from the horizon

Summer (southern hemisphere, so this means December – February) is a good time to be home in New Zealand. The weather is war, it’s the holiday season and things generally slow down. Yet, I should know by now that a visit back home is not a holiday. In the three and a half years I’ve been away, I’ve been fortune to have been home 5 times, which has helped me keep in close contact with friends at home. However each time there is a rush to catch up with as many people as possible, and take care of all the little  things that need to be taken care of at home: dental appointment, new passport, buying shoes which fit me…

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Four different beds in four different days, but I’m finally back “home” in Banda Aceh. Changing countries has become a certain ritual. First I change the time zones in my watch, phone and computer (my body is still lagging a little this time). Then I change my SIM card. Then the cash in my wallet gets changed over. Finally I change over my power adapters and I’m ready to plug into a different country.

These are links which I have collected from a number of hand outs from the conference. Some of the summaries have been copied from the hand outs.

DevNet
The Aotearoa New Zealand International Development Studies Network, the organisers of the conference.
www.devnet.org.nz

Dev-Zone
A New Zealand based development resource centre.
www.dev-zone.org

Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA)
VSA were out in force at the conference, it seems worthwhile to give them a mention.
www.vsa.org.nz

Participation, Power and Social Change Team
The Participation, Power and Social Change Team is one of six research teams working on key development issues at the Institute of Development Studies(IDS), UK. These pages tell you more about the work of the team.
www.ids.ac.uk/ids/particip/ Read the rest of this entry �

The highlight of the conference was meeting people in the development sector, and the conversations we had. Robert Chamber’s Workshop presented some really interesting ideas, which flavoured the conference, and stimulated some interesting thoughts for me. Being in a conference environment, surrounded by academic types, absorbing new information, really inspired me to do more study – but there’s still heaps of work to do first!

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:

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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 �

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)

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.

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If Aceh was a dream, but being home was a haze. I’d initially planned to be back for 2 weeks, but then I found out that my Pakistan visa could take up to 4 weeks to process, so I thought I’d have a bit more time. However the visa was done in 2 weeks, once I found this out I had booked my ticket and was out of the country in 4 day.So here are some snippets of my whirlwind homecoming tour: Read the rest of this entry �