Training & Object #2.

Training

I know; there haven't been posts in a while and doing a post on Object #2 is a very easy way out; i.e. nothing substantive. In brief, Raul and I are busy preparing a training. From September to August next year - so for over 11 months - there will be around 90 people working for the evaluation throughout Eastern Congo. All of them have to be trained. The first 22 will start training next Monday for six days; these twenty-two are the first wave for the provinces Sud Kivu and Maniema. Raul and I will be doing the training so we have been working hard on putting a training schedule together that includes:

• Us presenting the project itself (goal of the evaluation, why a behavioral measure, etc.);
• Preparing and training from hardcopies;
• Training on how to use a PDA (most of the forms will be filled out on PDAs: saving literally 100,000s of pages and decreasing data-entry mistakes);
• Training how to use the GPS devices we'll give them;
• Training on how to drive a motorbike;
• Training the supervisors on how to use the laptops we'll give them to upload the data;
• And all of this should be combined with discussions, games, etc.

All in all, it's really great fun!

Object #2

Our house is not connected to the city's water system (which if it would probably wouldn't work well anyway). As a result, we have two 10,000 liter bags of water lying outside, right next to the house. Every so many weeks a big truck refills them. Interesting, I think. So hereby Object #2:

UNICEF? I do wonder whether a school somewhere in the DRC now lacks water (and yes, those are Converse shoes-footprints).