The evaluation has started.

After months of preparation here in the Congo, and over one and a half year in New York City with some several-month long trips to the Congo, the evaluation started! Raul had the honor to start with his Haut Katanga team yesterday. I leave tomorrow morning for the field with my Sud Kivu team. It is a very special feeling. After so much work, ups and downs, it is really going to start!

The last two weeks were nuts regarding work. Therefore the absence of posts. Given the absence of internet and for large part phonecoverage in the days and weeks to come, don't expect many posts. If you want to get in contact:

• Phone with Zain-coverage: +243998399330
• Phone with Vodacom-coverage: +243810930927
• Satelite phone (always on from 8-820am and 6-620pm): +8821643340723

All alone in Bukavu.

After living together, working together, and sharing lots of ups and downs together for almost three months, Raul left me last week. I am all alone in Bukavu. In the months to come Raul will be responsible for the evaluation in the provinces Haut Katanga and Tanganyika; me for the provinces Maniema and Sud Kivu.

Before leaving however, the Sud Kivu and Maniema team that we trained the week before invited us for a goodbye-Raul drink. We had (yet again) a great evening together, which ended with them giving us two wooden carvings. The first is a hunter that carries a prey; the second a hunter that carries a wounded collegue. The first symbolizes how we have a job to do, the second how we will have to work together in the months to come.

Getting the work done, ...

by working together and helping each other.