For my english speaking friends

English Blog 1

Since my friends appear to be from everywhere in the world, I’ll do a regular update of my blog in English, so that you can all keep track of my life in Zambia. And my own selfish reason is of course that I’d love to stay in touch with all of you, so I hope this helps a little, and you’ll post a small comment every now and then.

The English blogs will probably be good summaries compared to the ‘too’ long Dutch versions (-: - so you’re lucky!
I’d first of all like to apologise to all of you who might not even realise I’ve already moved to Zambia – it’s been a hectic couple of months ever since I heard I got the job as programme adviser for VVOB.

My first days in Zambia

I arrived in Zambia on Saturday morning early October 18th together with Lieve, a Belgium colleague who will start working for VVOB as well. David, our temporary manager, picked us up. He was nice enough to endure our first encounter of a Zambian supermarket and to help us buy our own sim card, and brought us to Gossner Mission afterwards. The mission will be our house for the next couple of weeks until we have our own house. My house was supposed to be ready by now, but as I had expected it will take at least a couple more weeks for it to be ready.

The Gossner Mission is a beautiful place, the garden has many flowers and the trees are in full bloom. At this time of year the first rains have fallen so it’s a lot greener here now compared to the visit in August. The Flamboyant trees are bright red/orange, the bouganvilles are full of fuchsia colored flowers, and the Jakaranda tree with the purple flowers are a beautiful sight.

In the mission we can use a fully equipped kitchen, so we don’t have to go out for diner, but can cook our own food. There’s a big veranda to relax and the rooms are very clean and spacious. It’s even quite cheap for Zambian means (it’s an extremely expensive city).

Another advantage of staying in a guesthouse is that we get to meet some other people, so we’ve already spent some lively evenings, chatting to Hans who is working on water management, Anthony who is building a farm with cottages for expats, and Alison a head teacher who came over from the North of the country. They have also been able to give a lot of useful advice and insights in Zambian life.

On Sunday I went to see my new house and was surprised by the excellent location in the middle of the town, in an area that feels quite safe, close to the big supermarkets and a few small cafes. On the compound there’s a beautiful spacious garden (shared) with an avocado and a lime tree, 6 other houses and on top of all that a small swimming pool. Hurray! For those of you who don’t know, I really love swimming. When we walked around the corner of the street I even found a 50 meter Olympic size swimming pool, mostly used by locals.

The house itself is space wise perfect. It’s a bit of a little bunker, but the good thing about that is that it will be cool. Luckily there’s some more windows in the back of the house, and it has quite a good size private garden on the back too (which has nothing in there yet). There’s still a lot of work to be done in the house (place a kitchen, put tiles on the floor and in the shower and put doors in). So it may take quite a bit longer than I had expected. The agent promises me though that it will be ready by November 2nd. We’ll see….

Opposite the compound there’s the international school. Luckily when we visited there was an Indian food festival, so we could have a look around the school, as well as enjoy some lovely food. It’s a small world, as we immediately got to talk to a Dutch woman who knew the people who arranged the house for me. A nice start to get acquainted here.

Work
Well …work? The first days at work were quite relaxed. We were given the chance to start with getting some of our basic needs arranged. Within two days both Lieve and I had bought a car! A Toyota RAV4, 2 liter motor on petrol, 1996, green, automatic and low milage. It’ll still have to be shipped from Japan, but in the meantime we’ll be getting a substitute car once payments are settled. A car is an absolute essential item here, as it’s a very widely spread city with not too much public transport. I’ll be working 50 kms out of town 1 day a week, so will need to be able to get there. It’s my very first car ever, so quite exciting!

Anyway, I was going to write about work. Eventually after a day or two we started work. VVOB has a new office in the Provincial Resource Centre, a nice building at a very good location (near supermarket and internet café). Our office is nice and David ensured new desks, office supplies and laptops, wo we’re all set to go. It’ll take some time to find out exactly what I’m supposed to do, but I started of preparing for a meeting that will take place tomorrow.

Elections
It’s election time in Zambia. Normally the elections would be in 2011 only, but president Mwanawasa passed away in August, so new elections will be held on October 30th. They’re expecting peaceful elections, though you never know of course.
Lieve and I have been invited to join Peter, the owner of the Gossner Mission, to visit poling stations. He is a EU observer for the elections and thought we might enjoy moving around the poling stations for a day. Quite an opportunity! Let’s hope it’s a formal day off and we don’t have to work that day.




Some backgrounds

VVOB

VVOB is a Flemish development organisation working at semi-governmental level. They’re sponsored by Belgian Developmental Aid (DGOS).
VVOB’s mission is:
‘As a creative Flemish cooperative partner we strive to a sustainable world with equal opportunities. Within a wide framework of poverty eradication we are building to improve the quality of of education and training in development countries.
By working in the South we are increasing the public support in Flanders for a solidary society’. (VVOB Jaarverslag ‘07)

The programme I’ll be working in consists of two major lines:
1. Strengthening the organisational and policy capacity of all structures involved in teacher training
2. Strengthening of relevant pedagogical competencies of educational staff.

VVOB’s main partner is the Ministry of Education. They are responsible for the strategic direction of the VVOB programme. Other stakeholders we are working with are staff in teacher training centres, Resource Centres, District Educational Office, and Community School Committees.

My role
My job title is programme adviser distance learning.
I’ll be working on tasks such as:
- the development of a conceptual framework for distance learning;
- strengthening distance learning providers
- development of a programme for continuous professional development of tutors and mentors in distance education
- identify problems in councelling of students and develop remedial strategies
- use and introduce a Management Information System
- promote research on policy and pedagogical processes on distance education.
-Coordinate networking between colleges, other providers and research centra.