Window Office

This has been a pretty good year. I mean, promotion, engagement, these are awesome, but nothing beats:

A WINDOW OFFICE!

I move in tomorrow.

Snowpacalypse 2010, Pics by Edith

Edith took these during the storm this weekend - thunder and lightning apparently came along with the snow! The darker ones were taken in the middle of the night.

Tanzanian Wedding

Last night Waziri, our second-in-command at COMMIT, got married! They had a muslim wedding at the mosque in the afternoon, and then a hugely fancypants reception, Western-style, in the evening. Anna and I got there about 8:15 because of traffic, and there weren't many folks there. Congolese party music was going and a gaggle of older ladies shuffled around the dance floor, their grim party faces on.

From Waziri Wedding

The decor was all blue and white bunting and flashing plastic lights and these remarkable vases filled with blue liquid and topped with plastic flowers. You can maybe see the huge white thrones up on the dias. No expense was spared, and the carbonated beverages were flowing. Two cokes later at 10:30 no one had showed up but the traditional dancers from Waziri's village down south in Tanzania, who had long crazy hair, not quite dreadlocks. I asked Margaret, the office manager, why they wore their hair that way. "Oh, you know - artists," she sniffed. "They like to be...different."

I think we got some soup and then things started happening:

From Waziri Wedding

From Waziri Wedding

From Waziri Wedding

Then they called me up to be one of the five openers of the "champagne". The three men all tilted their bottles back and forth for five minutes before opening; the lady next to me did not. The men proudly spilled champagne all over the floor (which made for a sticky time later, I can attest) and us girls smiled, popped the corks, and rolled our eyes.

Then they asked me in Swahili to serve the bride and groom but of course I didn't understand so there was this awkward moment before they realized they had to say it again in English.

After the cake cutting, the embarrassing sing-along by the MC to the Lionel Richie song, the feeding of cake to not only the bride and groom but the best man, maid of honor, and the junior bridesmaid and groomsman, the first dance, and family introductions, the dancing began. We'd had some vegetable soup earlier in the evening but it was clear there would be no more food coming for a good bit, and it was 11. We danced our way up to Waziri to say goodbye, and he was so happy. It was great.

All the Single Ladies

I can only get a half-second of this at a time on the slow line in Tanzania, but blogging it so I will go back later (in Dakar tomorrow?) to watch:



And this one too. Thanks Volker for the share!

Hiring: Lessons Learned

When advertising 5 jobs in a Senegalese newspaper, I recommend telling applicants to send their dossiers to NGO_hiring@gmail.com instead of your own email address. Also, you don't need to see their diplomas and letters of good work from their employers, even though other job postings include this. If you don't, surely you will suffer a fate similar to mine - all of the out of work accountants and administrative assistants flooding your inbox with terribly-formatted CVs and 5MB scans of their college degrees and recommendation letters. This will immediately exceed capacity and prevent you from receiving any more mail, requiring you to ask the new hire to logon to your desktop and read and process all your mail, deleting as she goes.

No fun for anyone!

Hotel Alexander, Dar es Salaam

This hotel is awesome. It's on the same street as Rob, our Chief of Party, and was turned into a hotel about a year and a half ago (or so the staff tells me). Downstairs there's a comfortable, well-decorated dining room with two long tables, and two wings of rooms stretch out from the back, flanking the garden/pool area. The food is AMAZING, fresh fish, huge prawns, very reasonable, and cooked perfectly. Seasoning is not skimpy: the cook knows how to use salt well, but it's not overpowering.

The rooms are large and there's a third story bar above the dining area that is open on the sides, with three cushiony nooks on the long side that one can settle down in with a book or a laptop or a group of friends, and a few tables for dining off to the far side. Gorden, the owner, is warm and welcoming, as are the two main staff, Felix and Mohammed.

Only drawbacks are that the wireless doesn't quite reach to my room (when I'm sitting on the bed - which makes it easier to concentrate on work!) and the a/c fans are quite loud, but these are definitely not dealbreakers. My ethernet cable setup at the desk works fine, or I can go upstairs to the bar to work wirelessly.

From Travel

From Travel

From Travel

Ibex Tuck Gloves Review

These gloves are softshell, with wool lining. They are bulky. And they are warm. The leather palms are nice, but the nosewipe ("flock" nosewipe) leaves a lot to be desired. Not that I used it on my nose during the testing period! It's just not at all fuzzy - same as the outside softshell of the glove. The seam running between the thumb and forefinger felt bulky and irritating on the left hand, but not the right, so it's possible a different pair would not have that issue, but it made for noticeably uncomfortable biking.

I've ended up sending both these Ibex gloves back and turning to a more tried-and-true approach - glove liners (currently my cheapo H&M gloves) and a windblocking shell (Joshua's pair from last season). Warm enough and the least bulky option out there.