The final week at the AMFRE M&E training course was bitter sweet. We spent the week having some final wrap up lectures followed by only 2 days of compiling an evaluation report for our field work the previous week. By Thursday afternoon we were all unattentive and very tired. Nonetheless, the final report was submitted by me to AMREF on Thursday around 4:00pm; enough said!
On Friday morning we all gathered at AMREF for the graduation ceremony where we were presented with our certificates in M&E joined by the students of the Masters of Public Health and the Nursing students. This ceremony was special as it marked the 25th AMREF graduation. Between the 3 classes there were close to 200 graduates from across Africa, Europe (x3 people) and North America (just me!) with family members in the audience.
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| Me and my Tanzania flatmates; yes it was a coincidence! |
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| Harriet (Uganda), Tayo (Nigeria), Jill (UK working in Liberia) |
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| Jeff (Kenya), John (Tanzania) |
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| Valerie (Switzerland), Jane (Kenya), Michael (Nigeria), Ruth (Kenya) |
On Saturday after graduation I said a last farewell to all the wonderful people that I met, hoping that we will cross paths again in the future, and went back to pack my things. I fell asleep early on Friday as my journey home was to being with an 8am flight back to Zanzibar which meant that I had to wake up at 4:30am and be in a taxi to the airport by 5:30am. After 3 days of traveling, I have arrived safely in Toronto
- Saturday morning: Nairobi - Zanzibar
- Saturday afternoon: Zanzibar - Dar es Salaam
- Sunday evening: Dar es Salaam - Amsterdam
- Monday afternoon: Amsterdam - Toronto
The worst part of the journey was crossing the Atlantic Ocean for more than a few reasons:
- The plane is always jam packed; thus, not conducive to sleeping
- After 9 hours on a previous flight the movies are no longer new and interesting
- Crossing multiple time zones is not fun ie: leaving Amsterdam at 2pm and arrive in Toronto at 4pm and it was definitely longer than a 2 hour flight!
- Jet lag. Enough said.
So, now what? I am back in Toronto and already looking for my next flight back to Ghana in February, which I cannot wait for! I will be back working with YCI on a short term contract doing two different jobs. The first one will be for Program Development of the YMCA mentorship program that started in Koforidua. The YMCA wants to scale up this successful program to be initiated into YMCA's across the country. The second contract will be for M&E with YCI's other partner YES Ghana (Youth Empowerment Synergy). Throughout this contract, I will be working with YES in order to set up an M&E system to monitor and evaluate program implementation.
As for now, I plan to do a lot of visiting with family and friends before setting off again. I wish I could said I also plan to enjoy the weather but, lets be serious! What I really need to do is start planning my return to Canada for the summer time and not the winter.
