Janneke's weblog

Hello there!

It has been a long time since I have written something on my weblog. The reason was that I have been quite ill lately. I had a nasty ear inflammation.

On Monday morning my ear started aching. I was feeling quite bad, so I went home. The pain got heavier, and suddenly my ear started bleeding. I decided to go to the UN doctor. On my way to the UN I saw a UN taxi, so I immediately asked him to bring me to the UN. There they sent me to the Aga Khan hospital, to see a specialist. I was very lucky that my housemate, Vicky from the
UK, was willing to join me. I was very worried, and she calmed me down a bit, and said I would be all right (which I thought was very hard to believe at that time). In Aga Khan, the doctor cleaned my ear and put a bandage and some drops in it. My ear drum was damaged somehow, because of the inflammation. It could be caused by the altitude here, or just an infection. I got medication (antibiotics). Have a look at the photo’s, which are made thanks to Vicky. Luckily I can laugh about them now J.

I have been home for one week, and been unproductive at work for about two-and-a-half more weeks. Luckily I am feeling much better now, but still very tired. So I just take it easy, and sleep and rest a lot.

Well, these were all my adventures for the past weeks. My work (the only thing I have been doing lately, except for sleeping and eating) is much more exciting at the moment. I really enjoy it! A new consultant (about my age) has joined us recently, and I have another supervisor, who is very nice. We do a lot of work together, and discuss a lot, so it is not just sitting in front of the computer anymore. It is much more interactive.

At present, I am working on an inventory of all the documents that are available. This gives us a good idea of how we should organize all the documents, which documents should be on the website, and what documents we still need to produce. I already selected the country documents for the website (have a look at www.unpei.org and admire my work (ahum)). We have lots of discussions on how we should display the useful documents on the
PEI website.

Alongside this, I am working on setting up a network of all the people around the world working on the Poverty Environment Initiative (PEI). This Network is still at an early stage, but the idea is that people working with the
PEI can respond to our messages with all their comments, suggestions, questions, advice, experiences, etc. This will create a global exchange of knowledge and experience. It sounds very interesting, and I hope I will be able to handle the first real questions concerning ‘real on the ground’
PEI work!

Next week my job will be enriched by another task: doing interviews for a handbook on guidance and tools to ‘mainstream the environment’ (=the main task of the
PEI). Together with the new consultant, Caitlin, I will have to go round Nairobi to visit some
PEI people and do some interviewing. I am really excited about it, it would be great to meet the people working on the ground, and actually talk about what they do.

Well, that is it for now. I hope I will be able to give another update of my adventures soon! I will also put some more photo’s of my friends here on the weblog.

Hope you are all fine!
Best,

Marjanneke