Downtime

In Dakar for a two week needs assessment to set up our newest biggest project, delivering nets and promoting their use globally - or at least, just in Senegal to start with. Lots of meetings already, everyone touching on the same issues (routine distribution not working, out of nets, procurement is hard, need more communication to increase use of nets, help help help us). But today is a bit slow as some meetings have just been canceled, so I am waiting for a caesar salad in my room and catching up on the little tasks, like writing an invitation letter to the private sector, so that they can attend a meeting where we are likely going to tell them we're not subsidizing their operations in this project, unlike the previous project. Hoping that the Nigerian Embassy guy wasn't really serious when he said he could reject my visa application because I am not a resident in Senegal.

The caesar salad came without any dressing. This hotel has been open only three months. Yesterday my soft-boiled egg was perfect - today the yolk was still raw, but they insisted it was soft-boiled. "You know oeuf en coquotte? C'est comme ca". No, really, it's not. For some reason this made me really pissed.

CRS is helping us out with vehicles, sample letters, putting our Chief of Party ad in the paper - being completely wonderful. And we're getting fairly good information, but nothing too detailed, from our interview so far. As one member of the Global Fund CCM said this morning, "Quelquechose nous echappe". Hopefully by the end of these two weeks we'll have captured it.