11/29/2012
What is this foreign
sensation of being busy??
Monday nobody was at
work so I spent another lazy day at home drawing a picture and fixing some
things up around the house – just another start to a typical week.
On Tuesday someone
(aka the only person who shows up) mentioned that we should maybe start
planning for AIDS day. I asked when that was, to which he casually responded:
this week. I asked what exactly we need to plan, to which he responded with a
slew of activities/ events/ projects. So in the course of 3 days we: pulled
together the funds; made and coordinated our program with the hospital,
government, and education system; purchased the materials for a march around
the town with candles, painting the trees in town, a running contest, a soccer
contest, a jeopardy contest, and a lunch for 100 people; wrote a speech for the
whole town; planned a HIV/AIDS training for the whole town; made banners; among
other seemingly impossible feats.
This wouldn’t have
been nearly as difficult if our president who usually runs the show wasn’t sick
in hospital, if our second in command wasn’t also sick and barely available, if
our main supervisor wasn’t busy this week giving vaccines with the hospital
around the district, and if 2 of our other supervisors didn’t have young
children with malaria. Not to mention that conveniently the focal person in the
government is sick at home, the focal person in the education department is also
sick at home, and hey! it’s the week-of and unsurprisingly the hospital and
education department also are just planning their programs alongside us. SO!
Basically it’s the last possible minute and nothing is planned – welcome to
Mozambique J
For the past few days
me and my organization’s accountant (seeing as we are the only healthy and
sick-children-free individuals) ran around our entire district pulling all of
these loose strings together. Between attending a funeral for the half the day
on Wednesday morning for one of our supervisors, spending all Thursday afternoon
in the hospital with a supervisor and her young child with a high fever and
malaria, and visiting our organization’s president every evening in a hospital
a few towns away… Also managed to squeeze in a meeting with a private business
that’s interested in donating food to our OVCs (orphans and vulnerable
children) – pretty excited about that possibility. Needless to say, we’ve had
our hands full this week.
I’d forgotten what it feels like to actually
be busy!! It’s awesome, and I’ve taken the liberty of all these things falling
on my organization’s plate to let me full OCD planning beast out on them by
making excel sheets and to-do lists galore! I swear, next year I’m forcing all
the chefes of this town to sit down together a month in advance to discuss the
programs for this event because there are way too many individual actors for
this event to happen successfully when
nobody talks with one another.
I’ll try to attach photos
of the events from this week J
-
sleepy
and sore Emily
So glad you're busy :)
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