Last thursday, I came back from a two day field visit with a donor representative from FinChurchAid. She came to monitor the progress of our Community Empowerment Project. Last week, we also had our quarterly steering committee meeting (meeting with our partners) and donor representavives form DanChurchAid visiting our Phase II Program for Peace. The week was hectic and busy as we were preparing and accomodating our visitors.
I have to say the two day field visit felt like many days and it was tiring. Of course, I have already been on several field visits but this time since we were pressed for time we pushed through on a very tight schedule trying to show our visitor as much as possible. It was also my first time going to the communes of Cendajuru and Gisuru where the road is especially bad even on a rural Burundian standard. Our first day, we left the hotel at 8 and came back to the office at 4 pm (no lunch break since there is no place to eat out there) where we had a meeting with the remaining CEP staff. By the time we got to the hotel it was 6pm and another 2 and half before we would eat dinner. The next day, we started at nine and finished our visit around 2:30 pm, stopped by at the office in Ruyigi and headed back to Bujumbura without our usual stop for lunch since it was too late. When we arrived in Buja it was dark and all I wanted was to take a hot shower. Another tiring aspect of the trip was the fact that it was an evaluation trip and so it was very important that our donor liked what she saw and so at all times I was on high alert.Despite all this, I have to say that I really enjoyed the visit and I think it has been my favorite one so far. I got to see many collines I had never seen before and meet many of the people we are assisting. I learned a lot and I took a lot of pictures knowing that I would soon start working on our annual report. I don't know when exactly I will be going back to Ruyigi and Cankuzo, but now I am more determined to go often and really get to know and work with our field officers who spend their entire day in our intervention areas.
Friday afternoon, my boss left it up to me and one of co-workers to entertain the visitors. We took them to vist one of our co-workers in the hospital, then we went to a few spots on the beach and ate dinner at one of the hotels on the beach before dropping them at their hotel. We had a good time and our visitors were pretty cool.Saturday night, I went to Marine ball (every year the marine holds a ball to celebrate the anniversary of the Marines) and it was a lot of fun. There were all types of people of all different ages doing different things (Ngos, UN, Diplomats) in Burundi.
While I was in the field, I took a couple pics with some kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment