Kufunda week 2

Its the end of week 2 (10 days in) and we're starting to get better
with our fairly basic cooking facilities. It has taken a bit of
adjustment cooking dinner on 3 small electric rings that are shared
with the family we are living next to, after having the facilities of
oven, grill, 4 ring gas cooktop, electric kettle, microwave, blender,
toaster, and outdoor bbq. Unfortunately no wok stir fries for us
then! We seem to have cracked the maize meal porridge (read gruel!)
with peanut butter for breakfast; omlette is good for lunch and dinner
is mainly chicken/ bean/ pumpkin/combination stew with sadza (more
maize meal, but thick like mashed potato) or rice. Ali has also got
handy with making a sweetened fried bread that is a bit like a large
scone which is also pretty good with stew.

This week we have started to put our fingers into a few different pies
with respect to different projects and figuring out where we can be
most effective. The Kufunda team had their first review for the year
that looked at the projects they have been working on, how they have
been progressing and how people feel about their work.

A couple of things have become evident to us: firstly there is a need
for better project planning and project management; and secondly that
people are wearing 'too many jackets' and have spread themselves
thinly across a lot of different projects.
To this effect Ali & I are going to write and deliver a project
management course for the team here & provide support to help them
integrate the training into their work practices. Good project mgt
should hopefully help to clear up the 'too many jackets' issue as
people better understand resource allocation.
As a result of some of our comments with the different project teams
during the review, we've had a couple of evening sessions with a few
people to help them get their team plans together a bit better. In
addition to the boxing 3 times this week we've been pretty busy!

On Saturday we went out to the farmers market with Daiton & Simba (see
next post) and today we were expecting a trip to see a football match,
but this got cancelled & we went to Mbezi Game Park, about 30 mins
walk up the road (insert website). The grounds there are lovely, a
proper little bit of luxury if it comes to the point where we need it.
We had lunch (giraffe burger for both of us!) and then took a guided
horse ride through the park to see Zebra, Impala and Giraffe. We met
the owner who showed us around the site a bit more, and ended up
driving us home as his wife wanted to come & check out Kufunda, and
she ended up leaving with some of David's mushrooms! Definitely going
to go back there for canoeing & fishing in weekends to come.

All up a busy week, but good to realise early on where we can be
useful to the team here and the work that they do beyond Kufunda.

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