Wildlife adventures

We had a proper rainstorm here today (well that was Saturday now), thunder and the whole bit.  Shook the little prefab building like crazy, and made me appreciate the fact that I've lived in a house with solid walls my whole life even more.  I've become very local about rainstorms.  When I wake up hear them I don't bother getting out of bed.  Nothing happens when it rains, meetings are inevitably delayed, sometimes by hours.  Very little seems to move when it's wet, or if it does move it does so slowly.  I think I will have to adjust to the idea that there will be an assumption my early meeting mornings won't happen if its raining if they are with a local NGO.  It usually tapers out by mid-morning so hopefully it won't slow me down too much, but I'm trying to embrace it and get some extra sleep when I wake up to the sound of it drumming against the metal sheets of my little building.

I was woken up again on Sunday by dueling cats on my roof.  It's pretty common for the wild/feral cats that wander around to walk across the roof every so often, which given that it's metal is loud enough.  But every once and a while two cats really decide to go at it right on my little shed and it sounds like they're going to bring the place down.  There is yowling and hissing and just a terrible commotion.  Fortunately so far the roof has held.  In other wildlife news, while the chicken has disappeared (probably into someone's dinner pot) the rain brings out hundreds to tiny toads.  They are so little they look more like flies or tiny black bugs, but they hop across the gravel pathways in droves after the rains.  They're so cute but I spend a lot of time trying not to step on them.

I had my fist real meeting with an active CBO (community base organization) yesterday, it was fabulous.  I got all kinds of interesting information out of them, and now I'm working on typing it up and developing a method for recording what I learn in the interviews so that all the information I learn is transferable to others so that nothing is lost after I leave.  Creating local information is so important, and part of what I need to make sure happens is that all the information I acquire is preserved so that it can be used after I'm gone.  Hopefully no one will ever have to track me down in order to find out some piece of information that can be useful to them, I'm trying to be as detailed as possible with my individual reports for each survey that gets filled out. It's going to be time consuming, but I think ultimately the information database it creates will be worth it.

I'm going to spend today setting up appointments with other CBOs and trying to get ready for tomorrow's meeting with the social work team to discuss setting up the focus groups which the social workers will be facilitating since they can conduct them in the local languages and get the flow of the conversation going instead of me trying to to run them with a translator.

Anyways, kind of mundane stuff around here.  Sorry there's not more to report on.  Hope all is well at home!