Unfortunately for you, the reader, there is not much exciting going on in the lives of the Rosenfeld’s in Africa. For that reason, you have not heard much from either of us since returning to the continent in mid-January. Honestly, how can anything really compare to the whirlwind month we spent at home catching up with family and friends and getting married in Puerto Rico. Anything else really pales in comparison. Regardless, I will proceed to give a short update on all the happenings over the past month and a half.
Christy and I arrived back in South Africa as a married couple in mid-January and spent about 1.5 weeks with our friends in Pretoria. During that time, we did everything we wanted to do: sleep in, watch LOST (I managed to get Christy hooked), begin eating reasonable portions (something I did terribly while at home – the 10 pounds I put on were proof), and returned to our jogging routine. It was a great continuation of the honeymoon we never took. We finally returned to Zim at the end of the month, arriving by plane with more baggage than we left with. I’m not sure how we always manage to do this, but we do. I blame Christy’s shoes! Anyway, it cost us a fair amount of money seeing as how British Airways has a completely different policy from every other international carrier in that they only allow 50 pounds per person, not per bag as we had meticulously planned for. Oh well, at least we arrived and immigration gave us a new visa.
So, we moved in with our friends, Liz and John Gair, who kindly offered up their garden cottage to us while we settled in and began looking for our own place. I jumped back into work, while Christy continued her job searching. On my side, things are progressing nicely, with one big potential grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It appears that we are moving nicely through their pre-award interrogation (checking our systems and whatnot to see if we can handle a US grant) and will hopefully move on to the finalization of the proposal and budget in the coming 2 weeks. It all depends upon whether we have met their requirements, but our finance and admin manager feels confident so by extension I do. We have also managed to increase the overall visibility of our organization as whole, becoming a larger player/actor at a national level. Most notably, ZimAHEAD is now a key player on the Social Mobilization Cluster (during emergencies UN agencies implement a cluster approach to managing the different aspects of the emergency – social mobilization is focused on organizing communities or on the ‘software’ side of things as we like to call it) and was recently invited to join the Strategic Advisory Group (SAG), which provides guidance at a national level for all programmatic decision (funding, methodologies, advocacy, etc). Basically, I feel that I have achieved part of what I was meant to achieve and now must land a project to feel fully successful (and I think that is in the cards). Finally, before I left in Dec 09, I had made inroads with EcoNet, a new cell phone provider, in regards to using the Mobile Researcher platform (survey software used on cell phones) for community based surveillance and monitoring. However, I had yet been unable to demonstrate that the platform would work on their network. Well, I finally managed to get it working, but now there seems to be hitches with funding and programmatic decisions from their board. Keep your fingers crossed that I can push through the bureaucracy next week and get this up and running because this could be the first surveillance system for cholera, measles, H1N1, etc anywhere I am aware of that utilizes cellular phones at a community and clinical level. Could be pretty cool.
So that’s my work. Christy is still in the process of finding work, but there are a few things that are beginning to take shape. I won’t steal her glory, but the potential still exists with Solidarites (a French NGO) and she has had recent interviews with Oxfam GB and with the Harare International School. Wish her luck! Otherwise, we are happy to be back here and get settled in. We just managed to extend our visa (at no cost) for another month without having to jump the border, but I think next month we will go south (South Africa) to pick up some of our stuff in Pretoria. Why? Well, because we found a nice flat through our friends the Gair’s that is in a perfect location. The price is right and so is the size so we are moving in next weekend! Needless to say we are very excited to finally have a place of our own, particularly after the disaster of last year’s accommodation and having to share space with the Gair’s. It’s all coming together. Now all we need is some friends! Anyone want to move to Zimbabwe?
