Under African Skies!: A week in the field

I have been working for awhile now on putting together a proposal for a grant from the European Commission. We are working in a consortium with 4 other organizations and since my organization is the Lead, it means a lot of the responsibility and organization has fallen on me. I've been learning a lot and have really enjoyed working with the team we've put together. We just hired a consultant to help us put together the final product and after several months of work things are finally coming together. It is exciting and tiring and stressful but as we move forward I am pretty confident that the proposal we are putting together has a really good chance of winning. I think I have mentioned here before that the funding climate in Burundi is difficult and that there aren't many grant opportunities compared to other countries. There are several other consortium competing for this same grant so there is no guarantee we will win, but I am hopeful.

In order to make sure that our proposal reflects what is actually going on in the communities where we will be working we've had a lot of discussions with our partners and staff working on the ground, but it is important to see these things for ourselves so last week the consultant we hired and I spent four days in the field talking to community members and doing an informal assessment. This is something I have not gotten to do enough of in my position so far. So much of my job has been dealing with donors and emails and reports and I have not been able to get out of the office nearly enough, so I was thrilled to have this opportunity. The organization of our schedule was a little hectic and at the last minute we were given the crappy land cruiser with the back seats that face the side instead of the normal one with the seats that face forwards. This meant I spent 4 days being thrown around the back of a land cruiser and I have the bruises to show for it, but all in all it was a successful trip. We got the information we needed, confirmed some of our hypothesis and found some important things that we would have missed otherwise. I got to spend 4 days getting sunburned while standing in fields talking to farmers. I got to walk through fields of banana trees, I learned about the mozaique virus that has had a huge negative impact on the manioc (cassava) crops here, and I got to talk to moms about what they feed their kids and how they are trying to make sure their kids are getting enough nutritious food. I love to be able to look beyond the statistics and reports into the eyes of these mothers as they talk about their struggles and their dreams for their children.

Now I am back in Bujumbura, exhausted, slightly sunburned and bruised, but looking forward to the next two weeks as I finish up various projects and get ready to come home. Apparently it snowed this week at home so I'll be greeted by the white stuff when I land in Toronto. I'll spend as much time in the sun as work and the rain allow me to and take advantage of the rest of my time here.

For now, here are some pictures of my week in the field.