Sorry for the long interruption in blog posts. I haven’t been on my usual schedule.
On Tuesday afternoon the Peace Corps picked me up in Ha Sefako and moved me and all my stuff to Maseru. I’ve been living at the Peace Corps training center since then, waiting for the lease for my new house to be signed and for new burglar bars to be installed. Best case scenario I’ll be moving in early next week, but more likely it will be late next week.
More importantly, I started my new job on Wednesday. My job description is still being defined, but it looks like it’s going to be high level project management. Millennium Challenge Account – Lesotho (MCA-L) has a few big water infrastructure projects that are supposed to be completed by September, 2013. One of them is the Metalong Dam Project, which will provide bulk water for residential and industrial purposes to the greater Maseru area and larger outlying towns. There is also a lot of pipe network extension and rehabilitation in peri-urban areas. And it looks like I will be involved primarily on the rural water supply project. Goals are to complete 250 village water supply systems and build 10,000 Ventilated, Improved Pit Latrines (VIPs). Additional donor and government assistance could boost the total number of VIPs to 30,000. The rural water project is supposed to affect 125,000 people.
MCA-L will be working with government paid District Engineers for designs and has hired consultants out of Canada to monitor the drawings and manage the contractors. My job will be to do some of MCA’s reviews of project design files and interface with the consultants on projects. It’s a little outside of my comfort zone, which means I’ll get to learn a lot.
That’s the quick version of what’s going on now. It’s 180 degrees from what I was doing in Ha Sefako, and it’s been fun to look at engineering drawings and meet the multi-national team that I’ll be working with. There’s a lot of work to go around, so I’ll be quite busy. When I get moved into my new place I’ll post some pictures and give a more colorful description of what’s going on here.
Hope all is well with everybody at home.
Cheers.
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2 comments:
So the thicken plots, ah? And all your stuff is in a pile at Peace Corps, ah? Got a note from Mel for materials; gave her my best site: http://www.ttms.org/
If she can download, bueno; if not, I can try attaching; or, I can burn the files.
Motorcycle is garaged for the winter, I'm afraid. So it goes. Spring springs eternal. Hasta.
phil, being a part of 125,000 people receiving decent water is, well, a big deal. i'm sure you were making a difference before, but from the sounds of it, perhaps maybe you will now be more aware of the fact you're making a difference. sometimes that is needed.
i'm proud of you and glad to hear of what sounds like a good change.
love from the feves,
anna
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