this is me

Coffee makes the morning OK : " Coffee makes the morning OK"

The chefes das brigadas (brigade chiefs - the ones in charge of the hundreds of locals working in the field) at training on how to effectively spray the insecticide:

things i'd like to remember from the past couple days: getting to see the faces of the people who go out to the field and ensure that the hundreds of people hired for the spray season get the money they deserve. it's a thankless job, arriving on-site by 5am and dealing with argumentative and dishonest people. i'm really impressed. sitting in the kitchen at lunch time, being given the seat of 'honor' and choosing my food first, observing the camaraderie among the staff. dinner poolside at the municipal pool - it's an amazingly well kept restaurant with gorgeous food presentation. wish i had brought my camera to dinner. not super excited that the red wine they brought me was chilled, but the stuffed pork i ordered for dinner and the fried banana with amarula and ice cream for dessert were awesome. watching Juno on TV after dinner and marveling at the power of cable tv to bring things i'd never expect to Africa one of the office helpers going out looking for ...

Monday morning began with a hotel breakfast promptly at 7am and a stop at the office before we headed out on the road. We rent the first floor of a house and all the necessary equipment and technology for about 5 months out of the year. There are 4 full-time staff that stay primarily at the office – an admin assistant, an office manager, a cook, and a cleaner. There is also an office for the finance staff, one for logistics staff, and one for visitors. Everyone was very gracious and I was happy to recognize most of their names since I manage the budget that has their salaries included! We then headed out to Mocuba, one of the 6 districts where we are responsible for paying the local staff hired throughout the spray season, which was about a two hour drive. A car and driver have been hired for the office staff throughout the season and he drove myself and two colleagues to various construction sites throughout the region. The driver looks like he can’t be a day over 20 (alt...

(wrote this Sunday night when I didn't have internet access...more soon. I've also uploaded more pics to Picasa which I'll label sooner or later.) Quelimane is such a beautiful and sad city. It was the first “big” city in Mozambique , but all the local factories shut down after the civil war following independence in 1975 and there is literally no industry here. Ten or fifteen abandoned ships line the shoreline, and the 19 th century church shown in so many pictures of this town has also been long abandoned, with everything inside stolen, including the altar. My colleague took me on a walk around the city soon after we arrived, and showed me where he saw his first movie, and told me that when he had his appendix removed as a teenager, this was the town where his family came, because it was the main city in this region. We sat for a beer at a restaurant right on the river that made Quelimane the main port in northern Mozambique , and he told me how the owner of the est...

with very limited access to email so for now just wanted to say i got to Quelimane just fine, things are good, and i´ll write more soon!

amazing what some quality drapes can do. i should invest in some for my apartment! in any case, I did go to Costa do Sol for lunch, and had more prawns (i may have reached my limit) and enjoyed the view of the water. The taxi driver on the way back played Celine Dion in his car. When I got back to my hotel, I grabbed a book and sat by the pool while the sun went down. I noticed on Thursday when I was exploring a bit that there seemed to be a small stadium next door, and I could hear a lot of cheering and general fun being had this afternoon. Tomorrow I fly up to Quelimane , where the field work of my program in Mozambique occurs. I'm looking forward to meeting more colleagues, visiting some of the work sites, and getting a better sense of the value of the work I do. Uploaded more pictures - the best ones should come next week: Mozambique

to a restaurant called Mundo's that has good pizza and was rumored to have a good wine selection by the glass, but turns out you can't choose what kind of wine you want by the glass, and i couldn't totally understand what the waitress said...so i ended up with something red and half decent. random guy who knew enough English to tell me that I should stay and talk to him and ask for my number followed me to my taxi...and a cop chastised me for only carrying a copy of my passport at a checkpoint about 2 blocks from my hotel. fun times. tomorrow I plan to head to this market and this hotel .

1. slept in. glorious. 2. did some work. 3. ventured out for a couple hours. had my first Mozambican beer (a Laurentina) and took some pictures. got doused with dust thanks to some strong wind. Mozambique 4. came back to do some more work. 5. got in bed to take a nap. all in all, not bad so far.

not a whole lot to report today - i seem to have caught a cold on my way over and am too sniffly tonight to want to do anything after work. lunch was great today, though - the country manager for our office here took me to Marisqueira Sagres , which is the restaurant attached to the only waterfront hotel in Maputo. (there's a road between my hotel and the bay, so that doesn't count.) more prawns and some yummy chicken and absolutely perfect weather. it's winter and their dry season, so every day is about 85 and sunny, with no humidity. The sun sets at 5pm, though, which is not super fun. tomorrow is Mozambique's Independence Day, so the office is closed and I'll have some time to explore. looking forward to not setting an alarm and wandering through downtown - there are a lot of pretty buildings within walking distance of my hotel, and I think I'll save the visit to the Costa do Sol restaurant on the water for Saturday.

not only did i order a plate of prawns for dinner, but i didn't even hesitate when they came served with eyes and tentacles still attached. (do prawns have tentacles? I'm not sure what those feeler things are called...) they were pretty yummy. and this hotel apparently pours glasses of wine to the tippy top. my dinner music included piano versions of From a Distance, Tears in Heaven, With or Without You, and other fine tunes.

Yep - you read that right. There's a KFC on the ground floor of the office complex. Who knew? I'll get more adventurous soon, but right now I just need some sustenance after 4 airplane meals, a granola bar, and some peanut butter crackers. The trip out here was long but not too difficult. I was ready and packed with 20 minutes to spare, and met some interesting people on the SuperShuttle that took me to the airport – a man flying to Paris to work with International Energy Agency and an Australian couple who had spent the last 6 weeks traveling through eastern Canada , then to NYC and DC and were on their way to San Francisco before heading home. No problems at the airport, and when I boarded the South African Airways flight, I found that my seat assignment was right next to Ed, the man my company recently hired for a new project in Namibia . Our tickets were booked through the same travel agency, but it still seemed like a crazy coincidence! It was nice to have a travel compan...

I think I will like this hotel... View Larger Map

decided to bite the bullet and pay the 6 pounds it costs to use internet for 90 minutes in this airport. oh how i look forward to the day when wireless internet is free everywhere. i am not even close to the first person to say this, but the whole airport security process is really excessive and often humiliating. on the way to Nairobi via Heathrow, i didn't pull all my 'liquids' out of my bags because I had no problem going through Dulles with everything inside, and then was held up for approximately 1/2 hour while they searched about 5 bags ahead of mine before they could look into mine. Today i was smart and pulled it all out into one little plastic baggie and got through Heathrow security in about 30 seconds flat. Nairobi was actually the most redundant security system of all - they scan all your bags before you even walk into the airport, then you go through immigration (which is much faster leaving than coming in, obviously), they have you put your carry on luggage...

is replaying the news as it broke on 9/11, as i understood it did in real-time yesterday in the US...i'm surprised by how overwhelming it still is to see these images and realize how vulnerable we were and still are. I was a junior in college and in class when both planes hit the Twin Towers, and missed seeing a lot of this footage the first time around. It's still shocking.

i didn't plan to pass 5 days without blogging while on this trip, but the second week has been drastically different than the first. after moving to the crazy resort-like hotel, my life was overtaken by the real reason i came here - to participate in a conference with the prime contractor on our project, which was scheduled from 8:30am-6pm every day and usually ran over. these days were tempered by sharing a bottle of wine or a couple beers with a coworker afterwards, then doing more work after that and heading to bed. it's been great, but i'm starting to feel drained and possibly getting sick. tonight the project manager based here took us to her house for dinner. her husband works for the state dept so they live in a government-owned and therefore bigger-than-necessary-and-quite-beautiful house that has a guard outside 24 hours. it was great to go 'off-site' a bit and see a bit of what her non-work life is like. her husband is great, too. last night was probably ...

and I saw more zebras than I could have imagined even existed! Makes sense, since they're essentially wild horses, but still - they were everywhere. We saw at least 25 rhino today - especially when they are laying down, they look almost fake. Fantastical creatures. 7 million flamingos at Lake Nakuru - you could hear the sound of their wings flapping wherever you were. Baboons EVERYWHERE - slightly unsettling, til you see the babies crawl on their mom's backs. So grateful to have a driver recommended by the company who was a great tour guide and had a great sense of humor - his laugh was contagious. He could point out giraffe a full 30 seconds before they came into my view, and see rhino from 100 yards away. He wants to take me to the airport next Saturday - we'll see if that works out. And yeah, I feel like i'm in Africa now. :) The Windsor is gorgeous, as expected - golf course out my window, everything has an 'outdoor' feel to it, and again, this hotel r...

this guy was close enough for me to get a solid shot this one ran by at the perfect distance this guy wanted to jump in our van female and male ostrich together Tons more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/Kenya02 #

I just made plans to have a driver take me to Nairobi National Park tomorrow and Lake Nakuru on Sunday! So excited to see the 'wilder' parts of Kenya.

Today's really the reason i came out here this week - our procurement manager is leaving the project, and our replacement arrives today, so it's the big hand off. As procurement is the majority of our work on this project, and USAID has very strict, specific regulations as to how procurement is carried out and files are kept, it's important that the transition goes well. I coordinate all the finance details from DC, so it's good that I'll be here. Plus lots of fires to put out with subcontractors in Ethiopia not performing, and other typical 'emergencies' that pop up on this problematic project. I'm never bored! It's almost the weekend! I need to make plans for exploring. I've gotten some good suggestions from various people who have been to/lived in Nairobi, and plan to spend one day in Nairobi and one a couple hours outside. There's a safari park near the city and some good shopping areas, so I can buy the requisite souvenirs and take ...

couldn't resist eating too much at the pool side restaurant tonight...white wine, beef medallions, cheesecake, tea....if only i lived on per diem all the time. :)

The Kenya office has an office assistant named Derek who's job it is to bring us all tea or coffee when we arrive, and at an appointed time in the afternoon. I can't get used to it. He's a sweetheart, though.

when i'm in the DC office i complain about getting interrupted all day and not getting any work done, but here in Kenya I don't get interrupted enough and miss the social interaction a bowl of fruit salad that would cost $6 in DC cost 50 Kshs, or less than $1, here avocado must be considered a fruit here since it's in my fruit salad i still don't like mango

It's been a while since I used this blog to document my travels, and I've posted lots of random stuff since then...but since I was sent to Nairobi for my first business trip, I figured I should start posting again! I arrived late Monday night, after a flight from DC to Heathrow and then to Nairobi, both of which went smoother than any of my domestic flights earlier in August - go figure. British Airways might be my favorite airline - quality food, fairly spacious seating, video screens at each seat. I sat next to a family with a baby on my first flight and was impressed that British Airways provides baby seats that attach to a fold-out shelf so that parents don't have to hold their kids the whole time. As is the custom for most of our international offices, the Kenya office sent a driver to pick me up at the airport and drop me off at a colleague's apartment, where I'm staying for the first week. The apartment complex is part of the Fairview Country Hotel ( www.f...

watch at least til you get to where they give the spider the main ingredient in marijuana...then you'll understand why this video is so amazing.

my interest in blogging waxes and wanes. Today I am reading an article called Hearts of Darkness from the magazine City Journal, and there are parts of the article I wanted to put out there because they're making me reconsider the way I view international development efforts. "A recent Heritage Foundation study found that, of the 70 least-free countries on earth, nearly half have received U.S. foreign aid for more than three decades. The result is more poverty, more aid money, and more corruption. In Zimbabwe, for example, foreign aid enabled strongman Robert Mugabe to destroy property rights, introduce a command economy, and create a kleptocracy where the inflation rate recently reached 11,000 percent. Once southern Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe now depends on subsidies to feed its people." "Kenyan economist James Shikwati agrees that handouts thwart the emergence of a culture of self-reliant problem solving and that they breed corruption to boot. When a drought ...

thanks to my best friend Google Reader , I read a lot of blogs fairly regularly. some are written by people I know, but many are just blogs by other people in DC that i stumbled upon in one way or another. some are useful in the sense that they give me ideas of things to do in the city, but many are just musings on life by other twentysomethings, and i find myself wanting to adopt their blogging style - expressing their thoughts, relating random experiences, no holds barred. a few things hold me back, however: a lot of the things i think about throughout the day and wouldn't mind blogging about are things i wouldn't necessarily want people who actually know me to read. that's definitely part of the appeal of the blogosphere - a sense of anonymity, and knowing/hoping that some random person might stumble upon some words you wrote and laugh or sympathize. and it's something that typing your thoughts into a random Word document that no one else will ever read will ne...

don't really remember how I found this blog but i can usually relate to what this other Emily has to say. especially today: "Like most overeducated and underemployed young adults in DC, I live paycheck to paycheck. I've never known anything else and, given my education and professional choices, probably won't know anything else for a long time. I figure I'll just marry rich and then justify my shallowness by calling it fourth-wave feminism. Perhaps I'll become one of those fabulous stay-at-home moms I see in Washingtonian who live in Georgetown and wear lots of Lilly Pulitzer. I'll run a "freelance lifestyle consulting business" where I charge clients several thousand dollars for advice such as "live in Georgetown" and "wear lots of Lilly Pulitzer."" EJ Takes Life

that you decide it is acceptable to wear a hair roller with your bangs wrapped around it out in public on your way to work? especially when your commute involves walking in/around/near Union Station, which is arguably one of the most populated metro stops during rush hour. i would guess the woman in question was in her mid-to-late forties. i like to think that no matter how pressed for time i am, and even if i someday end up using hot rollers regularly (which i doubt), let alone get bangs again (which i highly doubt), i will never leave the house with one still attached to my head. you never know when a stranger will find you intriguing and try to catch your eye, and then look up and realize you have a foreign object protruding from your forehead. then again, maybe she is 100% happy with where she is in life, relationship-wise, and has no reason to care what other people think of her as she walks to work in the morning. i, obviously, do not fall into that category. i made a class...

that may sound a little new-agey, but i think it describes what i'm trying to do with my life at this moment. the past couple months have been some of the busiest and most sleep-deprived of my life, interning 30 hours a week and working 3-4 shifts at the pizzeria. now that i've started working doubles on saturday, i find myself with more time during the week, but no idea what to do with it. i'm arguably in the worst financial situation of my life, dreading my first loan payment at the end of next month (happy new year to me), and therefore feel guilty doing anything that requires much money. but i also don't want to spend many more afternoons the way i did this past wednesday, napping and watching tv until bedtime. my internship has kind of stalled at this point as well. we're nearing the time of year where business tends to slow down, and my supervisor will be out of the office 4 out of the next 6 weeks. this week i have spent more hours trying to figure out ho...

family visits and work gets in the way. i'll go back to posting when there's exciting news to post. :)

today i have one of those sinus headaches that when really intense makes me feel insanely nauseous. not pleasant especially as I have dinner plans with a friend from high school tonight and my mom, cousin, and aunt visiting starting tomorrow. it's looking like i could be a salaried employee by December....here's hoping!

since i just found out about this today? don't know if i'll manage to post daily, but it's worth a shot. i could use more of a creative outlet these days. my friend Angel is at this moment interviewing for a position at my company where he would end up sitting right next to me. that would be beyond fun. here 's a link to a review of a concert i went to on Tuesday. if you haven't heard me gush about Ryan Adams, just ask.

"The three lead suspects convicted of murder and attempted murder [in the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004] each received sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years in prison, although under Spanish law the most time they can spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment." (read the full article here ) I remember that day really clearly, and all the desperate phone calls and emails I received, as I was actually living on the outskirts of Madrid at the time and took those regional trains daily. I need to take the time to read what Spanish newspapers are saying about the verdicts, but that will have to come later...