Tag Archives: work

Last farmer meeting

March 4, 2011

My organization organized a farmer consultative meeting for urban agriculture legitimization today. It was also my last meeting as project officer here. Good energy, lots of discussions, constructive dialogue between government agriculture people and the farmers. The feedback about the strategic plans will be presented at the bigger stakeholder meeting coming up soon. I actually didn’t think this meeting would happen when my two supervisors and I discussed it three months ago. It was too risky. It could have been […]

Back from Durban

February 28, 2011

I just arrived home in Dar from Durban and I already miss the beautiful beaches with waves that could knock you over in a second. Durban (and maybe South Africa in general) is such a paradoxical place; so many sides that some how co-exists. I’m sure, however, that if I were able to stay longer, even more sides would emerge to fill the missing puzzle pieces. The peer exchange was an amazing experience: lots of insights to how different governments […]

February 12, 2011

Lesson: if you’re serious about staying and working in a foreign country, you have two choices: 1) start you job search earlier and/or 2) stay behind for a while to focus on job searching and networking. Do not have vague hopes about funding for your organization to hire you to come in on time (and thus postpone starting your job search). Do not book your ticket out of the place too early and risk having to spend extra to change […]

International Development Week at UBC

February 10, 2011

This morning, I woke up at 3:50 am to skype into a conference in Vancouver at UBC. I was one of the presenters at the panel for International Development Week called “A Day in the Life of the International Humanitarian.“ The theme was a ‘typical day’ of my work (and the 5 other presenters). Just the thought of a ‘typical day’ is quite interesting because the things I do almost always differ from day to day. But I did my […]

Of money and projects

January 30, 2011

One group of farmers that I’ve been working with abused the funds we gave them for their project. Blatant stealing by the only two male group members out of 7. I won’t go into details. But there’s been a lot of complications and the big showdown is on Monday. I wonder how it’ll turn out. If you ask me, there were a lot of things wrong with how the project developed in the first place. But it still doesn’t make me feel […]

When being an incompetent facilitator is a good thing (maybe)

December 15, 2010

There were no fans. My head was pounding. My eye was tearing. Rapid-fire Kiswahili echoed in the room. I was in a meeting today where I was supposed to be the facilitator. I was a bit sick and I felt it would be better if the flow of the meeting wasn’t interrupted as much with the translation of every sentence. So I asked the stakeholders to facilitate the meeting. Result: much boredom and more energy to dwell on my now […]

Apolitical blame

December 8, 2010

One of the groups of farmers we work with farm in a controversial area – the Msimbazi Valley. In the past few months, there’s been lots of media attention on the valley, mainly due to research findings (confirmed or not depends on who you ask) about the toxicity of the water and soil. The Msimbazi Valley runs along the middle of Dar es Salaam. It’s huge, with estimates of hundreds of, maybe even a thousand, people who directly make their […]

What do you call it when you get a string of good signs?

November 26, 2010

That a higher up force is on our side? That’s what’s been happening a lot during the process of legitimizing urban agriculture (part of my job) here in Dar. As I’ve explained before, I work a lot with government officials. Sometimes, it’s frustrating, but sometimes you just feel like everything is happening to help us get our jobs done. Today was such a day. First I must explain, though. Currently, we’re asking each municipality (there are three) to write a […]

another blunder

November 9, 2010

Big meeting this morning. One of the trainers from the urban agriculture training week (goodness, that was more than a month ago) finally came with her report for the training (I’ve been calling and texting for 3 weeks now). I was so excited to see her at this meeting and to get the report that I completely forgot to think. Oops. I just handed her the money in front of everyone after the meeting. Shit. My supervisor calls me aside. […]

A Typical Meeting at the Office (and there’re many)

October 28, 2010

Agreed on meeting time: 10 am – 12 noon 9:40 am: first meeting participant ambles in. We greet them, show them where the meeting will be. Karibu chai na kahawa (you’re welcome to have some tea or coffee). We go back to work a bit more. 9:55 am: second participant ambles in. Process repeats. We introduce them to the first one so they can have polite conversation. 10:00 am: still only two people, we wait. 10:10 am: two more people […]

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