At the moment I have been balancing the roles of IT Manger, Developer, IT support, database administrator and a touch of donor management . Add these plus an emergency and you get an idea of how busy I have been this past week or so.

Tonight I had a party, which turned into a most pleasant and wonderful combination of two people from my two current Melbourne worlds.

Tomorrow I fly down up to Sydney for a meeting with my supervisor about my thesis. I’ll be there until Sunday morning. My thesis doesn’t seem to be quite as important when in my work I am dealing with more and bigger issues then any one academic paper could hope to grasp.

There are also some other eye witness accounts here.

None of these accounts come from the areas hit the worst. Those stories will come latter I am sure. Please if you are the praying type, remember these people in your prayers.

Pray too that the Burmese junta lets in the large scale aid.

For those who don’t know more then 15,000 people have died because of the cyclone. For more news read here.

TEAR are partnered with some NGO’s working within Burma, and five fieldworkers in the area. We have an emergency appeal up now at our website. Please do give something to it if you can.

I’m also off to Alice on the 4th of June for a few days of study and catching up with Ketih and Stella.

Now though I am getting to crunch time with my capstone. Have until June 20 to finish it all off. I’m hopefully going to go and sit in the Alice Springs for a few days just working on that in a few weeks which will be nice.

Then Mum and Dad are coming on Sunday and Monday.

Then Lesley might be coming soon too.

Yay for people.

I have though got a lot of good stuff done, including an email server migration, that until the headaches Monday will surely bring, has gone very smoothly. Took a lot longer to copy emails between servers, but that’s OK.

Next week I am hopefully going to have a five day weekend, and I have Sam and Jenn coming to visit for three of those days. It’s going to be super fun to hang out.

I did take a break last night to cook some food, I made a mushroom subji, which actually wasn’t too bad for a first attempt. I love mushrooms, though I’m not into the magic kind.

Life is going well here in Melbourne but I need to get me some friends. I think I’ll go steal some from work, and steal some from Gem. Anyone else know where I can find me some friends in this city?

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really understand myself.

And the fact that I think I am following
Your will does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
Does in fact please you.

And I hope I have the desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the
right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may
seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear for you are ever with me and
you will never leave me to face my troubles alone.

Thomas Merton

Did I accomplish what I set out ti? in a word no. I thought I was going to be able to use research methods in Africa that require far more time and planning then I could do. I found the needs in the area of IT in Uganda is great, and complex. I wish I could of done more to help the organisations I visited. I found that lack of infrastructure, expensive prices and poor training made the use of ICT far less effective then it could otherwise of been.

I set out trying to define my life for the next few years by determining where I could serve over the next few years, only to have that worked out two weeks before I even left. What I did find is that my future colleagues are helping small frail but ultimately powerful fighters of poverty a lot. I am looking forward to serving and helping them be more effective.

I set out planning to be largely independent and end up living closely with two awesome TEAR Fieldworkers and getting to know their community.

I had a wonderful time having a holiday with my friend Pete who’s in the Peace Corps. He has had a challenging year, but is ready to face another year in The Gambia. I enjoyed staying in a great bed & breakfast in Brugge, Belgium. I enjoyed visiting the pubs, and chocolate shops their a lot. I got stuck arriving in Paris looking for accommodation for a night. I went to the top of the Effiel Tower, and was starting to fall in love with the city when I left.

My highlight though was Belfast where I caught up with my friend Ally who I met in India I got to meet her fiancé who was pretty cool (I am always glad when people choose well). We travelled 200miles in a day as she showed us the best of Northern Ireland, and a little of Ireland. Then we out for dinner at an Indian restaurant, which was just a great time reminiscing with Pete and Ally about our time in India. On Sunday we went to church and out to lunch with some people from her church, which was really good. I love Irish humour.

Last night and today was mainly spent hanging out with Pete in London. It was a good day. It was a bit sad and strange to say goodbye again to Pete, but I was glad I got to spend this past 8 days with him.

So now I head back to Australia to live in a new city, with a new job. I hope that Melbourne and TEAR are good to me. I’m not sure quite how it will all work out but I am thinking at the moment it will be good.

I had lunch with Sharon(the Manager of the project) and the chairman. It was quite nice to sit and talk and eat.

After lunch I took my leave and went to the “Divine Mercy Guesthouse” for the rest of the day. I thought I would be really intelligent this time and stay in a slightly more upmarket place then where they put me last time. The room was small but OK, except that the interior plumbing wasn’t functioning so I had to go to an outdoor bathroom. The staff also sat in the corridor between the rooms and seemed to talk all night. On the upside though I did manage to get breakfast and dinner there which is more then I ever managed at the previous place.

I was ready for three days of work when Monday morning came around. I ended up leading devotions with a message I stole straight from a book about the 4 people bring the man who was paralyzed to Jesus. I ended up talking about needing to have enough love and creative to work around the problems you are facing. (Look later for the irony in the message).

I had brought some new equipment (Voltage regulator, power boards, fixed UPS and good power cords) and set about getting everything ready. By about 9.05am I was all set and ready to go, but the managers who’s office the equipment was in was busy in meetings. About 10.20am she was free and I go the go ahead, but to run the generator they needed to buy more fuuuel. Why they could not have fuel on hand I do not know, anyway it was about 11am by the time the generator was running. In the mean time I got a second hand donated computer setup with an old monitor they had. The monitor lead for the newer monitor was missing. The first time the same group only sent the monitor with no computer, ops.

The UPS was not functioning correctly but everything else was working pretty well. I decided I’d try and get the printer running. This was all well and good except I forgot that the laser printer draws a lot of current and I ended up stuffing the voltage stabaliser. So they shut down the generator while I worked on option. I then worked to remove the old dodgy two pin European plug that didn’t sit properly in the Universal power sockets they use here with a brand new plug I brought in Kampala. However in the office they didn’t even had a screw driver and side cutters. Eventually I had some pliers with a cutter, and a screw driver so I set to work. Once I was ready to go we had to wait for a staff member to get back to start the generator.

Then once the staff membered started the generator it slowed down to a halt within about 10 seconds. One of the dodgy fuel intake pipes had broken off. It was now 1pm, and I’d only gotten to do 30-45 minutes of work. The manager and I went off for lunch at the church where I decided it was time to get the hell out of dodge. I discussed with the her and eventually got her to agree to let me go. She was disappointed, as was I but I couldn’t stand the idea of another two wasted days in the middle of nowhere. I promised to work on a proper solution to the power problem.

At about 4pm the generator was fixed and so I got 1 hour of training people in. I then worked to get the printer going again, except every time the computer started the power flickered on and off. Without a working UPS the computer just rebooted killing the print job and frustrating me. Around this time my driver arrived to pick me up and I left.

I didn’t really end up doing as much as I would of liked for my partner organisation in Kaberamaido but I did introduce two people to computers, and an accountant to Excel.

There is so much resentment of Indians, and Chinese in Uganda.
And for a country with so many women managing day to day operations of organisations there is still a lot of sexism too.

With the delays in Kampala I ended up delaying some of my work on my presentations for the workshop on the Thursday(6th). Ian who was meant to be doing half of the presentations ended up stuck waiting for the car in Kampala and missed the workshop. So suddenly I had to prepare the entire workshop myself. During the day I had to prepare, I was also entertaining Ian and Tash’s guests. I was a little stressed that day.

When it came time to do the workshop the sessions on power, file organisation, Excel, Powerpoint and Word went pretty well. I really needed to a week or more of sessions, but I am happy with what I fit in. I would of loved to go more in depth and to split participants into smaller groups or individuals (I had three groups of 5 people), but with no one to help run the sessions I couldn’t really do so.

My favorite session was Excel, where I made people use Excel as a planning tool.

The funniest session was the Word Q AND A session where I didn’t know how to do half the things I was asked, (OPS).

After the workshop I relaxed for a few days before moving on to Kaberamadio.

In other news I am hopeful that I have unhacked my Blog now.. But we shall see…

I’m a bit up in the air about what is to happen next week. I am meant to be visiting a project somewhere else but I haven’t received any contact back from them. So I will see what happens in the next few days.

Aren’t they cute..

Hello, How are you? I am fine!
Hello, How are you? I am fine!
Hello, How are you? I am fine!
Hello, How are you? I am fine!
Hello, How are you? I am fine!
Hello, How are you? I am fine!

Is a very fun game the kids in the village I briefly visited today played. I love it, the children in the villages are very innocent and rather fun. They were so excited by the presence of the project people, and me the white man (Muzungu). They kept on yelling out photo as well. So I got over my dislike of white people taking photos of villages, and indulged them by taking some photos.

People here remain remarkably friendly and proud. It’s taken me longer to really notice the poverty here then in India as people hide it well near the towns.

I have meet many great people here, which has been nice.

I am staying with some funky people here in Mbale, they are TEAR Fieldworkers. I am so thankful to Ian for meeting me in Kampala and showing me around. It made the whole experience so much easier. I probably would of been $300 poorer right now if not for him..

Get to visit the project tomorrow which should be interesting. Still not sure exactly what I’ll see there..

In Kampala I stayed at a funky backpacker resort that was fun, but a bit of an ex-pat central.

Don’t have that much of a feel for the place yet. The city is a strange mix. Haven’t really processed it much yet.

Leaving the Kampala tonight for Mbale.

Even better received an urgent email using it.

Note that my flight to KL was via Brisbane and I wasn’t told about that either.