Update

I think it's been about 80 million years since I last posted. Lots of things going on.

- I returned to Baltimore to get my Nigerian visa and promptly got a big ol' fever, which was probably not really the swine flu, but was enough like the swine flu that I wasn't able to go to Nigeria, even though
- I did in fact receive my Nigerian visa in time.

- USAID made me a job offer that was pretty dang awesome.

- Nick and Johanna had their baby! Oscar.

- CCP made a counter offer in order to keep me in Baltimore. And I'm taking it. Despite all my professional heroes telling me to take the USAID job, because it will be good for my career, etc. Basically, it boils down to: a) I can get a lot of similar job experience at CCP and b) I don't have to commute in order to do that and c) all things being thus more or less equal, sort of kind of, I would rather spend those 3 hours with Joshua, Kima, and my other interests rather than on the MARC train with my New Yorkers. I'm sure I will regret at some points not taking on the badassness of the USAID job, but hey, that's the breaks. The feeling that I have now, after taking this counter offer (read: promotion!) is, I would say, "happiness", whereas the feeling I had after waking up thinking I would take the USAID job I would have to classify as "sad, and putting career ahead of family, for maybe some not super good reasons".

So you know everything works out.

Second:
I have been reading 'quirky' and 'indie' wedding blogs like a maniac and using Evernote to file all the ideas I can steal from them. I don't think I will blog much about the wedding planning. It's pretty boring. Not that we will have a boring wedding, no sirree, but who wants to see the sausage being made?

Third:
Joshua and I took Kima for a walk at Jerusalem Mills and we let her off leash (which *gasp*, illegal!) and hullo, it was totally fine. This dog just wants to cuddle, she is not liable to run off after anything, because I am the most interesting thing to her. To the point that when cutting her nails later that evening, she freaked out in Joshua's chokehold, and came over to me, all "Mom, I'm scared, he's scaring me, don't let him squeeze me like that!" and just LET ME cut her nails, no trouble at all. Good doggie!!

Oh, Nigeria

Nigeria embassy wouldn't give me a visa here in Dakar, because I do not have a Senegalese residency permit. A small Nigerian offered to take me to the Police Whatsit to get said permit, quickly, and without them asking me all the usual annoying questions. I declined. Lagos doesn't offer visas on arrival, and it's illegal to send one's passport back to the states to get a visa (or with someone else, for that matter).

So either I:
a) go back to the states a bit early from Dakar, get my visa, and return to Nigeria within a week or
b) ef Nigeria and stay in Dakar to do more work here or
c) ef Nigeria and go home to regularly scheduled programming.

Much depends on how much it will cost to change my flights, and whether or not my collaborators on the Nigeria workshop are willing to let me bail.

Also, two men are up in my ceiling draining water that has been gurgling up there for a couple days. Looks kinda messy in there.

Downtime

In Dakar for a two week needs assessment to set up our newest biggest project, delivering nets and promoting their use globally - or at least, just in Senegal to start with. Lots of meetings already, everyone touching on the same issues (routine distribution not working, out of nets, procurement is hard, need more communication to increase use of nets, help help help us). But today is a bit slow as some meetings have just been canceled, so I am waiting for a caesar salad in my room and catching up on the little tasks, like writing an invitation letter to the private sector, so that they can attend a meeting where we are likely going to tell them we're not subsidizing their operations in this project, unlike the previous project. Hoping that the Nigerian Embassy guy wasn't really serious when he said he could reject my visa application because I am not a resident in Senegal.

The caesar salad came without any dressing. This hotel has been open only three months. Yesterday my soft-boiled egg was perfect - today the yolk was still raw, but they insisted it was soft-boiled. "You know oeuf en coquotte? C'est comme ca". No, really, it's not. For some reason this made me really pissed.

CRS is helping us out with vehicles, sample letters, putting our Chief of Party ad in the paper - being completely wonderful. And we're getting fairly good information, but nothing too detailed, from our interview so far. As one member of the Global Fund CCM said this morning, "Quelquechose nous echappe". Hopefully by the end of these two weeks we'll have captured it.

Yes We Can!

From Anna in Dar.

Favorite line from Global Fund Round 7 proposal

from translated English version:

"Once these CBOs and NGOs are well rehabilitated and equipped, they could, during discussions and home visits, advocate, at the same time, for other health problems such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and diseases linked to fecal peril."

Engaged Engaged Engaged

So, the other weekend, on a bike ride, during lunch, Joshua asked if I would marry him!

And I said "Holy crap!"

But no, he was serious, and I said, "But we've never lived in the same city."

He admitted this was true but that it didn't have any bearing on his wanting to marry me, and also that he would move to Baltimore in May, if I was so set on us living in the same place, jeez louise.

I thought about this for a little while. Until dinnertime, actually, when we discussed the logistics of the whole thing some more, and also some non-logistical things.

And then said yes. :)

New bed

Even before I had finished laying it down, Kima curled up on the new bedroom rug and was all, jeez it took you long enough to get me another bed upstairs, jeez!

From Kima