October 20th - Back to work

Last week I joined my lovely fiancée in Bali for some much needed R&R. We had a wonderful time as we first spent a couple of days relaxing on the beach in an all-inclusive hotel in Sanur. We then stayed in Ubud before moving on to the Gili Islands on neighbouring Lombok. Ubud, with its scenic rice terraces, numerous temples and traditional dance performances, is an enchanting place that I would recommend to anyone. On the more remote Gili Islands, we enjoyed snorkelling and diving in the turquoise waters. We did our deep adventure dive there and had our first encounter with a white tip shark and later a small black tip. That was really exciting! Besides that, though much of the corals had died as a result of global warming, we saw copious amount of fish and many turtles. Finally, we spent our last day before returning to Banda Aceh in the touristy Kuta in Bali and barely had enough time to do some shopping and watch the sun set over the famous sea temple in Tanah Lot.

Being back in Banda Aceh meant going back to work and being thrown right back into the thick of it! With a new quarterly report due by the end of the week, time was pressing. To make matters worse, being knocked out for a day as a result of eating a bad pizza – it must have been the cheese – added to the pressure! I have nevertheless managed to update the information for my part of the report, including writing one and editing another case story, and to weave all parts into a coherent whole. But there is never but one thing to do at the office!

In addition to the report, I have been working on the final instructions for the Spatial Information and Mapping Centre (SIM). This should have been ready by now, but at the last minute the suggestion was put forward to combine CDR information with information from other departments such as health and Child Youth Protection and Development (CYPD) into a single map. This is a good idea since these programmes are also funded by Stichting Vluchteling (SV), the Netherlands Refugee Foundation. Unfortunately, however, this means the map will not be ready in time for this report.

In addition, we are now working on bringing back the number of databases from two back to one. I have developed and used my own database in SPSS and have gathered information using my own forms. This was necessary for immediate monitoring and evaluation purposes as the design of the main database, which runs in MySQL, was still being elaborated. Now, the trick is to incorporate all the information we have collected thus far into a single database without loosing anything. Obviously, both databases have their specific advantages. The main database is great for generating reports and makes it easy to update information from the field. SPSS, on the other hand, allows for a multitude of statistical tests and can produce a myriad of graphs and charts. Luckily, both databases can import and export data into Excel, so the task at hand ‘simply’ consists of adding fields to the MySQL database and matching the presentation of the data in Excel so that is can be transferred from one programme to the other and still make sense. This also makes it possible to take advantage of the strengths of both programmes.

Finally, though I had no part in this, there was bit of a panic about the financial aspects of the CDR programme. Some concern arose with regards to the low amounts of money that are actually being spent. The truth of the matter is that the run up to the implementation of the community projects was indeed very long. Much time was spent on sensitisation, Community Participatory Assessment Workshops (CPAWs), forming Community Development Boards (CDBs) and developing community proposals. Only in the past couple of months have significant sums been spent as communities received the first instalments to commence with the implementation of their projects and they are only now requesting second payments. So good progress is being made which, regrettably, could not yet be reflected in the previous report. But there has therefore been somewhat of a rush to verify and approve community financial reports to boost the amount spent with the next round of transactions. For the rest, for some time now, the CDR teams have been busy searching for additional communities in which to start projects in order to spend the entire available budget (not all funds have been committed yet). As was mentioned in my last log, the CDR teams have already come as far as establishing CDBs in new communities.

That is it for this post folks; I hope you visit my Blog again next week!

Take care,

Alex