food and work

The trip to Zanzibar left my head in vacation mode and I've been really tired for the last two days. Monday I felt exhausted and yesterday I was also very tired. I was beginning to worry that the tiredness may be the onset of "general malaise" which is a symptom of malaria. Today, however, I feel fine, especially after a cup of tea and two cups of Africafe. Zanzibar also did a number on my intestines, which may have been a cause in my being so tired. Things are settling down, though.

I went shopping yesterday for food. It was kind of a shock to my brain. The raw produce was extremely cheap. For instance, potatoes were selling for 700/- a kilo, which comes out to about 25 cents a pound. On the opposite end of the scale, a box of cereal cost, on average, $13. The cheapest cereal they had was Wheatabix, which is cereal compressed into bars that dissolve into mush when milk is added. While I do miss breakfast cereal, I am not willing to spend $13 a week on it. I picked up the largest box of Wheatabix I could find, which cost about $10 and should last me for three weeks or so. It tastes like cardboard, but it's full of fiber and other healthy things that I'm probably not getting enough of here.

Work at CARE has been alright. When I'm helping to prepare for our upcoming workshop, things are interesting. When I'm editing the UGI report, I find myself wanting to fall asleep. I think I've read through the thing about a dozen times by now (it's 53 pages long) and I'm getting a wee bit sick of it. I keep assigning myself really small editing tasks so I can do them quickly and move on before my attention completely fades.

The workshop is back in Zanzibar and begins on Monday. I think we are taking the Sunday afternoon ferry over, and we'll be coming back on Friday. The workshops are for CARE staff to help them better integrate good governance into their projects. The UGI review discovered that most of the CARE staff believe that they are promoting good governance, but when asked, can’t actually explain what that means. So these workshops are to introduce them to the basic principles of good governance and CARE’s governance framework. CARE aims to promote participation, accountability and transparency. Transparency is to ensure that government decisions are made in a fair and open manner. Accountability is meant to hold decision makers responsible for their actions. Participation is to educate people about their rights and about navigating the legal system to ensure that those rights are upheld. Honestly, we could use more of this work in the US. I told this to Edson. He laughed and said the US is the one pushing Tanzania and organizations like CARE to do this work.