Day 85 to 91 (25th to 31st July 2011)

The week started for me in sunny Dakar, Senegal recovering from jet lag. I spent most of the day sleeping after going into the office in the morning to see my old finance and admin team. A few of them are still around. There are some old timers in the office, people who have been with the organization for like twenty years, fifteen years and so on. They are in a new office and a lot more staff than when I was here. It was lovely to see them after six years

I heard about Amy Winehouse death early this week. I was so sad. What a waste of talent. May God have mercy on her Soul?  I asked myself whether she has fulfilled her purpose in life, a life that was cut short at such a tender age. This made me think again about our purpose in life. Why were we born? None of us ever chose to be born. When we began to become conscious about your-self, we don’t remember where we were before then, nothing at all. You start living life, putting plans in place along the way and then one day you die. Is that the reason we came into this world? How many people fulfill this reason by the time they die? These questions made me decide to research and write on purpose. If you are reading this and are interested in what I have to say, you would need to read my article on We CAN blog.

I had to prepare for my training session for Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s purely finance and not leadership for a group of fifteen programme staff from the different offices in West Africa, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Niger and Senegal. This is a good initiation into the world of consultancy.

I finished my training today, very exhausting but had very positive feedback from the participants. I am thinking of writing a finance training manual that reflects where we are now in terms of new initiative. I’m a bit wary about taking on another initiative in the remaining half of my leave though. I will try and put some structure down now it’s fresh in my head, then would think about finalizing it later. One thing though, training people is one of my purpose in life. I love imparting knowledge and skills to empower and equip people. I feel so content when I hear people talk about what new or different thing they have learnt.

I’m straight unto preparing for another project that I’ve been asked to do in Liberia. This time a review of a project implemented with donor funds. It’s nice to have unplanned income. All glory be to God. I think I might really like this consultancy thing, work for two weeks earn nearly a full month’s salary and take the remaining two weeks off?

It’s been an amazing week in Dakar. It’s funny I don’t feel much sense of déjà vu because the RC is not in the same office, there are a lot more people than before and the environment is much different. There are still most of my finance team around and some other programme and logistics team. It sure was great to spend time with them all.

Dakar, the city though is changed a lot. It’s dirtier, more high rise building which I have to say was already starting before I left in 2004. Though for a Country that do not manufacture or export, there are questions on how and where the money comes from. Politically, there are rumbling of citizen dis-satisfaction with the intent of the President, Mr. Abdoulaye Wade to change the constitution to pave way for him to be President for life (he is 85 years old!) and subsequently hand over power to his son. I don’t know what is wrong with our Africa leaders. They get intoxicated with power, don’t want to leave and want to make it a family affair. It’s great though to see the Citizen’s of a nation take action against unconstitutional and unfair government practice especially in this part of Africa. I give Kudos to Malawi for their stand as well.

I have been staying with my friend Begay and it’s been good spending time together. She is a We CAN Board member as well. She is the founder of Life Solutions and they’ve started wonderful initiatives to equip and empower people. Do check them out on the web; www.lifesolution.co.uk.

I am sitting at the Accra International Airport updating my journal today the 1^st of Aug and the time is about quarter past twelve mid-day. The Airport is quite nice and fully air-conditioned the minute you step into the building. I’m reading the ‘One minute Entrepreneur’ by Ken Blanchard and Don Hutson. It’s a very easy read and you pick up some tips and some interesting quotes. One says, ‘you get what you want in life if you help other people get what they want’, another one says, ‘Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation’. Although for this one I think not necessarily all the time, it is possible for success to occur when you create the opportunity. Think about Bill Gates, he changed the world’s view and the use of personal computers. He did not wait for the opportunity to come but revolutionize the computer world.

Talking about opportunity, I saw the set of women in Ashilem market in Dakar making beautifully designed hats from wired like string. I don’t know what to call the mesh, yes I think that is it wire like mesh. One can squeeze the hat and it springs back. It brings to mind entrepreneurship. It’s a new kind of hat and might become quite marketable.

On our trip to Ashilem, we went to the food section of the market. Oh my word, I don’t know whether flies were having a meeting that day but the way there settled amongst the food being sold might put me off for life if not that I like food so much. Take a look if you can see them in the meeting inside the fish calabash!