First Full Week and a New House

Hey All

Sorry for the big gap between substantive blog reports; it’s been busy around here.

First of all, let me get some business items out of the way.

1. Until I get my own PO Box (it’s $20 a year, but you have to apply for it) I’ll be using the Peace Corps PO Box in Maseru. I updated the address in the sidebar.

2. I generally have un-interrupted cell phone service. I also have internet access, but I have to pay per MB for internet service, which means video Skyping is free for you, but will probably cost me $0.50/minute. Just voice Skyping will be cheaper, so just send me a text and I’ll let you know if I’m free. 6pm to 10pm my time is best, which is noon to 4pm on the East Coast.

3. If you send music please don’t send music you got from iTunes because they don’t work without the password. If you send a CD with MP3s it works great. Don’t bother with the plastic cases because they break in the mail and scratch the CDs. CDs are resilient in envelopes by themselves.

Ok, on to more interesting things.

Last night was my first night in my new house. I got the keys Thursday, but didn’t have sheets or food or any of those necessities. It’s a pretty big 3 bedroom 2 ½ bath with spacious yards, lots of steel on the windows and razor wire on the cinder block fence. It’s in need of some fresh paint and some yard work, but it’s safe and in a quiet neighborhood so I’m pretty excited about it. The only furniture in the house is a bed, so I’m sitting on my old bathing tub to write this. I’m hoping to mooch some furniture from the Embassy or from other expats, but I’m new to town and don’t really know any. It might be a while before I have a chair.

My first full week at work was good. I’m still trying to piece together what exactly I’ll be doing for MCA, but some of it is coming into place. MCA is an “entity” that was setup by the Government of Lesotho to manage all of the projects that are part of the MCC Compact. I am part of the Infrastructure program, which entails water infrastructure and health infrastructure development. Water infrastructure development has a number of components, but it looks like I’ll be working primarily with the rural portion of it. We will be funding the construction of 250 village water supplies and 10,000 pit latrines (the government will be funding up to another 20,000). The rural water supply and sanitation project is supposed to affect 125,000 people, which is over 5% of the population of Lesotho.

Now, the design of the system will be done by district engineers or consulting engineers, while a consultant company out of Ottawa (Canada that is) will be doing the project management portion of the work. They will be working directly with the Department of Rural Water Supply (Lesotho government) who will be doing designs and the contractors who will be building. So, MCA is not doing design work or lower level project management, we are there to do the high level program management. We are the customer. I will be involved in helping to decide high level program management, including designing contracts, reviewing reports, doing some site visits to check on project status and hopefully doing some design reviews.

I’m not sure if that really clarifies anything, but feel free to ask questions if you’ve got any. I’ll let you know more as I figure it out myself.

In other news, to reiterate, we received a Self-Help Grant from the US Embassy to put in a solar power system for Sefako High School. The ceremony is November 4th, so I’ll know more about how that will workout when it happens. It will be about 650W of solar panels, a 2kW pure-sine wave inverter, batteries and regulators. It should be enough to have consistent and reliable energy for the printers and 2 laptops in the office, and 2 desktop computers in the library as well as lighting for the staff room, office and library. It’s about $6000 worth of equipment and I’ll get to head up to help them install the system and get it going.

I also just submitted a Peace Corps Partnership Grant to help get science equipment for Sefako High School. Liz Fay has started raising funds with her high school, and hopefully by February or March we’ll get to put in a big order to get chemicals, microscopes and other equipment. A volunteer will be replacing me at the high school in January, so they will be heavily involved in getting the lab setup. If you’re interested in helping support the science lab, please let me know and we can talk about how you can help.

I think that’s it for now. I hope all is well at home. Things are good here. Cheers.

Oh, and I'll get some pictures up of the new house this week.