Just like buses

Well, after a long delay, I've now done 2 blogs. Naturally, a full working week and even more entertaining weekends, have left little time to catch up with events whilst in Zambia.

Well it’s now nearly 3 weeks since I left Blighty, seems a lot longer. Trip here was fine, and since I left home I haven’t worn a coat, jacket or jumper. Temperatures here in Zambia don’t fall below 20 C, even at night. Locals all wear coats though. This is the rainy season which lasts from November to March normally, but seeing how worldwide floods are going, who knows when they’ll stop.

On changing some currency, I became a millionaire. The currency is the Zambian kwacha, which is pretty worthless, needing over 7,000 to buy a £. Got a kw 50 note in change, fraction of a penny. Will frame it.

On arrival at CHEP, was introduced to everyone there. I’m not very good at remembering names to faces, so I needed to make a list and apply memory aides to match a Zambian name to a big, smiling face.

After an intensive start fact finding and meeting all the different personnel, it’s been a bit quiet these past few days. All the senior managers and finance team went to Lusaka. Apparently they went to meet a current donor, to discuss on-going activities and financials. I’m sure they will all enjoy their break in decent hotel facilities. Oh well, I might as well get stuck into a major revamp of a future Donor’s budget. Time to get my Excel head on, improve the presentation, highlight key financial issues, and do a project cashflow.

There’s challenges, and there’s challenges. Not having internet is bad enough, and the only functioning Accounts printer is locked in FM office. The other day, I wanted to print a copy of a budget. The library had borrowed the FM’s printer cable. So in good faith I asked the librarian to use the printer, he inserted my memory stick into the laptop connected to the printer. On returning to my laptop, I found that a virus had wiped all my documents and music on the flash drive (the laptop didn’t have anti-virus protection). The manager just looked at me, tried to assure me that the files were retrievable. On failing to do so, not surprisingly, he just looked at me with big apologetic brown eyes.