Today was our last day with the Sigli staff. It really was hard to say goodbye.
We had a hands on morning. Katherine reviewed our work plan with key staff. While she was doing that Rob gave the collection a thorough review and I worked with a group of staff at the computers.
My task was to support them in setting up some basic templates in Excel, to help with some performance measures. The thinking is to have a baseline to measure now so we can track the changes that will occur once some of the changes that we are planning to achieve happen. Each time that we work one-on-one with the staff we find more strengths. I worked with Yurni for about an hour and we had a good time together at the computer. We don't have a language in common but were able to understand each other for the most part. We were both showing each other tips in Excel. I give the staff credit for working in Excel (and Word) because they work with the English version and they have to learn all of the English commands. Just think of having to work in Excel and all of your commands were in Bahasa Indonesian. It actually helped me with my language learning this morning. I am getting most of the library terms down...not that it will help me in the market when I am trying to buy food!
Later in the afternoon we met with the Bapeda (the lead politician for the area) to thank him for letting us work with the staff and to show our appreciation for the opportunity we have been given in Sigli. He was equally gracious and permitted us to have a photograph. The other team was with us for this meeting. They had a good morning with their team too, so we were all on a bit of a high.
The afternoon was spent working on the various reports that are due and wrapping up details. For dinner, we went out to our favourite outdoors restaurant. Manon had a hamburger (which was really more like a roast beef sandwich)...this was the first time we had ventured past the regular satay and noodles. We had so much fun with her ordering the hamburger that we documented it with copious photographs...I even took a video! (I think this shows you how little it takes to amuse us these days!)
We head back to Banda tomorrow and slowly begin the journey home.
Dawna.
We had a hands on morning. Katherine reviewed our work plan with key staff. While she was doing that Rob gave the collection a thorough review and I worked with a group of staff at the computers.
My task was to support them in setting up some basic templates in Excel, to help with some performance measures. The thinking is to have a baseline to measure now so we can track the changes that will occur once some of the changes that we are planning to achieve happen. Each time that we work one-on-one with the staff we find more strengths. I worked with Yurni for about an hour and we had a good time together at the computer. We don't have a language in common but were able to understand each other for the most part. We were both showing each other tips in Excel. I give the staff credit for working in Excel (and Word) because they work with the English version and they have to learn all of the English commands. Just think of having to work in Excel and all of your commands were in Bahasa Indonesian. It actually helped me with my language learning this morning. I am getting most of the library terms down...not that it will help me in the market when I am trying to buy food!
Later in the afternoon we met with the Bapeda (the lead politician for the area) to thank him for letting us work with the staff and to show our appreciation for the opportunity we have been given in Sigli. He was equally gracious and permitted us to have a photograph. The other team was with us for this meeting. They had a good morning with their team too, so we were all on a bit of a high.
The afternoon was spent working on the various reports that are due and wrapping up details. For dinner, we went out to our favourite outdoors restaurant. Manon had a hamburger (which was really more like a roast beef sandwich)...this was the first time we had ventured past the regular satay and noodles. We had so much fun with her ordering the hamburger that we documented it with copious photographs...I even took a video! (I think this shows you how little it takes to amuse us these days!)
We head back to Banda tomorrow and slowly begin the journey home.
Dawna.
2 comments:
have a safe and (as much as possible) comfortable trip home.
Say hi to Steve for me.
Matt's having a good time on Zanzibar, no worries.
See you at the airport on Sunday.
xoxo
What a great adventure. And what great good work as well. Have a safe trip home - Douglas
Post a Comment