Its now April and I am still finding less time than ever to blog. Right now, however, I am trapped in a car for the next 4 hours, and I have my blackberry. Not the most ideal way to type but it gets the job done.

We - my Congolese driver and I - are shooting along a ridge-line road, half an hour outside of Kigali on our way north to Ruhengeri, then from there west to Goma, a large border town on the easten edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo (more commonly referred to by its acronym DRC). No commercial international flights to Goma exist, hence the brief visit to Rwanda.

Kigali seems about the same - warm and safe and green and sad. The two things I noticed as we zipped through that I had not noted previously: there is slum dwelling literally across the street from the shiny US embassy, and a few miles down the same road there's yet another huge dark church on the side of a hill where death once held court.

Damas the driver doesn't speak a word of English but his French is fluent and his Congolese version of Kiswahili is conversant. He knows a few basic phrases of Kinyarwanda - the Rwandan mother tongue, and that's it. I of course speak enough French only to apologize for not speaking it at all, but I have been suerprised how well I can get on with swahili when in a bind. So far, I have been.able to:

- determine what languages he does and doesn't speak, and how well
- exchange names and other pleasantries
- ask about which roads we are taking and how good they are right now
- thankfully accept his offer to stop to pick up a bottle of water
- explain that I am from the USA (and California, and Sacramento upon further inquiries), but that I live in Nairobi and hence the swahili
- point out the hotel I stayed in when I was last here and explain how many times I have been here before
- ask how long the drive is going to take (I had been advised 3 but Damas doesn't share such optimism)

I am still not nearly conversant but I suppose I am at least a tiny bit past the basics by now.

Rural Rwanda hasn't changed a bit - green and densely populated - sustenance farms clinging onto impossibly steep hillsides, one butted up against the next. Kids walking down the side of the road with farming tools or empty water containers, mothers carrying bags and buckets and whatnot heavy on their heads. Young men sharing a bicycle, another one carrying an entire bedframe upside down on his head. Brown rivers carrying mud away to places unknown. Trucks (lorries) and buses belching black smoke as they struggle up the next hill, us breathing it in until the next opporunity to try and pass (overtake). And did I mention the endless farms? Every inch of this hill-covered country appears populated.

Ruhungeri is the town from whence travellers set out to track the gorillas - as such I passed through there one day this past January. I suppose that's one of the many things I have failed to blog about recently, but it was a very cool experience and I made some new friends out of it to boot - pity I won't get a chance to see them while passing through this time.

One thing I have never quite figured out here that seems unique to Rwanda is the massive groups of farm workers - long lines down the side of the road, as many as 200 long - all walking who knows where.

Rain clouds ahead, so much for driving with the windows down.

Life so far this year has been spent bouncing back from home and the office in LA to Nairobi, but already this year I have been spending much less time in Kenya on average than I did last year. Rwanda, Malawi, Tanzania, now DRC and probably Mali soon too.

The road gets progressively worse in quality with each kilometer we put between us and Kigali. Beyonce's song from the Charlie's Angels soundtrack has now replaced the local music. Life goes on. Maybe I will nap a bit.

Something spurred me to look something up on my blog yesterday and that made me realize how long its been since I last wrote - it hasn't been often since I started this thing that I actually missed a whole month, but I managed to do it again.

It has been straight crazy - non-stop - since I hit the ground here in January. I've worked in 5 countries so far (including here in Kenya), 2 of which - Rwanda and Malawi - were new additions to my passport. I've been working minimum 60 hour weeks just trying to keep up, and not doing a very good job of it. I've done a good job of forcing myself to take weekend breaks thanks to out-of-town trips and lots of fun with my (mostly) new friends here - Ultimate on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon/evening, softball on Saturdays, and the random BBQ, poker night, dinner out, dinner in, movie night, church on Sunday morning and looooong brunch after, what have you. (Whew, long sentence) I need to be writing about this stuff, but with the weekends full of all of that and the weeks chock full o work...my reading / writing time has plummeted.

So there's a whole slew of things in that last paragraph that I need to write about and maybe I'll actually try to get back on it this week (hah, yeah right). In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to take a spin back through the to-do list I made back before I last left the states:

- get a medical screening done for WV
check. only had one parasite - blastocytis, a pretty common one. probably got it in ghana or maybe tanz. had it all fall and didn't know it.

- see a travel clinic to update any of my immunizations
nope. i don't think i really needed to do this anyway, but don't worry mom, i promise i'll (try to) get around to doing it real soon.

- meet with my financial guy and sort all the 401k rollovers out
half-check. we met, i still haven't gotten any of the rollovers done. or my taxes! you get 2 extra months if you're out of the US but I'm fast burning through that.

- interview potential sub-letters for my place
half-check. had a couple people look at it but never got it rented. this was a major bummer but here i was way too busy to do much about it.

- host the NYE party at Lincoln center
check. i knew all of 3-4 people (Erin, Amber, other hosts) out of the 300 or so, most of my crew were at other events so it was mostly the other hosts' friends. i guess that's what you get for up and moving to Africa.

- schedule an appointment with the derma doc
not a chance. its fine though, hands are back to normal now that i'm back to the land of perpetual no-winter. its like the opposite of the start of Narnia.

- figure out how to transfer all my personal stuff from Outlook and OneNote to the home computer
check of super awesomeness. how i cleaned that bad boy out and actually backed up both those programs and all the user data locally is beyond me, but i made it happen, cappen.

- back up the home computer
dangerous no-check. it suffered some internal jostling on the way over and i've been having issues getting it running but the memory's still in decent shape so hopefully i have it up and running by friday and can spend my weekend doing my taxes. yay.

- get new headphones, an external hard drive, a projector to serve as my TV in Africa, and potentially a DSLR (woot)
check, no-check, check, check. got the newest shure SCL4 headphones and they're great, just like the e4c's were. didn't get the small external drive i wanted but i still have my 1.5tb here with me to backup everything. got the projector (albeit late, via a friend bringing it from the US, along with the headphones) - let me just say its the best consumer decision i've made in years, probably since i built the home computer. it is hours of endless movie awesomeness. oh and i used all my amex points from the accenture card to get the DSLR and some lenses, i've got about 8gb of pictures from the last 5 months waiting to be DL'd, edited, and flickr'd.

- find my old receipts and submit them for work expenses
check. no idea how i did it, but i got my monies.

- finish all the administration around leaving the company
same as above. i need to write about the feeling of walking out of that building for the last time. wasn't great - more like "did i just do that?"

- send some thank-you cards
no-check. i am a bad person.

- pay my parking ticket
no-check. THANKS MOM.

- find a new bank account that won't screw me on withdrawal charges in Africa
no-check. i still hate you BoA.

- figure out where I'm going to store my stuff
check! it now fits in a 5x10 instead of a 10x10. its sitting quietly in a unit across the river from the UWS. i'm hoping next time i get it all out i can find a way to reduce it to 5x5, i love reducing the amount of stuff i have. its the books that are an issue. they keep growing.

- start packing
check. holy cow was that a nightmarish last 72 hours of no-sleep insanity.

- find some jeans sample sales
nope. maybe in August when i'm back briefly?

- get a living will drafted
nope. arg.

- send my (late) holiday cards
the great thing about the cards i picked out for Christmas 08 (the first time i think i ever was going to try to send holiday cards, mainly with a "oh and btw i'm leaving the country letter" as the underlying motivation) is that they will work great for cards sent from Africa for this year's Christmas. its like i was planning ahead (maybe i'll even put an "oh hey i've been out of the country all year in case you were wondering" note).

- finish all the on-boarding paperwork for WV
nope. still haven't sent them my W2 or my personnel form. oh well.

- see Grand Torino
check. fun times with hol, man that was an unexpected ending.

- switch all the bills over to Dave's name
half-check. gas and electric yes, cable and internet no. need to shut off cable.

- figure out how to get out of my Sprint plan without having to pay
quarter-check. did it, but a few months late.

- eat slightly healthier and perhaps even get a few runs in
can't remember for the life of me. i think i was running. i know i was getting rides in with Kuz too.

Also, I have decided that I will be acquiring a pair of dogs once I get settled (so to speak) in Kenya. This makes me happy.
awwww man this one is a bummer. i saw all crap apartments, one of which would allow a small "house dog" (i don't think they had 2 rotties in mind). then i found the place i'm in now, which is super awesome, but no dogs. i'm going to keep an eye out for other places that might work in the meantime, but no dogs in the immediate future. given my work schedule right now its probably for the best. sigh.

A bit about what I'm doing in Africa. Prepare yourself for some acronyms.

I am now with World Vision International (WVI, or WV for short), the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) doing humanitarian work on this continent (based on spend. I think its World Food Program - WFP, World Health Organization - WHO, and UNICEF - all 3 of which are public orgs - who are bigger). WV is:

...a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. Inspired by our Christian values, we are dedicated to working with the world’s most vulnerable people. We serve all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender.

I am the Program Manager for Supply Chain Management (SCM) Implementations in Africa. WV has, I believe, National Offices (NOs) in 26 African nations, and those offices are typically structured according to their main functions - an operations department, an HR department, a finance department, and other departments on a more ad hoc basis depending on WV's particular work in a given country (AIDS/HIV response, Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs - HEA, water projects, Children of War programmes, etc.).

A few years back, WV identified SCM as a key internal initiative - with the help of my former employer, Accenture, and their ADP program, which is how I first came to be working with WV's Global SCM unit. As part of the strategy for building SCM as a function within the organization, the Implementation team was set up to work with NO's to identify the need within the NO, and assess the organizational structure impacts and make recommendations to address them. The team then carry out the actual training of the staff on the tools and processes to be used in key SCM functions such as Procurement (the main function we focus on initially - other stuff comes later: Fleet Management, Warehouse/Inventory Management, SC Planning, etc.). In layman's terms, SCM is the part of the organization that gets "stuff" for the organization, and then gets said stuff from where it is to where it needs to be.

I'm tasked with setting up SCM offices in at least 6 countries this (fiscal) year and a good deal more in the year to follow. Once we've established the function in all of the NO's in Africa, Asia is next in line (we've already started some assessment work in Mongolia, where I might end up sooner or later).

So yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Lots of Program Management type work (fitting, for a Program Manager, no?) - planning, budgeting, more planning, selling the project internally with Senior Management Teams, and managing the specialists that actually carry out the assessments and implementations in-country. Its a challenging position but as my boss' boss has told me, "if it was an easy job than we wouldn't need you here to do it."

There's a lot of very reasoned debate amongst many minds greater than mine around the places of relief and development in the 3rd world. Many feel that the former is preventing the latter, and not without good reason. That said, I feel both are important, and with about a year of insight into WV before deciding to hop aboard, I saw them doing both, and in a fairly balanced approach. The organization is not perfect and could benefit from myriad improvements - my particular line of work is just one of those potential areas for growth. There's a lot of work to be done and sometimes it looks rather endless, from where I'm standing, but I believe in what I'm doing - and having been in other positions where I couldn't say that, I think its important.

No blogging lately, work has been pretty intense lately. I move next week to my new place and I'm still looking for a car. Easter is a 4 day weekend holiday here in Kenya and it couldn't come at a better time. I feel like I gave up sleeping for Lent.

OK so I should probably write an update about last week and who I met in Kampala and what I went and did last weekend in Western Uganda, but instead I'm just going to blow some steam about the car situation here in Nairobi. Which can be summed up pretty succinctly:

It sucks.

The main problem is the duties. Duties to get a new vehicle here typically (TYPICALLY) run right around the same amount as the ENTIRE STICKER PRICE OF THE VEHICLE ITSELF. So, I'm looking at a nice new Hilux, Toyota's kind of equivalent to the Tacoma pickup back in the US, the first (and only) car I had out of college (I payed something in the mid-teens for it, used and a couple years old). The sticker price is something around $25K which of course is a stretch on a humanitarian budget, but possibly doable.

Here's why a pickup or an SUV - something with decent clearance and 4WD is important - of all the countries I've been to all over this continent, Kenya has, hands down, far and away, without a doubt, and beyond all comparison the WORST roads of anywhere. Ever. I'm talking speed-bumps the size of Volkswagens, roads in complete disrepair, potholes so big they should really be called craters. Some of them actually look like sinkholes, there are at least 2 within a couple kilometers of my apartment that I know if I ever hit by accident will pop the tire and probably bend an axel, at the least. There is no way I'm investing in anything less than a truck, as it would just get torn to shreds here. I've actually seen potholes in the speedbumps.

So anyway, back to the shiny Hilux. I'm thinking I just might be getting one when WHAMMO I find out about the duties. Just take that price and double it. Hey at least the math is easy, right? So instantly you take the idea of "new" and eliminate it from your car shopping vocabulary, that's no longer an option.

OK, so, used. Anything in the last 7-8 years is pretty much still out of reach because locals typically pay the duties in monthly installments, like their actual car payment. So anyone selling one is also selling it with whatever is still left on the duty. So I can't really afford anything newer than a 2001, maybe a 2002 if I find a steal.

Which just so happens to prove a very minor problem in that Kenyan banks won't make loans on older cars given the legal restrictions around the selling / importation / etc. of older model vehicles, in what I understand to be a rather admirable governmental policy trying to force newer vehicles onto the road and reduce fuel consumption. Smart move when the country's often out of gas (lines were 30 deep at the pumps yesterday, that I saw). So, I can't get a loan for the cars I can afford, but I can get a loan for the cars I can't afford. Brilliant.

Which in a way is fine, because, considering the state of the roads here, 100K kilometers on a used car, well I'd estimate that to be at least 1.5 to maybe 2.0 times as many kilo's wear and tear as it would be on the same vehicle in most developed countries. So I'm hesitant to consider one of those cars anyway.

So I'm up a creek. At this point I'm thinking maybe I'll just resort to taxis and borrowing friends cars here, and renting when I have to. WV's vehicle allowance is nice and all, but it gets me nothing up front to fund a car, so unless you want to blow your down-payment-on-a-home savings on something decent, that's not an option. I can always take the pool car which will be one of those used sedans that will get swallowed in a pothole, but then I don't get the allowance, and you can only use that for work anyway.

I realize I'm in the humanitarian sector now, but honestly, time is money, and the amount of time I've burned and will still burn on this headache is just bad business.

/vent.

And like that, my time in Zambia is through.

Its been a whirlwind 3 weeks, as evidenced by the nearly complete lack of blogging. Let's see if I can catch up a little.

I spent the first week bouncing between low-cost lodges trying to save on project budget, but they weren't nice, security was iffy, and I didn't have regular power or any internet access. And my camera got lifted, AGAIN. Apparently God doesn't want me taking pictures of Africa. At least I still have the video camera. Also that week was all of the creations of the approach and deliverables I'd be working to craft out for my validation (survey, interview guides, intro materials, final reports, etc.). That first weekend was a party that Anthony took me to with a few of the expats around, and then on Sunday I hit up Pastor Kabifya's church and was the only white guy there. I think I might have blogged about this already. Anyway, Kabifya's turned into quite a good friend of mine and a sort of trusted individual in my life. He's about my age but his life has taken a completely different path and he has a lot of good input for me on things. That's all.

Week 2 I started all the interviews, sending out the surveys, etc.. I also moved to the new, nicer, safer, usually powered and interneted lodge which has been much more comfortable. I spent most of the 2nd weekend hanging around here. The 4th was a Friday and not a holiday here, so I was working, but headed to the embassy to see where the party was that night. It was at the colonel's house so Diana dropped me there and I had a few gratis drinks and caught the last of the back-yard fireworks. Some gal from the Irish embassy invited me over to another expat party following, so that was nice too. Sunday I went to George's church with him and his daughter and Christy, who are all staying at his house (across the street from the lodge I'm at) right now. We hit up the grocery store and the street fair market thing they have Sunday afternoons to sell trinkets to the tourists. And we played soccer with security guard and maid that George has on staff, and the maid's 2 kids, which was fun. And I had more of George's excellent cooking. And watched an episode of house. Then I finally went back to my lodge to sleep because...

Week 3 started with a 2-day holiday here in Zambia. I worked from the lodge mostly. Wednesday morning Anthony and I were due to leave for Nakande, which is in the far western province of Zambia, about 70kms from the border with Angola. It meant a 6.5 hour drive (2 of them through the 3rd biggest national park in Africa), to a 2.5 hour speed-boat ride up the Zambezi and its requisite tributaries. Then another 2 hour truck ride to the actual field sites, which involved a very sketchy river crossing that we almost didn't make (the truck was taking on water, and I caught the whole thing on video).

This was in an area so incredibly remote that I was the first white person quite a few of the children had ever seen. Instead of shouting "Mzungu" they were mainly just screaming and pointing, and following me around at a safe distance whence I alighted from the truck. Suffice to say there's not a lot of NGO's operating this far afield.

We spent that night in Nakande, Anthony and I drinking Castles in front of his room and talking about life and such, and then Friday was all the traveling back to Lusaka. Yesterday and today have been mostly work (although I didt take a break to go work out at one of the nicer hotels here in town, with Tina, another expat stuck here at the lodge like me). I've been cramming the final presentation to the senior management team together, which I present tomorrow to them before flying back to Joburg. And then to Nairobi, and then to Accra.

Today Tina and I walked to the further away shopping center (Manda Hill, about 2kms, Arcades is the closer one at 1km) to have lunch at the Irish pub - Hagan's. Food's actually really good and we had a couple Mosi's and bitched with each other about the general challenges of development in Africa and the resistance to change and the temptation to succumb to the general "TIA" attitude that convinces you that's just the way things work here.

Tina went back to the gym and as I walked home, I thought back to what I have written about before - that part in Lord of the Rings where it talks about how Aragorn took Frodo's hand to lead him away from the fields of Pelennor, and "never walked there again as a living man." Except this time, I was feeling it for Zambia.

I've been here 4 times now, and have made good friends and grown quite accustomed to the society. I will miss it, and I hope to return. But I don't know if or when I will.

Apparently people do actually check my blog from time to time, because a few of you, my precious internet stalkers, have recently gone so far as to point out my lack of bloggery lately.

Apparently being in the US is not conducive to my motivations to write.

Let's see. Its mid June now. What's new...

Dave and I are pretty much all settled in the new place. I was worn down into picking up a HD flat screen and watching the US Open in high def in my own living room was a whole new addiction. So anyway, all settled in means of course that...

Its time to go to Africa again. I leave on Friday. Here's a random string-of-consciousness list of the things I can remember at the moment that need to happen before I leave:

- Do my taxes. This one pretty much has to happen as I'll be in Africa well past my 90 day auto-extension for being out of the country on 4/15.
- Get my passport back from the Ghana consulate along with my visa for said country.
- Get a hotel in Joburg for Fri/Sat nights. This one is kind of important. Rental car too.
- Get malaria medication. This one I'm toying with not doing.
- Balance out all the finances since the move in.
- More address changes.
- My driver's license expires while I'm out of the country (on my 30th birthday, actually) but there's pretty much nothing I can do about that. I finally have to go back to renew it this time. Which means I need to...
- Change my return flight home from NYC to CA in August. Surfing with the bro's is pretty much shot so I'll probably be doing the trip on my own, unless I can find someone cool enough to go.
- Send support letters for my missions week with the youth group in Uganda.
- Book my Kili plans for the week before that. Figure out how I'm getting from Nairobi to Kili and then from there to Entebbe.
- Find a replacement power cord for the video camera.
- Back up the laptop.
- Find a sublettor for my room (please God please make this happen).
- Continue to juggle the work that now fully 3 senior partners are throwing at me like I'm some Business Development slot machine that they can pull the handle on and win every time. I don't mind doing a fair share of work but people are starting to get insane, and nobody will take no for an answer. I AM LEAVING FOR AFRICA.
- Somehow catch up on about a week's worth of planning for my project that I was supposed to have done before leaving, but didn't because of the last item.
- Get Netflix and the cell phone put on hold whilst I'm gone.
- Fill my prescription for the anti-inflammatories for my foot since I won't be able to rehab it in Africa. Somehow it needs to be fixed before climbing Kili. They've given me a really stylish flat-soled orthopedic shoe I have to wear for the next week or so.
- Get the super to come change the lights in our stupid-high ceiling and replace the gate in the backyard (the one going to the basketball court).
- Tell my bank I'll be leaving them if they try to get me with withdrawl charges this time in Africa.
- DO ALL MY EXPENSE RECEIPTS. I'm like a few months and few thousand dollars behind on these freaking things and I need to send them in. Maybe I'll do this one tonight before leaving the office. I'd feel really good to have that one done.
- Pay the gas bill.

As you can see, blogging, personal emails, or really any personal life at all doesn't really make the list right now. It hasn't been all work, however. We did have, in the last month or so:

- The youth group's Father's Day year-end picnic yesterday. There was much razzle dazzle and nobody sliced my face open with a hubcap, so that was nice. It also ended with the tradition throwing of water on people, but Erin started it this time with Gatorade, taking it up a notch.
- Jen's B-day party the night before. Crappy weather but fun hanging with folk.
- Dinner courtesy of Trisha, who won some silent auction, at Django, with her and Holly and various other friends.
- Taught the last two lessons of the year with youth group on Others First.
- Had our housewarming party, which was off the hook. George knows how to get people grooving.
- Finally took the free tango lessons in Chelsea Market.
- Hosted the Arndt's son-in-law when he got sent back from customs in Cape Town w/o getting to leave the airport b/c he didn't have enough pages in his passport. That same weekend was paintball for Libby's birthday and breaking into the HighLine with Aron.
- Lunch with Dave's dad to talk over my schooling options for next year. There's really nothing in the city that matches what I want to do. Its either Boston or LA which is kind of like deciding whether you'd rather have your hands cut off or your feet removed.
- Lots of 8 mile runs up the West Side Highway, my new favorite place to run. Hence the busted foot.
- Caught a show with Mo and Jason and Julie and Amanda and her new BF. Show was some guy Mo knows from college, he was pretty good, and it was good to see everyone.
- Was in Chicago for a week for training, I think I forgot to blog about that. Training was good, made some new friends. Took it a lot easier than we used to at training, for the most part.

I think that's about it. I leave for Lusaka, Zambia (via DC and Johannesburg) on Friday afternoon. Next blog most likely from there.

Well, its been one of the many posts I've been meaning to write for a few months now, but I'm finally getting around to it - a layman's description of the type of work I'm doing here in Africa.

I remember I was with a friend, near the ocean, once upon a time, and we saw a freighter steaming on a southern heading. I told her that it was coming from Oakland, was about 50% full of cars, was headed to LA and then back to Japan. I could tell that much from looking at it a couple of miles off. She told me that she had no idea what it is that I do for a living. I told her that its hard to explain. So, with that in mind, here's what I'm doing in Africa.

Last year around this time I interviewed internally with a group called ACN* Developing Partnerships (ADP, for short) - the very small and very cool not-for-profit practice that my company operates to provide 1st world consulting services to organizations (mostly charitable NGOs) that are doing work in 3rd world environments. That's the external selling point, the internal one is that the executive in question gets to go travel, see the world, do fulfilling work like helping bring medical training to countries that need it, etc., and all at the cost of 50% of their salary. You keep benefits, they pay for travel and put you up while you're there. Its a pretty cool gig if you can swing it.

Anyway, I made the cut, which places one in the pool of potential applicants to join a project, should one be sold that requires someone of your skill-set / experience. I dabbled with a few potential projects with organizations that I was mildly interested in (UNICEF, etc.), before my dream project just kind of fell in my lap.

I've been a fan of World Vision - a private, Christian relief and development organization, financed mainly through child sponsorship - for quite a while. For my last 7 years out of college, I've been volunteering with the youth group at my church, and I've made it to the 30-hour-famine that WV runs with youth groups around the globe for every one of those years (including the one that I only showed up to play guitar for, when I was on my deathbed with the flu). So through that, as well as a number of other volunteering opportunities (packing boxes at their warehouses, etc.), I've had some great exposure to their organization. I respect what they do and when the opportunity came along to work with their Global Supply Chain Director in South Africa, doing Strategy Development, I'm pretty sure I peed myself just a little, out of sheer glee.

I don't make top-10 or top-5 lists or what have you, but South Africa has been one of my TOP desired planetary destinations, ever since a couple of Au Pair friends of mine told me all about it, as a teenager. And World Vision is like my dream organization to work with. And strategy development is the one arm of Management Consulting I've really been wanting to break into. Dream organization in dream location, doing dream work for them. Tres awesome, as the French say.

Essentially, ADP's work with WV is to help them operate more like a top-performer in the commercial world. They are surprisingly not far off from being able to accomplish that - thanks, I think, in large part to both the quality of people they have in their organization, as well as their massive size - they're the largest NGO doing emergency relief and development work (only WFP, UNICEF, and WHO - all govt. orgs, have bigger annual spends). But there are a number of specific areas in which Supply Chain, in particular, needs to be maximized within their organization, and that's what I'm here doing with my team - another manager, and a consultant.

Specifically, my work involves the creation of process manuals that help WV guide their Supply Chain operations - which we've grouped under what's called a Process Model, which has 4 parts: Plan, Source, Deliver, and Return. An initial pass at the Source (how they find and procure goods for delivery to beneficiaries) manual was created in the previous phase of work (although we're now revamping it), and I've been focused mainly on creating the Plan (how they plan the SC structure and functions) and Deliver/Return (how they move goods from point A to point B, and return them when necessary) manuals. We're also doing a couple other work streams - one helping them to define and develop their SC Organizational Structure, and another to assess the IT systems that they need to implement to facilitate both the Org Structure and the procedural guidance laid out in the manuals I'm creating.

So that's kind of a high level of the work. It involves working with various stakeholders throughout the organization, based in different functional groups, across the planet - Europe, all over Africa and Asia, Australia, the States, Latin America, you name it. They specialize in everything from emergency operations to donations management to in-field infrastructure development, and much more. And its incredibly high exposure - I'll be back in their global headquarters again in March for more presentations to the Advisory Committee on our work.

The project has taken me to Denver, LA, London, Nairobi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and of course here in Joburg / Pretoria, where I'm based. Further plans will add Mozambique and perhaps Malawi, Uganda, and/or Ghana to that list. Basically, I've only been able to look at the work I've been doing, shake my head in disbelief that its actually me here getting to do this, and then wish I could be doing an even better job for them, somehow. Because at the end of the day, my (and their) work won't help drive up a share price, it will put food in a hungry kid's tummy.

And here's a treat: recently, the ADP program got a shout out on CNN. Bon appetite.



*(ACN is our NYSE abbreviation - I think most of you know the name by now anyway, but now you know how to find out on your own if you don't)

The other day I had my normal salad for lunch but went with the French vinaigrette for a change in dressing (I'm mainly a bleu cheese man). Which jogged a funny memory.

I spent a year or two working in a Raley's supermarket mostly as a grocery-bagger / loader-into-your-car-er (I think the term was "Courtesy Clerk"). It was a weird point in my life for a lot of reasons, which is why a weird work environment like that probably suited me as well as it did. Had some psychotic management in the time I was there, ranging from derranged-but-pretty-funny to completely-control-freak-and-probably-has-human-heads-in-the-basement-at-home. This memory, however, focuses on the former.

He liked to play tricks on the new kids. Well, we all liked to play tricks on the new kids, but he just happened to be the first to play one on me. It was my first closing shift, so about ten til 11, he asks me to head out front and take down the flag. I'm new on the job and still responding with "yeah sure right away" and running off doggedly, so next thing I know, I'm outside looking for a flagpole. Which didn't exist. Come back inside and everyone's waiting for me to walk in with a huge grin on their face. Har.

Well this practice of jokery sounded like a fine thing to me, provided I wasn't the object of it, and so when the next kid got hired a couple weeks later and I was no longer the rookie, I promptly asked Steve, the shift manager, what the plan was. Steve said he saved this ones for the kids he thought were particularly naive, so I took it as somewhat of a complement that he hadn't pulled it on me. He called the new kid over, asked him to go get him a can of the dehydrated water on aisle 10, right next to the dehydrated milk. Poor girl.

Also fun was the supremely important shopping cart count. This one was usually doled out in a very urgent fashion, and key to its employ was doing so at an at least somewhat busy time, to make it more difficult. We probably had 200 of them or so, and the manager would instruct the rookie that district management was visiting later today and needed a detail report on store assets, including an accurate cart count. Picture this exasperated kid trying to walk through the store, counting all the moving ones, while trying to keep an eye on the door for ones leaving / coming out, then running outside to count all the ones in the parking lot...etc.. Good times.

My personal favorite, however, was the salad dressing shake. This was another one saved for those leaning towards the more gullible side of the scale. All you did was ask them to go make sure all the oil-based salad dressings were well-shaken. Don't worry about the cream-based ones. Thanks.

I can't tell you the endless hours of joy we had at some people's expense, as they stood there with a bottle in each hand, diligently shaking. Customers walking by, staring oddly but apprehensive to say anything to the kid they were assuming was a little "slow."

And that's what I think of when I have French vinaigrette.

Haven't been able to get around to any decent blogging time lately and there certainly won't be any time before Saturday as I'm fully booked between now and then, unless I get a few minutes to put the finishing touches on the introvert's manifesto that I've mentioned previously.

Work has been going well, albeit a little behind schedule. I'm wrapping up my first deliverable and starting my second this week, and will definitely have to pick up the slack with this second one and knock it out a bit faster than originally planned, which won't be easy, as this will the more difficult one to write.

Its cool to be working so hard for a client that I daily wish I could do even better for. I could get used to this.

My new roommate and the consultant working on our project, Paul, showed up this week. We won't be rooming together til the end of the month, and until then I'm still in my own place with the deck that I will miss having. Turns out I didn't lose my apartment-with-great-deck karma when I came here. Actually, the one at the place Paul and I will be sharing isn't half bad either. Actually, we have two at the new place...

Zambia was pretty cool, the week before last. I'll be writing about that once I get the pictures up, etc.. Which, if we work chronologically, won't happen until after I've blogged Medikwe, Cape Town, and Kruger. Oy.

I was pretty sick the weekend after we got back from Zambia and thought it might be Malaria from Kruger or a really bad strain from Zambia, but the first test came back negative and I was feeling better a day or two later. Not sure what that was about.

I've been back on the running horse, pretty regularly - have been getting in 5 miles a weekday, but I figure that's close enough to what I was at before, given that I'm running at 5k feet higher than I was back in the states. It makes a significant difference, especially given that my route now is pretty much 100% hills. Its also a social experience here - there are a ton of bikers and a handful of other runners out from 5:30-6:30am, which is usually about when I'm running. The sun comes up at 5 here - wakes you up pretty dang early. Anyway, the foot is feeling better, and I'm enjoying being out again. And I met one of my neighbors last night, she's pretty cool and invited me to check out her running group, so now I have friends to run with, hopefully. She said they do 18-kilo time trials on weekends - 11 miles sounds just about right to me.

What else? Tomorrow is dinner with Gib, the guy who leads the entire Accenture Developing Partnerships group. I was in charge of picking the location, so we're going with the Butcher Shop, which is supposed to be the best steakhouse in Joburg. Looking forward to that.

Thursday Tracy (the other manager here on the project with me) and I are headed to the Webb's for a Thanksgiving dinner that evening. David Webb is one of the pastors of the Every Nations church I've been attending down in Joburg, and he and his wife invited us to spend the evening with them and a whole bunch of other Americans they are having over that night. They're from Virginia originally, I think.

Friday our client, Gerard, has invited us - Tracy, Paul, and I over to his family's place for a little impromptu Thanksgiving celebration with them. Their daughter is in school in the states and has educated them on the holiday - and they seem keen to the idea.

Saturday I'm going to catch up on work and enjoy an evening to myself for a change. And maybe blog.

Its raining here in PTA again. Not one of the epic thunderstorms like before, but rainign all the same. Hope it lasts til morning so I can run in it, but given that's unlikely - it only rains at night here for some reason