A week and the Vice President follows me to Kenya!

This week, VP Biden and his family are in Kenya – their pit stop before going to the World Cup in South Africa. On his agenda is meeting with the president and other top government officials. Also on the agenda is holding up traffic. I have heard horror stories about the Nairobi “jams” and I’m hoping this week they are worse because of Biden’s visit. If this is normal than I am in for a long summer of sitting in the car smelling exhaust fumes and not thinking about how bad I have to go to the bathroom.

Work is going very well. We are training about 40 data collectors who will be going out into the field to use our PNA tools. I thought I’d share with you some estimated numbers about our data collection. Our protocol calls for 480 client exit interviews; 48 school director interviews; 48 facility audits; 24 student focus groups; 384 training coordinator assessments; 384 faculty member assessments; 720 student assessments; 48 clinical preceptor interviews; 7 regulatory body/association interviews and 2 interviews with Ministry Officials. That is just one Phase. No wonder I am working 12-hour days! After we collect the data we’ll launch into data analysis. Holy cow!

I am starting to think about what data I will use for my Masters Paper next spring. I want to write about family planning so I can easily pull out the data just focusing on family planning training. I will also be working with team to launch Kitui Training Center as a center of excellence for family planning and reproductive health in Kenya. Right now I’m focused on the PNA – it is massive!

I am so impressed with the participants in the training. They are a bright group and many are Masters students like myself. I am also enjoying trying on my shoes as a trainer. I don’t mind getting up in front of people talking as long as I know what I am presenting. Going thru this experience is highlighting the skills in which I am good. I’m extremely organized and pay attention to little details. I have the ability to pull back and look at the big picture and not get lost in those little details. I think it is important to recognize where we excel as individual workers and where we need to improve. My goodness I’m far from perfect and have so much to learn. I appreciate the guidance I am receiving from my colleagues about this huge process of going thru an assessment of this nature. I learn all day – at the training and at the dinner table!

Speaking of learning, I wonder if I’ll ever get this Swahili down! It is so hard to learn another language that is completely different from your own. In Swahili, the words for “who” and “you” are so similar, you almost miss it! A few words I’ve mastered are “amani” which means peace; “nanazi” which means pineapple; and “maji” which means water.

Now another one – la la salama, which means rest well. Goodnight friends!