In the groove (at last!)

My placement here comes at a cost… personal sacrifice by me and financial considerations to WAG. A few weeks into the job, I was feeling quite disheartened at not being utilising fully. Hence, the beginning of last week saw me having a ‘frank and open’ discussion with my employer.


I turned up for the meeting wearing my VSO t-shirt, a symbolic gesture as it states across the front “Sharing Skills – Saving Lives”. I delicately explained my ideas on how best we could utilise all of our time better and share skills. I was careful in my choice of words and of course, kept everything in the Zambian context. Little use comparing worklife here with that at home but, that said, I am here for a short period and want to make the best of my time. Notwithstanding the resource and financial constraints, there is a great deal of time wasting.

My boss, to his credit, was very receptive to my ideas…so much so that I now have full responsibility for planning and delivering an improvements programme that will easily take twice as long as I have left here! I embarked on the programme with great gusto last week and am delighted at how enthusiastically it is being received by my colleagues. I’ve also managed to squeeze in a few IT training sessions for the young volunteers, which been extremely rewarding, they devour every single piece of information with huge fervour.

Apart from work, my Zambianisation is coming along nicely. I have twice managed to cook nshima, and am a dab hand at it (if I say so myself!). When I tell the locals that I served it with a concoction of tomatoes, onions and pumpkins, they all howl with laughter – to them, the combination is like us eating carrots & peas with custard!!

I have also invested in a made to measure traditional outfit. I used all of my western bargaining skills and paid exactly the asking price! My local colleagues tell me off, saying I pay too much, but the cost of 100,000 kwacha, inclusive of material and making, works out around £21..! Look out for me wearing it out on special occasions…Mother of the Bride outfit, maybe?

The honesty that a half-shared language brings is amusing. When the skinny young girl at the dressmakers was checking how the skirt fitted, I quipped that I am a little heavy around the midriff….”yes, you are fat” she replied very matter-of factly. I like to think it was not intentionally that she destroyed my self esteem in one fell swoop!

Will finish now but MUST acknowledge the work of colleagues at WAG for incredibly restoring my laptop to full use. Work here is difficult enough but when the laptop failed, I was really up the Swanee and worried that I’d not get anything meaningful done until my departure. I was staggered to receive a call from a guy in ICT! He told me to take the laptop to an internet café and he would fix it remotely. To be honest, I thought he was nuts, how could he be in Wales and fix a laptop in Zambia?! But he did just that!! Other than our call today, I don’t know him… but thanks very much Rob!