Preparations

One can never prepare enough of course. But on the other hand "over preparation" can also block the mind which needs to be open for the "active listening" required to get a project of this size going with an appropriate community based participatory process. One of my first activities in Colombia will be to visit our two pilot communities (as I already described in one of the blog entries of yesterday). At the moment I am preparing those visits with one of my colleagues in Colombia. Bibiana is a coordinator of the SENA training center for mining & agriculture in Cartagena, the capital city of the province ("departamento") of Bolivar where our two pilot communities are located. We need to agree on the best dates for these visits and then Bibiana will get things organized with the local authorities. So I described to Bibiana with whom I hope to meet (together with Bibiana) and why. That will give her the required information to start the planning in January as soon as everybody starts the work again in Colombia where it is common to take a 3-4 week break from mid December to mid January.

When I took off to Mozambique in late 1988 with MSF (Medecins sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders), I had only one week preparation. However, I did survive my two years there and I learned more than I could ever have imagined. But that was then. Colombia is now, 24 years later. I hope that I will be able to put into practice the life and work lessons I learned in between these two placements.

I will fly to Bogota on January 8 and I will then spend the first few days finding an apartment and getting settled with other logistical practicalities. I have already met many of my colleagues at SENA during my two week stay in Colombia in November, so it will be easy to get started with them and start planning concrete activities based on our (draft) Project Implementation Plan.

During the coming days I will be working in Ottawa with some of the ACCC staff as well as with my colleague technical advisors who will be based in La Paz, Bolivia and Lima, Peru. Then we will all try to relax over the holiday season and re-charge the batteries. I will be back with some blogs in early January before I leave to Bogota and then with weekly blog entries from there.