Trip to Kasama

I went to Kasama to visit an urban planner at the northern province earlier this month. It was such a wonderful opportunity to see how he worked at his office as a planner from a different country.

On the 1st day, my friends and I took Tazara Railroad from Kapiri Mposhi to Kasama. The train was delayed for a few hours but it was so much fun traveling in a train. It was really shaky somehow but being there reminded me of the time when my family and I were visiting our grandparents by Blue Train (long-distance sleeper train).

When we got to Kasama station after about 12 hours of train ride, we visited his office in a township. I was really impressed to see what he did and how he made some changes at his host organization. It was hard to believe that he has done all those things just in 2 years! I still have a year to go until I leave this country, so his work really made me think of how I should work and what I should focus on from now on.

Also, his coworkers made me feel I was welcomed. This was definitely because he did a great job working with them at the office as well as being good friends with them outside of work. It was overwhelming and heartbreaking for me to see them being sad when they had to say goodbye to him as he was leaving for good. I guess saying goodbye is always hard...

He also took me to Chishimba Falls. It was definitely smaller than the Victoria Falls in Livingstone but I really liked the way that we were able to get so much closer. I was able to feel the water splash coming directly from the falls. It was not as major as the Victoria Falls, so the nature was still untouched and we did not have to deal with too many tourists.

I really enjoyed my time there in Kasama. I would love to go back there sometime soon to see the falls as well as the people there (especially the staff at the planning department)!

GIS Training 2012

My co-worker (an urban planner who works for the other provincial office) and I organized a GIS training for 2 weeks this month. The national-level training turned out really well and all the participants learned a great deal out of this!

We had been prepared for the event since last October. The things we did for the training included; arranging the venue, making a training guide, requesting guest lecturers from various organizations, making presentations about the GIS in general and some case studies in Japan and the U.S., leading training sessions as instructors, etc. It definitely was a lot of work but was definitely one of the best opportunities that we were given during our stay here in Zambia (though, I do have another year to go until my contract ends...). 

The best part of the training was that the 20 participants really got interested in GIS and now are quite fluent in basic applications of GIS. They can now make maps and do some analysis, including buffering, overlaying, etc. They even mentioned that they were ready to launch GIS programs at their provincial offices and willing to invite us as instructors for the the follow-up training in their provinces.  I cannot wait to see new changes in those offices / provinces!

To be honest, I already miss being an instructor of the training so much... The good news is that we might be able to host the follow-up training sometime in August or September! I cannot wait for the day to come soon :)