I have a home!

I officially have a home in Kiembe Samaki, Zanzibar! Wednesday evening Sabrina and I finally shifted from the apartment on the second floor to our very own apartment on the top floor! It was so nice to be able to unpack everything and find a home for all of my stuff!

The apartment is much more than I could ever hope for and for just the two of us, it’s huge! We even have a spare bedroom for guests which, at the moment is currently being used to hang laundry. And on that note, we actually have a washing machine which I definitely was not expecting! This aspect makes me very happy considering I have yet to master the art of hand washing my clothes.

The apartment as three patios, one in the living room, one in the dining room and best of all, one in my bedroom. I feel so spoiled as I even have my own bathroom which is equipped with a hot water heater, no more cold showers! (Check Facebook for apartment pictures!)

Work is coming along pole pole (slowly slowly)! For you to have a better understanding of ZANGOC as an umbrella organization, let me just describe the organizational structure first. It has a General Assembly which is comprised of 120 people (3 representatives from each of ZANGOCs 40 member organizations) the General Assembly attempts to meet once a year but this is sometimes constrained by lack of funds. However, the next General Assembly meeting is set for early May, 2011 and I am excited that I will get to observe this and maybe even hold a workshop or two for the member organizations, time permitting!  

Next is the Steering Committee which is comprised of 40 people, 1 representative from each of ZANGOCs 40 member organizations. The Steering Committee meets on a quarterly basis and the most recent meeting was on April 10, 2011. I attended this meeting because I wanted to start networking with some of the member organizations, which I was able to do. I even started my data collection process in which I hope to find out what each member organization does (ie: their vision, mission and objectives), how they currently work with ZANGOC and how they wish to work with ZANGOC over the next 5 years. The meeting itself was not really all that useful to me as it was entirely in Swahili and I did not have a translator!

After the Steering Committee is the Executive Committee which acts as management for ZANGOC staff and projects. However, since all of the Executive Committee members have full time jobs during regular working hours it is hard for them to meet and it is also difficult to get information. However, I have been lucky so far to have the full support of two Executive Committee members and one member of the Steering Committee. For example,last Friday I had a meeting with my supervisors to discuss the strategic plan, including the need to revise the vision and mission statement. I thought I was going to get suck at this point as I would need to wait for the Executive Committee to create these documents. However, in the meeting, I found out that the vision and mission had already recently been revised but in Swahili! So, Mohammed, my direct supervisor, had to translate the document for me and yesterday I received the updated vision, mission and objectives in English! Pole pole!