On Normalcy

I’ve recently received feedback from friends and family that they have a difficult time envisioning my day-to-day life from reading my blog. This is partly intentional; I don’t want to bore my loyal readers with the mundane aspects of daily life. Fun little anecdotes are much more entertaining. Additionally, elements of my work are sensitive, though not confidential. I’d feel somewhat uncomfortable blogging about the inner workings of the Ugandan Ministry of Health, for example, or the work we’re doing with other NGOs on the ground here. Thus, this entry is intended to give you a sense of my routine, without going into excessive, mind-numbing detail.

In some small ways, my life is unchanged from how it was for the past two years in Washington. For example, I still wake up early and make myself crappy instant coffee, which I sip while checking my email and doing a little bit of work. Minor changes to this part of my routine include:

· I now drink low fat milk with my coffee (I’ve not been able to find skim here).

· Late-night emails from my boss generally arrive between 10-11pm rather than 1-2:30am, frequently Peter’s hours of operation.

· Oh, and I watch the sun rise over palm trees rather than over the apartment building next door.

After about half an hour, I walk to Kabira Country Club—a lovely horrendously overpriced hotel with a pool, spa, etc., that’s located about 15 minutes from my apartment—where I spend about 45 minutes in their gym. After walking home, showering, and changing, I head to work (about 10 minutes away), arriving slightly before 9am.

My work days are incredibly varied. I’d say that, on average, I spend about seven hours in the CHAI office, and around three hours traveling around Kampala, meeting with people at the Ministry of Health, Central Public Health Laboratory, or various of our implementing partners. I generally leave the office anywhere between 7:30 and 10:00pm. In terms of the actual work, a substantial portion of my time is spent using Excel and PowerPoint to analyze and present data that tracks HIV testing and diagnoses of infants (under 18 months) and the laboratory process that surrounds it. The goal is to locate the bottlenecks (i.e., between sample collection and sample dispatch from health facilities, in transit, while processing the samples at centralized laboratories, or during dispatch of results back to the local facilities and to the appropriate caregivers) and then systematically reduce the different components of the total turnaround time. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, I'm also working with the Ministry of Health and central laboratory to negotiate service contracts for the government-owned (potentially expanding to NGO-owned) automated analyzers in Uganda. One of the largest problems here is not that Uganda lacks the necessary equipment, but rather that the equipment is non-functional due to lack of maintenance. Additionally, I’m just now beginning to construct a national quantification for laboratory commodities. This entails working with different implementing partners to assess their current reagent and equipment numbers, incorporating projected scale-up, and combining that with the projected need of the MOH. Ultimately, the quantification will be used by our procurement team to place orders with various manufacturers of laboratory supplies.

After work, I frequently get dinner with colleagues or friends. But, if it’s on the later side, I usually head home, and consume a delicious dinner of cereal and yogurt. I’ve taken to lying on my porch in the evenings (there are about four huge, comfortable couches), and writing emails or finishing up work from the day. So, that’s a typical day in the life of Eleanor at this point. Nothing too exciting, but generally quite fun and extremely rewarding.