Days in the field (fast summary)

I am in the Um Ruwaba (N. Kordofan) office; connected to the internet using a mobile phone. I have been trying to access my yahoo mail but it is not working, and because I an not using my laptop, I cannot use my PA mail. My last chance is this blog. (I feel like writting a message in a bottle).

Saturday: Late beginning in Khartoum (I had to take it easy because it seems that Saturday for them is like Sunday for us). I worked with Riffat and Shibby (Khalid could not be with us due to family issues). It was good to focus on the livestock project. We worked mainly on the strategy and the sequence and function of each one of the outputs (e.g. I.G, MoG, Extension Services, Productivity Plan, Productivity Workshops). We could solve some questions that Riffat still had.

Sunday: 8 odd hours trip to Kordofan. It was a tough trip... My butt-crack dissapeared for several hours after we arrived (Khalid still laughs with of the joke... It was not that good, I have to say).

Monday: Full day training with the POs of the hibiscus project (Asjad from Darfur and Tahir from Kordofan) and the local partner Eid El Nil. Khalid and Shibby led the PMSD approach (short version) in Arabic; we did PMM and discussed the importance of them doing it with farmers and other market actors.

We then then moved on to M&E and went to the very details of indicators and sources of verification. It was a very valuable exercise, especially because the POs need to know what to do at this level.

Then we went through Stories of Change and Most Significant Change. We did two exercises: one, using our personal lives (without specifiying domains of change ex-ante) and another one with a research question made by Khalid (the question was about the impact that the Iraq conflict has had on their lives at the economic level). The question constituted the domain of change. I was a bit scheptical with this question at the beginning but we did it anyway (I was also curious to see what the method could bring out). We discovered that two people (out of eight) were affected because two relatives who worked in Iraq lost their jobs and they cannot send any more transferences. They saw this as a very interesting discovery -even if the final result is that, in general, there was not a significant change in this respect for the whole group- and ended up valuing the methodology. In both cases, we found the MSC and discussed about the method's importance for the project and for the whole organisation. I think I succeded in trying to demistify the method. I hope they experiment with it.

We ended up with the PV video and a short discussion about the importance to use any tool available to get people talking within the market system.

We worked from 8 am until 5 pm... I have to say I have never felt so much heat in my life. I swear that we were at least enduring 60C in that office. We had fans and AC but to no avail. I felt I could fry and egg on top of my laptop (literally). It was one of the toughest workshops I have ever facilitated but I felt happy that no one fell asleep (despite one or two occassions where I saw sleepy eyes in one or two participants). Tahir suggested to use a breathing exercice which was very successful.

Tuesday: Ohhh my God... what a day! We were in the field the whole day. We visited two hibiscus collection and cleaning stations; talked with the women working there; met a local agent (an important buyer who sells to exporters); and met members of most of the VDCs in the region, who gathered in one of the villages where hibiscus is produced. I got very interesting footage, pics and a voice recording of the interview with the agent. It was a very interesting and exciting day... but it was also very hot and demanding and my knee failed me for the firts time... when I was getting off the car, it just clicked and I collapsed on the floor with the other leg still in the car!!! It was a bit painful but now that I think about it, it was funny...

OK, gotta go now (for those internet geeks out there: I did not write this message connected to the web.... no sir, I was off line!).

Lots of pics and videos to come (when internet connection is better).

Big hugs!