[Okay, actually, it's only technically 50% of what I've been working towards, since I've been working on 2 project. But still...]
"Starting a Lifetime of Savings: Teaching the Practice of Saving to Ugandan Youth", my baby, is actually taking off!
Tomorrow at 8:00 AM in Ntinda, Kampala, Uganda, will begin the 5-day training of 35 enumerators (surveyors). I will lead the walk-through of the Training Manual - a 50-page beast of a document which has kept me up working until between 1:30 and 4:30am for about 7 of the past 9 nights, and explains every single one of the 265 questions on the survey I've been developing for the past months.
Next time some annoying person tries to get you to take a survey, and you consider giving them the finger, making a derogatory comment about their mother or putting your size [INSERT YOUR SHOE SIZE HERE] [INSERT YOUR PREFERRED FOOTWEAR HERE] up their [INSERT THE MODE OF ENTRY FOR COLONOSCOPY HERE], just remember this: somewhere, behind this survey, is a guy or girl whose blood and sweat is behind that survey. And, at the time that you are thinking about how annoying it is that said survey is going to make you miss the first sweet notes of Massive Attacks's "Teardrop on Fire" as House begins on TV, that poor survey-developer probably looks like this:
last Thursday, ~3am, while Cup of Coffee #5 was brewing, after I made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror (I've decided the Bushy Baseline Beard will remain until the completion of the survey)
After the finish of the training on Friday, it's FIELD TIME!
Saturday will be the last day of mad scrambling, last-minute survey printing and logistics-arranging, preparing to head out to the 240 clubs we've selected for the project.
The Enumerator Team Leaders applying the club-exclusion criteria we (I) developed for determining the pool of clubs from which to randomly select:
The Team Leaders sorting the selected clubs' contact information in preparation for beginning scheduling-calls:
Sunday will find me on my way, to Mbarara or Mbale (TBD), to oversee the actual surveying. I'll be in that location for probably the first week, and then for the latter two weeks of the surveying, I'll be rotating between Mbarara, Mbale, Mukono and Arua, to check in on and oversee the surveying process in each of those districts. As you can see in the below map... I'll be traveling pretty far and wide in the coming weeks!
And as soon as the surveying (of 2880 members of 240 youth clubs) finishes, it will be INTERVENTION TIME!
[No, no, not THAT type of intervention... though it's not unreasonable to expect that this survey would drive me to alcoholism]
The week of July 5th will be the Training of Trainers (ohhhh development-jargon!) - in which we will train about 25 people to go out and teach each of the 120 clubs randomly selected from the 240 in the ten-session curriculum I've ALSO developed. Aaaaaaaand hard on the heels of that training will be... MORE FIELD TIME! "Field trips" are taking on a whole new meaning in my adult life.
Again I'll (probably) be traipsing around these four districts, overseeing and checking in on the trainers as they deliver my baby (heh...).
Aaand then, the last week of July is an IPA training I'll regretfully be forced to attend for a week in Kenya. Heyo!
Aaaand then, the second half of August my superawesomeamazing family comes to visit! VACATION. So necessary. Though I'm not sure how relaxing I can really expect it to be... those of you who have met my brother can probably imagine the full-time job I will have trying to keep him from trying to kidnap a lion cub or train a hippo to moonwalk.
Aaaaand then in either September or October is an IPA research conference, which I will (again, regretfully) be mandated to attend for a week in New York. East Coast family, here I come!
Aaaaaand then it's basically December, and I'm back in California for a few weeks of R&R.
Aaaaaaand then I'm back in Uganda in January, with only a couple months to go before it's time for the endline survey for SaLSa.
Aaaaaaaand then.... I'm DONE! (well, somewhere in there I'm actually going to have to get my other project - SaveMoRe off the ground. Details...)
So basically, I'm pretty much done with this job. See you all soon!
And now for a couple pictures that don't have anything to do with anything:
Thank you Umeme (Uganda's staggeringly incompetent power company) for deciding to do this yesterday while I was in the office trying to print the enumerator manuals... which is hard to do WITHOUT ELECTRICITY:
This made me giggle (I haven't been sleeping much lately):
Next time you're whining about your American (or other Developed World) taxes, just remember to be thankful that at least your government is competent enough to use those taxes to not allow things like this to happen:
This made me giggle (I haven't been sleeping much lately):
Next time you're whining about your American (or other Developed World) taxes, just remember to be thankful that at least your government is competent enough to use those taxes to not allow things like this to happen:
Wow, I didn't notice this the first 43 times I read this blog posting, but did you see that there's a big puddle of water on the ground in the picture of the linemen working on the electricity? Even I know that's not a good thing! I'm surprised sparks didn't fly...sparks and people that is!
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