Kenya to Tanzania

Written on May 6, 2008 from Dodoma, Tanzania
By Anne Olson

On Saturday I met with Louise Sewe of Wege Women Group Support Organization (WWGSO) – Beyond Biological Parenthood. Wege means parenthood in Luo – the local language and the language of Barack Obama's father. She's the woman I met at a conference in California. She is doing some good work in western Kenya, building a community in the villages to support the orphans and vulnerable children. Part of WWGSO's strategy is to improve the economic status of community members through sustainable income generating activities. This is where I think that VEF and WWGSO may be able to work together. So I connected Louise with Wilson, VEF Country Director. The next steps are theirs. I will certainly follow up when I return to Kenya at the end of June.

Saturday afternoon, Jackie came to my hotel and we went out for hot chocolate. It was so good to see her and catch up with what she has been doing. She invited Linnet and I to lunch on Sunday and cooked the things that she knows I like – chapatti, green grams (lentils), fish. I was so full when I left there! We made plans to get together at the end of June when I come back to Nairobi before flying home.

The flight to Dodoma Tanzania was uneventful. Only 3 passengers from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro and 5 from Kili to Dodoma. We go through immigration and customs in Kili. It is so strange to go through with the pilot! I was happy to arrive in my Tanzanian home, knowing that I was going to be here for the rest of the month and wouldn't have to pack up and go for quite a while.

I woke up yesterday with a sore throat. It went away during the day but came back last night. Now I have a cold and a sore throat. Have asked for some hot water and lemon as that will help my throat feel better. I'm not really sick, just inconvenienced.

No internet connection today. So really cannot start on much of anything until I can get connected to QuickBooks Online and show people around a bit. Got some of the receipts so that I can see what we are dealing with. Reviewed authorization form and payment voucher form from Uganda and decided to use something very similar here. Made the changes and took it to the printer today and should have the duplicate copy books tomorrow. Hopefully we will have internet connection too so we can get started. I'm trying to set up a local network so that I can connect to the computer that has dialup and then we'll have two computers on the internet. If that works for my laptop, it should work for the other desktop in the office. We'll see how far my network knowledge gets me!