We Move Media

Fear and Excitement

Dear team,

Jambo! Dar is beautiful. The people are constantly welcoming us with Karibu, the weather is warm with a cool breeze and my cubicle is overlooking the Indian Ocean. And myself, I’m becoming more accustomed to the culture, more excited about the work and being a bit more ok about being away from home as each day passes.

Admittedly, and as is typical with new places, I found myself in sincere withdrawal from all things ‘home’ for the first few days. Although I’ve spent many months overseas and away from home before, this time, for many factors, is different. The Toronto withdrawal was enough to make me question my decision to come here.  I have not had more than a 4h night’s sleep because while my body is in Dar, my mind still straddles between being here and Toronto. Although I shouldn’t be, I compare Tanzania to Malawi, Dar to Toronto, myself now vs myself two years ago. And I also wonder about the short term and the long term. I’ve always been one to have a clear directions, always knowing not the next one, but the next two steps I need to take. However, each day that passes brings to surface new reassurances and signs that Yes, this is right where I need to be. If I’ve stumbled upon any profound revelations in my wakeful hours, I’ve realized that the line between fear and excitement depends on where you draw it.

And so team, I have been given the opportunity to work on developing mobile technologies that not only will, but are, affecting the eradication of malaria in Tanzania. I will be working on three projects, two of which are funded by a public-private partnership between the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Acumen Fund investee, AtoZ (a mosquito net manufactuer). One project involves the development of an e-Voucher program for subsidized mosquito nets using SMS, the second involves tracking the distribution of mosquito nets using SMS, and the third is using Samsung tablets and ODK for the monitoring and evaluation of the two previous projects.

This is what I wanted. Thanks team, for your sincere love, support and encouragement. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to get on the plane. I would have remained comfortable and in the state of ‘I’ve always wanted to’ instead of ‘I’m going to’.

Also, I’ve been published! Check out the Data Integrity Guide I wrote for FrontlineSMS (no need to read, but please at least comment on the great graphics!). And my last update, M4Drinks Toronto #2 was a repeat success, with 30-40 attendees.

Peaches & love / kris

Note: the above photo is a placeholder of the view from my room. I will soon replace it with the view from my office (:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 4:52 pm and is filed under blog, kristina lugo, team and tagged with m4d, tanzania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.