Oh dear, I guess the novelty of this life must really be running out, I haven't blogged for ages! It's been a lovely couple of weeks though. Jes and Tom came out 2 weeks ago, and we packed lots of touristing into the 5 days Jes was here. The best bit was just catching up, but another highlight was going over to Livingstone island and seeing the Falls from the top. Tom went for a swim but Jes and I decided that sounded a bit scary
Tom stayed on for my birthday, and we had a dinner party for a few friends. Lovely to get so many packages from home and some thoughtful gifts from my new friends who seem to know me very well already and chose nice new clothes and jewelry. Staying with tradition I had two cakes (and one more promised in the post!!) and generally felt very spoiled. The biggest surprise was one of Rabbit's friends and relations (my affectionate term for the vast extended family that all Zambians seem to possess) turning up at my office with a dozen red roses.
Meanwhile, work is slowly moving on and we even managed to fill in a funding application this week. This morning I texted all my colleagues to remind them to come to work and it seemed to have an effect and we got a fair bit done. It often feels like I'm just nagging, but my boss always laughs when I say that so perhaps I'm achieving more than I realise. I'm off to Lusaka on Wednesday for VSO Zambia's annual conference, which I've been helping to organise. It'll be great to catch up with all my friends and I have a couple of presentations to make which I'm geekily looking forward to. I'll also get chance to meet up with Tom again, who's spending a couple of days in Lusaka after a trip to Botswana and South Africa. So all go but I'll try to blog a bit more often, and will try to persuade Hilary, Ed, Tom and Jes to make a contribution from the UK!
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Zimbabwe
Hilary and Ed were visiting last week, and I had a week off to travel round Zimbabwe with them. It's a strange time to visit, as there don't seem to have been any guidebooks written since before all the problems. It's peaceful now though, and there's food on the shelves, so a nice opportunity to see a country not overrun by tourists.
Victoria Falls are awesome from the other side of the border, you get much more of a sense of how long they are as you walk along 16 different look-out points in a straight line. The Livingstone side is more of a maze, and I still get disorientated about where I'm standing in relation to the river!
Driving down to Bulawayo we spent an afternoon in a lovely art galllery and then headed on to Kariba. Kariba is a stunningly pretty town overlooking the huge lake formed by the Kariba dam. Before the problems it was a big tourist destination, so there are lots of lovely hotels and lodges to choose from. There's hardly anyone around though, and everyone was so pleased to see us that we had a lovely couple of nights there paying well below market-rate for a lovely lodge overlooking the lake. Everyone was incredibly friendly and helpful and I'd really recommend it as a destination.
Back in Zambia the holiday didn't end well, with Hilary getting very sick and not being able to fly home as planned. As I write this they're finally in the air, but I'm starting to think my African holidays are doomed, the last one ended with my friend Dan breaking his leg. Hopefully when Tom and Jes arrive on Thursday all will go smoothly...
So that's the run-down of what I've been up to. I'm hoping that Hilary and Ed will add their comments and maybe some photos when they're safely back in the UK so watch this space.
Victoria Falls are awesome from the other side of the border, you get much more of a sense of how long they are as you walk along 16 different look-out points in a straight line. The Livingstone side is more of a maze, and I still get disorientated about where I'm standing in relation to the river!
Driving down to Bulawayo we spent an afternoon in a lovely art galllery and then headed on to Kariba. Kariba is a stunningly pretty town overlooking the huge lake formed by the Kariba dam. Before the problems it was a big tourist destination, so there are lots of lovely hotels and lodges to choose from. There's hardly anyone around though, and everyone was so pleased to see us that we had a lovely couple of nights there paying well below market-rate for a lovely lodge overlooking the lake. Everyone was incredibly friendly and helpful and I'd really recommend it as a destination.
Back in Zambia the holiday didn't end well, with Hilary getting very sick and not being able to fly home as planned. As I write this they're finally in the air, but I'm starting to think my African holidays are doomed, the last one ended with my friend Dan breaking his leg. Hopefully when Tom and Jes arrive on Thursday all will go smoothly...
So that's the run-down of what I've been up to. I'm hoping that Hilary and Ed will add their comments and maybe some photos when they're safely back in the UK so watch this space.
Workshops galore
Much of the work of the development industry seems to be about holding workshops, and 2 weeks ago (haven't got round to blogging for a while...) my week was fairly typical of this. CTYA' biggest funding partner have finally delivered on the promised funding (about 6 months after the project was due to start), and as any self-respecting NGO would, we started the process with a 3-day orientation workshop.
The workshop itself was somewhat chaotic, with facilitators coming and going a lot, but it was good to get chance to meet the young people who will be carrying out peer education workshops in High Schools around Livingstone in the hope of bringing about the kind of behaviour change needed to stop the spread of HIV.
Young people in Zambia hear about HIV a lot, and research suggests that the level of knowledge that people have is mostly high. This cannot be translating into a change in behaviour though, as the disease is still spreading, especially among young people. It' very hard to change behaviour, but some of the activities that our peer educators will use are very creative. My favourite is giving participants some chewing gum, asking them to spit it out immediately into a single cup and asking them to take back gum chewed by someone else. Obviously everyone thinks it's gross, but might give less thought than that about sharing other bodily fluids with people.
Busy for the first time, I was also asked to facilitate a workshop for VSO the same week. It was nice to have chance to plan and present something myself. We were inducting the employers in Livingstone who will be receiving new volunteers in October. I asked them to imagine what it would be like to move to Iceland and asked them to please be gentle with their new staff! I'm excited about meeting the new volunteers, but it's strange to think that I'm starting to be an old hand when I still spend so much time confused about the world!
The workshop itself was somewhat chaotic, with facilitators coming and going a lot, but it was good to get chance to meet the young people who will be carrying out peer education workshops in High Schools around Livingstone in the hope of bringing about the kind of behaviour change needed to stop the spread of HIV.
Young people in Zambia hear about HIV a lot, and research suggests that the level of knowledge that people have is mostly high. This cannot be translating into a change in behaviour though, as the disease is still spreading, especially among young people. It' very hard to change behaviour, but some of the activities that our peer educators will use are very creative. My favourite is giving participants some chewing gum, asking them to spit it out immediately into a single cup and asking them to take back gum chewed by someone else. Obviously everyone thinks it's gross, but might give less thought than that about sharing other bodily fluids with people.
Busy for the first time, I was also asked to facilitate a workshop for VSO the same week. It was nice to have chance to plan and present something myself. We were inducting the employers in Livingstone who will be receiving new volunteers in October. I asked them to imagine what it would be like to move to Iceland and asked them to please be gentle with their new staff! I'm excited about meeting the new volunteers, but it's strange to think that I'm starting to be an old hand when I still spend so much time confused about the world!
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