1 week to go!

In one week's time I'll be flying out to Congo (via Nairobi and Kigali) and starting what will be quite a different life to what I'm currently leading. I'm in the middle of my briefing at the moment, which means that I'm discovering a lot more about the place and the programme.

I'm going with Tearfund (www.tearfund.org), which is an amazing organisation. I've worked with them before in the UK, and love their values and the way that they're always seeking the best way that they can serve the people that they work with. I also trust them, which is a big factor when about to go and work overseas for the first time. I suppose I should start saying 'our' and 'we' now that I'm part of the organisation!

The place I'll be based at is called Kindu, which is a town of about 200,000 people right by the river Congo. It's in Maniema province, which is more central than North & South Kivu but still in the East. It takes about 3 hours to fly there from Bukavu/Goma - hopefully over some gorgeous scenery!






My role is as a Project Support Officer, which is a support role to the Area Co-ordinator. It's a training role, where I'll be able to get experience in many of the different aspects of relief work - from logistics, HR, donor proposals, budgets etc. The Kindu team is quite small, with only one other international staff member and about 21 national staff members. Communication is something that I've feeling quite apprehensive about - I have some French and although I've been trying to learn Swahili the first couple of months are going to be tough until my language is at a good enough level. I've found before though that you can have a very good relationship with someone even if you can't speak the same language - after all, 95% of communication is non-verbal! It also means that in a year's time I'll hopefully be fairly fluent, which will be very useful for any future work.

The food also sounds like it'll be quite varied. Apparently, there's a lot of fish and meat, with rice, sweet potatoes, chapati and, I imagine, manioc. Fruit sounds fairly plentiful (I'll have to learn to like mangoes and bananas!) although vegetables might be harder to come by. I'm glad that the food will probably be ok, I like looking forward to meals rather than struggling to eat them! There's a couple of restaurants in the town, as well as a bar, so it sounds like there's some social scene.

All will be a lot clearer in a week or so when I'm actually there!!!