Tania.co.za

I am supposed to be on holiday, but...

...as I expected, it's not going to be that easy to just up and leave. I have to do my referrals recon; I have to renew some domains, and I have to write two course proposals, not to mention the fact that I still need to finish off development of the feedback database, capture the feedback from previous courses, print additional certificates, and write a couple of training reports. So I think I will be in the office nice and early tomorrow... which is a Saturday. What I did manage to do today (besides dropping the Princess off at the airport) was to get the details of two special additional Project Management courses onto the Web site.

The one is an Intensive Part-Time Course in Project Management spread over four Saturdays from 23 February to 15 March 2008. This course has been developed in response to the demand for training in Project Management outside normal working hours. The approach is based on my experience of what works best to get as much value as possible out of the shortest possible time, and on feedback received from numerous short customised courses which I have presented to a variety of industries and to people in various positions, from junior administrative assistants to CEOs.

The other one is an Intensive Hands-On Course in Microsoft Project from 31 March–2 April 2008. The rationale behind this is that only two certification courses in Microsoft Project have been scheduled for 2008, so this additional hands-on course has been scheduled in response to requests for a Microsoft Project course earlier in the year, covering the same content, but without tests and homework. Whereas prior formal training in Project Management is a prerequisite for the certification course, this earlier course does not have the same prerequisite. It includes an overview of Project Management fundamentals for those who have not yet been exposed to the key concepts and terminology.

I will be offering training in PSNext later in the year as well, and I definitely want to develop a course in IT Project Management. With luck I will be presenting the first of the IT-specific courses in Q2 in Malawi.

Workaholic? Me? Never!

The work which was planned...

There's a saying in Project Management that goes something like this:

During the past few months, I have developed the following corollaries:

Life after StarCamp

I am still surfing the good mood wave brought about by StarCamp. Some tidbits which have come up...

New music venue

There's a new live music place in Cape Town called The Assembly opening tonight (learned about it via Evan Milton's mini-feed on Facebook). Two of my favourite local bands, Lark and UnitR, are performing, but I couldn't feasibly go, because I was going to be doing some tutoring in Microsoft Project for two students tomorrow, so, with the event starting tonight at 21h00, I would get to bed too late. Now one of the students suddenly has to go for surgery, so the tuition has been postponed to the first week of January. However, in the meanwhile I had undertaken to nurse and cook for a sick friend (who has the lousy habit of not acting sick enough, but getting up to go out for meetings). So I can't really go out anyway...

Holiday...?

With that training postponed to early January, I am going to have a rather diced-up holiday, unfortunately, because although I will be going away for a couple of days at the river, Marius and I have undertaken to spend two days working on ProjectManagement.co.za's strategy just after Christmas -- and it's about time I did something about all my dormant domains, so I was planning on putting some work into that over the New Year. I also need to get into my PSNext database and populate it with some credible-looking dummy data for demo purposes. (Not to mention the fact that the ProjectManagement.co.za Web site needs a complete overhaul...) And it looks like I'll be presenting a Project Management course to one of Cape Town's better-known environmental/landscaping consultancies starting on the 9th of January, so preparations for that will fill out the remaining days. Besides, I have set aside three full days to properly clean and tidy my flat. Oh,and then I promised to meet with Joey and Dave too! (I am getting the impression that people are starting to apply that 'If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person' principle to me.) Besides that, I have at least two dinner dates (that's excluding the 27Dinner), one with an old school friend and one with a gentleman to whom I lent two of my favourite CDs some months ago when I was in Johannesburg on business. And I want them back! Not to mention the fact that Christopher has yet to find out that I have scheduled a beach party in celebration of his birthday on 1January...

So, after these holidays I will really need another holiday. I am considering flying somewhere next year just after the accommodation rates at resorts have gone down so that I will be so far from the office that it will be impossible to come in to deal with crises!

Plans for early 2008

The demand for Project Management and project software training courses has increased to such an extent that I am going to schedule at least two new Cape Town courses for Q1 of 2008, and the rest of the plans still have to be worked out. I will try to arrange one Microsoft Project course running over 3 consecutive days, including a morning of Project Management theory on the first day. The other course will be run on Saturdays over a period of a month, and will include a balance of theory, group exercises and homework, and Time and Cost Management using software. The Saturday arrangement is specifically to accommodate the numerous enquiries I've had for part-time and after-hours courses, which we have not been able to cater for before. The classes will be small, creating maximum opportunity for individual attention. (If you want to know more, send me your details and I will let you know as soon as exact dates and fees are available.)

The last RoseBlood gig out in Ceres was quite successful, but it wasn't with the full band, and the costs and risks were lower than with the first gig. Having seen the effects of inadequate planning and ill-defined roles on the first concert, I offered to assist in planning the next one using a more formal Project Management approach, so that Roelof's new girlfriend/manager can have a solid basis from which to make the arrangements. I need to create a new project file anyway for one of the exercises for the course which I teach at the university, so I might as well use this real project as a basis for that. Events make good examples for such purposes, because the technical knowledge required for laymen to visualise the activities tends to be less than, for example, those involved in building an aeroplane.

Got to go now. Bye.

In the spirit of permissible language evolution...

...I have decided to allow myself the occasional liberty of ending a clause with a preposition.

I am uncertain, however, whether the preposition in the sentence above should not perhaps have been 'in'.

Eendag

Eendag in die middel van 'n bedrywige winterkwartaal wanneer mense toustaan by die wasmasjiene, sal ek my woonstel aan die kant maak ter ere van jou, en blomme rangskik, en die bottel wyn waarvan niemand weet nie, oopmaak, en slaai met neute en AB se Black Gold en pangebraaide hoender voorberei, en kaalvoet afkom met die trap om jou persoonlik by Portaal C se ingang te kom haal.

As die Here wil.

Eendag tydens 'n netwerkbyeenkoms wanneer die helfte van die deelnemers via 'n wireless connection Twitter en blog, sal ek my Relationship Status op Facebook verander, en jou naam daar aanbring.

As die Here wil.

Eendag op 'n besige Saterdagaand tydens die Woordfees terwyl mense sukkel om by ons verby te stap, sal ek jou lank en innig op die trappe van Bohemia soen.

As die Here wil.

Eendag wanneer niemand anders daar is nie, net jy, sal ek my slaapkamerdeur oopmaak.

As die Here wil.

StarCamp

StarCamp was very nice. (Sorry, I'm all out of intellectual-sounding adjectives.) The venue was perfect, the company was perfect, and some of the talks, like those by Phil Barrett, Ian and others were actually quite good too. To be honest, I didn't care all that much if one or two of them dragged on a bit on topics which were of no interest to me whatsoever, because the nice thing about an unconference is that you can fiddle around on your laptop, fall asleep (like Paul!), get some tea or go smack someone in a Wii boxing game next door without feeling like you've committed some violation of protocol. Of course, there are some basic rules of etiquette that do apply, but they are not vastly different from those you should adhere to when some friends come over for pizza.

I went out with Dennis, Simon, Adrianna, David (well, one of the Davids) and Neil (the other Neil) after the first day, and with a much bigger crowd at the end of the second day. Jonathan (the main Jonathan) found the discovery of my longstanding desire to own a Captain Janeway uniform perfectly entertaining, and made all sorts of psychological deductions from it. We all argued about when Descartes had lived and were all proven wrong.

Simon, Neil, Jeremy. (Graham's fingers in the background.)

I don't think one should have StarCamp too often, though. About once every second or third weekend would be often enough.

How much does it cost to go to StarCamp?

Dennis just asked me the price, so in case there is anyone else who is confused: This is not a conference. It's an unconference. You don't have to pay; effectively, you actually you get paid: free lunch, free t-shirt, free talks by free open source people!

StarCamp this weekend

I'm still recovering after a busy couple of weeks teaching Project Management courses at the Southern Africa Trust in Johannesburg, at Parliament, at the RSSC in Swaziland and for the company of wine people back here in the Cape, and I have two more days of private tuition for from mining employees from Sierra Leone before the "training season" is over, with plenty of loose ends to tie up, like reassessments, certificates, feedback reports, invoices and disbursement claims. I undertook to give an overview of Project Management software at StarCamp in Muizenberg (which everyone seems to want to call Muizenbuuuuurg), and I am going to have to prepare that sometime between now and Saturday morning! (StarCamp is free, by the way; sign up ASAP if you want to come.) I have decided that I don't want to "do Baden Powell" more often than I need to, so I have booked myself a place in the local backpackers for the night, since it's a two-day event. (All these decades of living near the sea, and I have hardly ever been to the beach. Funny how geek events can change your life.)

Choosing a new cell phone

You won't believe what a big thing it has been for me to choose a new cell phone. At one point I thought that I should perhaps get a phone with GPS, because I have an extremely female sense of direction, and use of such a gadget could assist me in remaining calm. But how often do I really travel to non-routine places? I could get myself a Garmin separately, without it having to be inside my phone. Dennis and I spent nearly an entire day in Tyger Valley Centre a few weeks ago with four brochures in hand, and I thought that I had finally decided to get the Nokia 6300, but with a rubber sleeve so that it wouldn't seem so flimsy; and then when I got home I decided to take the more robust 6234 which Marius had bought for a driver who resigned. But the top buttons turned out to be horrible little knobbles, so I began reconsidering the plump and far less glamorous 6085, which at least has the all-important Large Friendly Letters on soft voluptuous buttons. But the clamshell design bugs me, because I am clumsy with phones; so I thought that the 5310 would suit me be better, in spite of having a great assortment of features that I don't need. I then looked at the 6085, and got distracted by the E90 with its HSDPA. But I actually specifically don't want to take an entire office to bed with me, so what am I doing looking at a PDA with a keyboard?!

So I still haven't picked a phone. To solve this impasse, I should like to request the discontinuation of all cell phone manufacture, and the reinvention of mobile communications by Henry Ford. Then we could have a Model T phone, available in any colour, as long as it is black.

A working week in Swaziland

I feel privileged to have a profession that places me in a unique position to experience a diversity of industries, industrial microcosms and even regional cultures, and always feel excited when I receive news that I will be traveling to some place where I have never been, particularly if it is a place that even most educated people have never heard of. I've just returned from a week in Mhlume in Swaziland, where I was teaching Project Management to a group of engineers from the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation.

Aeroplanes and airports

I left home before dawn after a mere two hours of sleep. By the time Marius got me to the airport, I was already panicking, and I lost my cool with an employee of South African Airways who did not deserve it at all. Marius felt disgusted and alienated by my behaviour, but he stayed for coffee anyway, while I cried like a tired baby. "I know what I did was wrong," I said, "but I don't do such things to people who are vulnerable!"
"That woman was vulnerable!" he argued, and he proceeded to describe her to me, based on his observations in a manner which cut me to the heart, and which started me crying all over again, this time in great sorrow for how I had treated her. It was the culminating event in a growing selfishness and hardness of heart which had set in over some time, but which I couldn't see until that moment; and if it weren't for what he said, I probably would have grown even more and more callous and self-centred until all my relationships had turned to useless hedonism. Tired as I was, I wanted to go back to the other terminal to apologise to the woman, but it was too late: I would not be in time to board my flight. So I left, looking lachrymose and unprofessional, SMSing my appreciation to Marius all the way as I got onto the plane, and again as I got off on the other side.

It's just as well there was plenty of time until my next flight, because I got very lost at passports and customs, since I had neglected to declare the laptop, and so I had to go all the way round again, down corridors and lifts and up stairs until I finally was able to pass through passport control a second time. I was also glad that I had decided not to do the hand-luggage only thing this time, because it is a long walk from local to international at OR Tambo, and I was already extremely tired because of my lack of sleep.

Finally, I made it to the boarding hall, and waited. But the plane to was delayed by two hours, which in the end meant that more than four hours passed between my arrival in Johannesburg and my departure to Manzini. I chatted to a Chinese purveyor of security systems and a Zulu businessman involved in the importing of ethanol (one of the products of the RSSC). With the specific purpose of getting a there-and-then crash course in siSwati, I also struck up a conversation with a couple who were on their way home from Namibia. (I had printed out two siSwati sample texts which I had found on Google the night before, but they were not very helpful, and it was also obvious even to me that the translations were flawed.) However, I got the gist of the language after my traveling companions had given me the requested basic expressions in about five minutes, and by the time that I arrived at my destination, I was all set to be able to start speaking rudimentary siSwati.

As the aeroplane began its final descent to Manzini, it started vibrating loudly. I got a big fright, because at the same time it also started diving sideways, and I thought this was abnormal. I realised, though, that if something was going to go drastically wrong, there would be absolutely nothing I could do about it, so I might as well relax.

The road to Mhlume

The poor driver who had to collect me from Manzini had been waiting there in the heat since mid-morning. His name was Sabelo. I shook his sweaty hand. He was wearing a white lab-coat over his own clothes, which is the company uniform for drivers. I immediately took off my jersey and suggested that he rid himself of the coat, which he seemed very pleased to do, and we departed at once.

The drive from Manzini to Mhlume is 140 km, and the road is good. There were smallholdings along most of the route, and occasionally there appeared a small shopping centre consisting of about three shops, usually a butchery and a general dealer and what appeared to be a bar, with a pool table outside but still under roof. There are fences, but the cattle are often on the road side of them anyway. The cattle are very beautiful; many are spotted, and have long horns. I do not know if these are Nguni cattle or a cross-breed. I also saw two brindle bulls, a first for me. The countryside all along the way is green, and there are many trees and shrubs. The sisal trees look different from those that I am accustomed to, though; their phalanges are thinner and more clustered. There were also thornbushes similar to those that I know from the Eastern Cape, and several giant succulents which are familiar to me (there are similar ones along the St. Helena Road in Calitzdorp, but I don't know what they are called).

We passed over a cattle grille into a nature reserve, but I didn't see any of the lions which were purported to be there. Sabelo respected the speed limit at all the signs, and we passed out on the other side. (I later learned that all the RSSC company cars are fitted with tracking devices and driver identification, so that you can get fined by the company if you don't heed the beeping sound that indicates that you are driving too fast.) Along the way to Mhlume, Sabelo also pointed out a hospital which specialises in eye care, and another hospital with an adjacent church "where people pray for the sick people". I was somewhat amused by one or two company names I saw on buildings along the way, the most notably entertaining being Psalm 23 Investments in Manzini. I also asked many questions about the signs in siSwati, increasing my vocabulary as we progressed.

Staying in Mhlume

The Simunye-Mhlume area where the RSSC has its operations, is well maintained. All along the public road, the grass is kept short up to the edge of the sugar-cane fields. Sabelo dropped me off at the Mhlume Country Club, which doubles as a simple hotel. When I learned that I would probably be returned to Manzini by a different driver at the end of the week, I asked him to wait while I opened up my suitcase, and I took out a box of chocolate which I had gift-wrapped, and gave it to him in appreciation of his trouble, which had indeed been great. His astonishment could not possibly have been feigned. He actually gasped. "Ohhhh!" he said. "It is a merrychristmas!" (This context told me that this was his word for a gift.) I shook his hand and he hugged me in almost child-like appreciation. I hugged him with great endearment, and did not expect to see him ever again, as he had been assigned to do another trip on the Friday, and I would thus get a different driver from the pool to take me back to Manzini. (We were both equally surprised when the course organiser decided at the eleventh hour to reshuffle the driver schedules so that Sabelo could indeed be available to take me back.)

It was due to my own insistence on a pre-course briefing that I now had to meet my contact and two of his colleagues after hours, my arrival having been delayed by the plane's late departure. We passed through a hall with a wooden floor like an old-fashioned school hall, where a handsome instructor with dreadlocks was providing a gym class to a group of not-so-handsome ladies. Embarassing. We used a meeting room in the back of the Country Club, and the meeting came to an end about the same time that one of the three gentleman excused himself, having received a disconcerting cell phone call in which he learned that his daughter, who is attending a college in South Africa, had been bitten by a snake, and was not responding to the treatment. (I learned the next day that she recovered.)

I went to the dining room for a bowl of soup, but there was no-one else there, so it would have felt completely weird. I therefore asked the waitress to bring it through to the bar, and struck up a conversation with one of the RSSC managers who happened to be having a beer there.

My room had a bath, a feature I regard as a supreme luxury, since the flat I call home only has a shower. I had too little sleep again, because I had to be up early to prepare for the class I was presenting. I could quite happily have slept for another two hours of more, in spite of the fact that the mattress springs can be felt throughout the bed. (The following night I decided to sleep on top of the duvet and that made all the difference.)

The first day of class went pretty well, and the organiser (who was present during the training) asked everyone what they wanted for lunch. It was the first time in my entire career as a Project Management course facilitator that lunch included rump steak. Of course it was well done, not medium rare, but still -- rump steak! Now if like me you have ever had to travel to remote and obscure places on business, you would really appreciate the menu at the Mhlume Country Club (which was also the source of our lunchtime boxed meals). The Club's restaurant is run by Fedics, and it is possible actually have a balanced meal (which you definitely can't get in every small industrial town); there's a good choice, everything is well-priced and decently presented, and it would even be possible to survive for a good while as a vegetarian. Even the portion size of a starter is so big that it can function as a meal in itself. (I didn't finish.) And breakfast included bacon and egg fried exactly the way I like them. On the final day of the course we were in Simunye, because an oversight in the pre-course arrangements meant that there weren't computers for the participants in Mhlume for the hands-on software training. True to the report I'd had from some of the other contractors in Mhlume, the food at the Simunye Country Club was five-star quality by comparison. Instead of being perfectly adequate, as it had been in Mhlume, it was actually perfectly delicious: an excellent buffet including magnificent roast potatoes, and the best chocolate tart I have ever eaten in my life. If it weren't for the fact that I still had to teach in the afternoon (and thus to stay awake), I would have gone back for a second round of everything.

The course closed off quite formally, with the RSSC Training Manager handing over the certificates issued by ProjectManagement.co.za.

Speaking SiSwati

Upon my arrival I'd had a short telephonic discussion on the hotel office's telephone with my contact person at the RSSC:
"Sawubona," I said.
"Yebo. Kunjani?" came the response.
"Ngiphilile," I replied, and was asked in siSwati when I had arrived.
"Now," I said, unable to sustain the conversation any further in a language which I had learned in just one day. (Later that evening I regained my confidence, commenting on the weather, ordering a glass of milk and responding to a comment which a man at the bar made about me to a waitress.)

The reason why I was able to manage such a quick induction was because I can speak some Xhosa. Xhosa, Zulu and siSwati are the three major Nguni languages, and are similar in grammar and vocabulary. The first person singular is ndi- in Xhosa, and ngi- in Zulu and siSwati. If you know none of the three, they might not be able to tell which language is being spoken. But if you know one of them, you will note that siSwati uses softer sounds than either Zulu or Xhosa. For example, the word for eggs in Xhosa is amaqanda, the q representing a loud click which sounds like when a droplet of water falls into a frying pan containing hot oil. In siSwati, the word is macanda, the c representing a click which is as soft as a kiss. (The c click is also used in Xhosa in other words. It appeared to me that the x click is not present in siSwati at all.) Some of my students incorrectly pronounced the name of their colleague Nqobile (a Zulu name meaning 'victorious') as 'Ncobile'.

It seemed to me that abstract nouns remain similar across the languages, so that personal names, usually derived from abstract qualities such as beauty or joy, remain similar, while the names of everyday items such as trees and grass differ markedly. Much of Xhosa grammar centres around noun prefixes, which get passed on to the rest of the sentence. In fact, this is true of all Bantu languages right the way up to Kenya. In Xhosa, these always begin with a vowel when attached to the noun, and depending on which prefix it is, the vowel may fall away when the prefix is transferred to verbs and adjectives; for example: "Unmntu uyathetha" (The person speaks) or "Abantu bayathetha" (The people speak). But in siSwati, it appears that there is not a vowel component. If a word begins with a vowel, it is there because it happens to be part of the word. The Swazi currency is Lilangeni (singular) or Emalangeni (plural), abbreviated as L and E respectively (e.g. L1 and E75.00). Unfortunately I did not know when to use which one before I went, and took my best guess, which was the wrong one. As a result, my project costing exercises in the course notes had an L symbol where they should have had E!

A culture of nepotism

The name of this currency is an interesting example of how infused the Swazi monarchical culture is with every aspect of life in Swaziland. The royal family, those Dlaminis who are closely related to the king, are also referred to as the emalangeni. I was not exactly sure what that denotes, but it seems to mean something like 'exalted ones' -- or it at least has that connotation. Thus the currency represents the wealth of the ruling family, and the ruling family's wealth is the wealth of the country. Some time ago, one of those Dlaminis is purported to have said publicly that the Dlaminis are closer to God than other Swazis are. Not surprisingly, this caused quite a furore at the time, and although it was apparently subsequently acceded (in an effort to save face, perhaps) that other mere mortals could also become close to God, it appears that this has remained the honest opinion of the ruling house. I don't know why Swaziland is called Swaziland and not Swatiland, because Swazi is not the siSwati word  for Swazi. Even the King's own name, Mswati, means Swazi. So King Mswati really does represent the royal 'we' in a way that no other name could. It would be as if Queen Elizabeth's first name were in fact England.

Some Swazis are not happy at all that their monarch has chosen to stick his nose into the day-to-day affairs of government. They don't mind having a monarch, but they would prefer to have a royal family like the British one, that provides an air of dignity to the state and waives its right to interfere with legislative, judicial and executive processes. (Swaziland has frequently appeared in the international news when there has been conflict between the elected government and the king.)

Since the king appears to influence the appointment of people based on favouritism rather than on merit or democratic procedure, it appears to me that it is as a result of this that people in senior positions in business do the same. I realise that nepotism also occurs in other countries, including my own; however, if exposed, there is still some chance of a fight, because we have a more sactified constitution with laws supporting a process of recourse. In Swaziland, there is simply no recourse, so to be realistic one often simply has to accept the situation. This means that engineers are sometimes forced to accept tenders from specific organisations because those decisions are made at the top. There were also jocular allusions to kickbacks in some class discussions, and without labouring the issue, I pointed out that if in your position as a leader you set this example, you should accept that those you lead will suffer similar moral decline. You cannot expect the people who report to you to be ethical in their work if you are going to be unethical in yours.

Big news

There are two newspapers in Swaziland, the Observer and the Times. The Observer is owned by the government, while the Times is subject to government censorship. Both are published in English, which I think is a big pity, because if a language is not used in business and science, it will decline. Politics and sport are big news, as is news about sexual scandal (especially at educational institutions), and religious issues. During my brief stay, I got the feeling that the entire country is like one big village, because the newspapers contain a curious mixture of national and international news along with town gossip and typical local advertisements for births, deaths, healing services and pre-Christmas sales.

It's big news when a boy wins furniture from a local shop and gives it to his unemployed grandmother. And it's front page news with a big photo when three cars crash into each other at an intersection and sustain minor damage, because this type of accident is so unusual in Swaziland. (It is much more common for someone to sustain bad damage by hitting a cow along the national highway.)

HIV and AIDS

While I was in Swaziland, there was a lot of excitement about the concert which was to be held on World AIDS Day, in which celebrities from other countries would be participating too. While our own Minister of Health was making official statements on TV (South African TV stations are available in Swaziland) which, to use a phrase coined by the eminent Jeremy Thurgood, might be described as being "entirely content-free", Swaziland's media was more specific. Local religious organisations were advocating conjugal faithfulness on billboards, condoms were available in all the RSSC toilets, and while we were driving to Simunye there was a debate on the radio about whether you should have to consult your sexual partner before you decide to get tested. The DJ who was handling the calls from listeners was Nqobile's sister. I asked Nqobile where and when her sister had acquired the mostly British but also vaguely American accent, which appeared like a thick, comfortable blanket over her Swazi English, but Nqobile laughed and replied that everyone asks where her sister is from, and that the accent is entirely "man-made": her sister has lived in Swaziland all her life! One listener who phoned in said that in deciding whether or not to get tested for HIV, it is not so important to consult one's sexual partner, but more important that one should consult God. This evoked a chuckle from one of the other students in the car. "Funny how people think you should consult God before getting tested," he remarked, "but they never think of consulting God before doing the thing which put them at risk of getting infected in the first place!"

Girly stuff

I experienced an extraordinary coincidence in Swaziland: All the computer technicians I dealt with here were women. I assisted two of them (the abovementioned Nqobile, and the equally pretty Siphosihle) in installing some software, and it was Nqobile who sorted out the projector when I arrived.

When I found out that Nqobile's very attractive hairstyle had taken only two hours to braid and had cost her only fifty bucks, and that this was the norm in Swaziland, I started scheming about bringing Swazi hairstylists to Cape Town for intensive weekend sessions, with wealthy clients (such as politicians' wives) all lined up, and public demonstrations of the stylists' superior craft, and plenty of pre-event advertising and hype. In Cape Town, you have to really shop around before you will find a braiding hairdresser who has that type of styling creativity and flair, and who can do a neat and durable job; and you'll be lucky if she can manage to complete it over two three-hour sessions. I started making sums to figure out how much people would have to pay per head in order for the stylists and the middlemen to make their money, what with the travel and accommodation and all the rest of it... but I fell asleep and had to focus on other things the next day.

Back

On the way back from Mhlume to Manzini, Sabelo pointed out his homestead to me. He goes there on every weekend that he is not required to drive somewhere for his job, and runs his own small business supplying eggs to his local community. He has several enclosures and he buys in the layers, and when they become unproductive, he sells them off for slaughter and gets in new ones.

I liked working with the group at the RSSC; they were well-motivated, intelligent people, and I got very good formal feedback from all twenty of them, which I was able to pass it on to the Training Manager immediately, so I hope to be invited back to present further training there in the future. If I do go back again, I will make some plan to get a local SIM card and some form of Internet access. It was weird not to go to bed with what de Waal Steyn refers to as a "modern teddybear": a cell-phone from which to send messages to close friends at odd hours in the darkness!

My second course for Parliament has been cancelled or postponed, so I only have two more courses and StarCamp for which I need to prepare before going off for a week of holiday at the river with Mikhailo, Harry and Sam (and hopefully also Shupikai, a brilliant woman whom I met when I was teaching Project Management at the Southern Africa Trust in mid-November). I'm expecting plenty of late night campfire conversations, so I don't think I may not be able to spend quite so much time with my teddybear.