November 30th, 2006
There were a number of interesting sessions during the conference. Although there were a great deal of speakers who talked about a variety of development/poverty/aid topics, these are the session which I attended AND remember 3 weeks on from the conference:
November 29th, 2006
As part of Robert Chamber’s Workshop on Participatory Methods at the DevNet Conference, people were invited to speak on their participatory experiences. I was already thinking about the “participatory” approach I had taken with developing the ProLogs software, and somewhat hastily decided to share my experience.
For those of you who don’t know, ProLogs is a database which I developed for an International Humanitarian NGO to manager logistics information. It is used by the staff of the NGO, many of who do not have a huge amount of computer experience. Read the rest of this entry »
November 29th, 2006
On the day before the conference was a workshop on Participatory Methodology run by Robert Chambers. I had the benefit to come into the workshop unaware of Robert Chamber’s celebrity status in development circles.
He certainly was an interesting man. Although he was at least 70, he went jogging each morning (and was impressed by the disproportionate number of women joggers in Dunedin) and even attended U2 concert in Auckland the previous weekend!
His workshop was delightfully “Old School”. He uses an array of old wall charts, which had been recycled and add to from previous workshops. He wandered around the room, barefoot, encouraging participation. Above all, his witty humility won over the whole crowd. Read the rest of this entry »
November 28th, 2006
Coinciding with my return to the Land of the Long White Cloud was DevNet 2006, a conference on Development in Dunedin (New Zealand). I thought that this was a good chance to touch base (and network) with the development and foreign aid community at home. So having only been home for less than a week, I was back on another plane down to Dunedin.
(More posts follow)
November 21st, 2006
After being away from New Zealand for 6 months and working in 3 different countries, it was time to come home for summer. After traveling for 2 ½ days I finally reached. Scott and my parents were a little unimpressed with the 2 hour wait, and even less impressed with my cornrows.
November 18th, 2006
I’m on a plane out of Uganda, haven’t fully recovered from going out last night, and all I’ve had to eat all day are grasshoppers.
It’s been a crazy time. The work has gone really well, everyone here has been really receptive, and ProLogs has been a huge success. Work has been really intense, but I’ve also had a bit of time off to see the country, and even make some new friends.
November 18th, 2006
Because I’d been away from home for six months I wanted to do something to surprise the folks at home, and because I was in Africa, I decided to get cornrows (braids really close to the scalp – cause my hair isn’t that long!). So on my last day in Uganda, a friend of Josh’s came round braided my hair.
November 6th, 2006
Although traveling around all of the offices was busy going, it did also give me a chance to see some of Uganda. Below are some photos from my last week visiting field offices in Uganda, when I drove to the office in Kiryandongo and Lira.
November 4th, 2006
As always, I felt the urge to make the most of myself in a exotic location, and decided to play tourist, and go to visit the source of the Nile, at Jinja, for the weekend. And like any good tourist (and New Zealander) this also involved a raft trip on the River Nile.
November 3rd, 2006
While working in Africa is a fascinating experience, I must confess that almost all of my work is done in the office, mostly behind the computer. I’m removed from the actually programs (education, health, water and sanitation) who are actually working with the beneficiaries. That’s the down side of working IT, and doing a logistics database makes me even more removed. Logistics is a “support” department, they don’t actually work with the beneficiaries, they just support other departments which do. And here I am, providing support for logistics – that’s two degrees of separation.
So on the recommendations of one of my old colleagues, I made sure that I went out to see some of our programs in action. So on my last morning in Kitgum, I went to visit one of the Internally Displace People (IDP) camps. For those of you who don’t know, an IDP is similar to a refugee, but they haven’t crossed any borders – they are displaced within their home country. The camp I visited housed 17,000 people who had been displaced by the conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the north of Uganda. They had coming together in the camp, mainly for security which was provided by the army. Because the people weren’t refugees, they were still the responsibility of the Ugandan government, and aid agencies had to work with the government to provide services. I was told that the conditions in this camp were much worse than the camps for the Sudanese refugees, who are assisted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
The camp was basic and cramped. Families shared small huts, which had little space between them. In some places I could have reached out and touched 4 different huts.
