So I'm back home and all settled back into my regular routine...well, not quite. I'm so badly jet-lagged that I only get to bed at 3am and sleep until 12:30! While this schedule may be all well and good in Vancouver, I'm ending up wasting most of the day! Its almost 1am here so after this blog, I'm going to down a warm glass of milk and try to get to sleep.
I met today with some EWB project members to catch up on what I'd missed while I was away. The major TD4SUD (project EXCO) meeting apparently went very well, except that the City of Cape Town has planned to go ahead with the upgrades to the project site, Nyanga Interchange and this may change things quite a bit. Unfortunately, they wont let us in on their plans so we have to be flexible enough to work around them. Also, this pushes back our timeline quite considerably! Due to their upgrades only transpiring in 6-8 months, where does that leave the traders during that time? Will they be able or willing to invest in the stoves we are subsidizing if they know they are going to be (temporarily) displaced in the near future? I guess we have to keep pushing The City for more information until we can make some solid plans.
It seems we are going out to the site again this Saturday morning (jet-lag allowing). This is great since I've been admittedly a little, well, terrified! I know it sounds crazy but I'm still shaken by the story I mentioned in the previous blog. Even walking down the street out here in the university-suburb of Rondebosch has my heart pounding in my chest, grasping my handbag and keeping my head down. I really think that the trip on Saturday will be cathartic, a way of "getting back on the horse" so to speak. The great thing is that other project members I saw today (who are coming along on Saturday) completely sympathize and understand my feelings. (Thanks guys, you know you're awesome!) I will definitely be letting you know how it goes.
Check out some of these blogs about how I came to terms with working on the streets of Nyanga this year.
On another note, my technical leader, Matt has taken up a vacation-work position at an energy-efficient stove manufacturer, Honeycomb for the Summer! These guys have been hard at work developing us a stove to meet our (the traders') requirements! They are extremely cool and I am thrilled to have had a sneaky hand in setting up the vac-work opportunity for this bright-eyed first year who has shown time and again that he totally rocks at getting things done! I'm not letting any secrets out just yet, but I'm expecting great things from this young man in the near future of this project!
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