Preparing for my Departure

Let me start by saying that I will most likely not be bloging too frequently. This is because A) I generally don't like blogs and B) I will be in Shirati, Tanzania where internet access is extremely limited. However, I decided to start this blog because I expect there to be some funny stories (mostly at my expense I presume) that I'll probably want to share with classmates, friends, the Clinton School community and anyone else who stops by my blog. What better way to do it?

I will be leaving in just two days for a 10-week trip to Shirati, Tanzania. Once there, I will be working with an organization based in Cincinnati called Village Life Outreach Project: www.villagelifeoutreach.org

They have been around for 6 years now and amongst other things they distribute mosquito nets and water filters to local villagers. My job will be to create the first ever Project Evaluation of both the mosquito net project and the water filter project so that they know how well a job they're doing, how/if they can improve and expand their work, and, hopefully, they can show methodological results of their work to donors proving the quality of the organization.

Tomorrow morning I start on my malaria pills and soon I'll be on a plane from Little Rock to Detroit to Amsterdam to Nairobi. Then a 10-hour driven journey to Shirati: http://www.maplandia.com/tanzania/l-victoria/l-victoria/shirati/ (zoom out some and you'll see exactly where in Tanzania it is, northwest, almost Kenya border, on Lake Victoria).

Well that's it for now. Hopefully I'll post some when I get there telling you about my journey and fondly recounting that first time in my life that I will be called a "mzungu".