ocean.
In the office I have been working on getting some of the projects moving. The main work this week has been on a Food Voucher programme. This is a relatively new initiative for WFP – rather than distributing food, the idea is to give those in need vouchers which can be exchanged for food at local stores. This can be useful where the problem is high food prices rather than lack of food. One of the advantages of this approach is that it can help stabilize and inject liquidity into the local economy, and can also offer cost savings as there is no need to transport large quantities of food across what are often long distances. A number of pilot programmes have been run and it is expected that this will become an increasingly important way of distributing aid to those in need. I have been looking at how IT can support these programmes, as there are no real solutions available at the moment.
Ramadan starts at the weekend – either on Saturday or Sunday, depending on sightings of the moon. Of course this means that the local Muslims (by far the majority of the population here) will be fasting during the day, so I would imagine the atmosphere will be quite different.
Despite being here in Francophone West Africa where cricket is completely unknown , I’ve been able to follow the Ashes series as well, via TMS on the internet. Apologies to any readers who don't know what cricket is, and also to any Autsralians reading this (Salma?) - but right now listening to a frankly unbelievable comeback by England following the dismal performance in the last test – at this rate they’re actually in danger of winning the series.