Work
It’s been hard work trying to finalise the Strategic Plan after the consultation. Last night, Sunday, I sent the final draft to my boss, the Principal, and his colleagues.
Self-imposed early deadline because I decided to finish by end February rather than end March. This sort of work can drag on and I think about 4 months to do a strategic plan should be ample. Trouble was the deadline produced new information very late!
One issue was a new-ish Act of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar (really), the Public Sector Act 2011. I read the version in English which is full of phrases either written by donors (or Development Partners as they are called) or heavily influenced by them, such as ‘results oriented’, ‘client focused’, ‘participation oriented’, ‘value for money oriented’, ‘decentralisation’, ‘pluralism’ and ‘gender-mainstreaming’. I wonder how this translates in Swahili..
Plus you may be interested in this commitment in the Act:
‘Appointment of CEOs of Agencies to be made by the President on merit after an open and transparent process run by the Central Office’ , qualified by another sub-clause, ‘The President may exempt from merit rule by publication in Official Gazette’. But maybe this is more transparent than some UK processes!
Anyway gist of Act is that all recruitment, promotion and demotion and transfer decisions about staff in public services have to be approved by the Public Services Commission. As the College is a Government college, this threatens to capsize the Strategic Plan which proposes large scale staff recruitment funded by tuition fees. Ah well!
fishing boat paje beach |
Some other mysterious things here became clearer:
· A siren goes off at 7 30 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. every week day; turns out this is to mark the start and finish times of work, although very few if any workplaces have this schedule.
low tide mbweni beach |
· The Nursing Department here has seven nurse tutors with Bachelor’s degrees (most of the rest of the staff are educated only to Diploma level). Five of the graduate nurse tutors are on paid study leave for a year or more this year, doing Master’s degrees. This seemed an excessive number at one time and students complain their staff are not as advertised in the prospectus and cannot explain things. The fees for the study leave are paid buy a donor and the money was only available for a limited time, so it was ‘use it or lose it’..
Recreation
Mostly work but a few good interludes. There was an international music festival here for four days around 9 February. 'Sauti za Busara Zanzibar' (sound of wisdom Zanzibar). I went three evenings, quite interesting local music called Taarab, which is some local instruments plus violins and the music has Arab and Indian influences as well as Western. There is a famous diva from Zanzibar, Bi Kidude, who may be 100 years old and sang, see pic:Bi Kidude |
Also I spent a lot of time at Mbweni Ruins Hotel beach
sunset at Mbweni beach |
remains of 19th century chapel @ Mbweni ruins |
Yesterday, my last Sunday, I went with my boss and his family to a beach on the east side of the island, near Paje. He had been promising this since I arrived so I was glad he got round to it! Picture shows my boss – the tallest chap with the white shirt – helping local fishermen to launch a large heavy boat as the tide came in. I think they had made a ‘dry dock’ pit in the sand to do some repairs. It took a good ¾ hour for about 20 men to shift it on logs! Very entertaining.
how many does it take.. |
It’s been very hot and dust is everywhere in the house as have to have windows open, plus power cuts andr e-emergence of enormous numbers of ant-like creepy crawlies in the house.. Yesterday during a power cut I opened the front door door to try to keep cool. Next thing I know there are crashes and bangs in the bathroom and I chased a hen out of the bathroom, into the bedroom, across the bed and eventually out of the house again via the back. This is the culprit:
lost hen |
Then tonight I got home about 7 pm from leaving do at Mary's to find neighbours at the door asking for their hen back. I'd assumed because I'd seen a cock flying over the wall the hen could also get out of the yard, which has a wall about 2 meters high round it, but apparently not! So the family, mum and two girls, went into the back yard and chased the hen again through the bedroom where it hid under the bed and out through the front door!
Have also had leaving do and this afternoon is final one at Mary’s house with work colleagues.
must now finish packing, power has just gone off so really bad decision to do blog instead of that! it's 9.30 pm so power probably won't be back 'til 10.15, even tho' power cut this a.m.too.oh well!
must now finish packing, power has just gone off so really bad decision to do blog instead of that! it's 9.30 pm so power probably won't be back 'til 10.15, even tho' power cut this a.m.too.oh well!
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