My usual ramblings

Well thank god it's not raining today. It has been pouring down in this place almost all of last week and the entire weekend, making it very difficult to get outside and do things.

I spent last week in Salang doing a monitoring and evaluation of our WatSan program. Marty (our Monitoring and Evaluation delegate) came over from Banda Aceh and we had a week-long program of beneficiary surveys, GPS-ing of the location of our latrines, meetings with field staff and compiling information. It was good fun, especially going around to the households and interviewing people in the pouring rain, and teaching the field officers how to use the GPS. And playing frisbee with the local kids on the road. In a few weeks we'll compile all our info and make a pretty report for the big wigs.

This week we've properly kickstarted a revamp of how we procure, warehouse and deliver all our WatSan materials, in conjunction with our Logistics and Finance people. The reason behind it is to be more efficient, in order to meet our December 08 finishing deadline. Currently we're only building about 15 latrines a month; to finish on time we have to build close to 60. So lots of work to do.

So in logistics terms, instead of sending over septic tanks and cement and other goodies by the very unreliable Sinabang ferry, and getting a lot of other materials locally (either through suppliers here in Sinabang, or supplied by the community which is cheap but really slow), we're going to get everything from Medan in much larger quantities and stick it on a landing barge that can deliver it directly to our field site, where we'll build a big new warehouse. Then we don't have to truck everything from Sinabang on crappy roads, which takes forever. We only have to truck it from the port to the warehouse and to each household. Should be much faster and more cost efficient. I'm pretty excited at the prospect of it actually, hoping to have it up and running by January.

But what I'm more excited about is going to Bali on Friday - yay! I am gatecrashing the wedding of my friend Rob, well it's not his wedding but he's going, so I'm gonna be his hot date. Should be great fun. I've had lots of fun and games getting tickets back though, because my original return flights were cancelled, bastards... so it's ended up costing me a lot more! Still, it will be worth it for all the good fun we're gonna have, plus getting off this island is always a good idea, and I'm also looking forward to wearing shorts, and just bathers to swim in. Hoorah!

Not much else to add really. Bye.