Departure and Training

After 4 weeks of training in Toronto the time has come to board the plane. Thulasy, Kim, Heather and I are all flying tonight from Pearson Int. to Amsterdam, then on to Nairobi and finally to Lusaka via Harare, Zimbabwe. We are scheduled to reach our final destination just before noon on August 3rd. Even though I am not ecstatic about the idea of spending the next 30hrs in a plane and/or airport I am really excited to be finally on my way. The last month has been a whirlwind of readings, discussions and assignments on agriculture, rural livelhoods, Engineers without Borders, health and safety, integration, gender sensitivity, power and priviledge, participatory approaches, development organisations... etc. I have learnt a lot and really enjoyed hanging out in TO and getting to know the EWB crowd and the 8 other volunteers that are off to either Western or Southern Africa in the next few days. Here is a photo of some of the group on one of our days off (camping at Emily Prov. Park)I am not in the photo but that's my orange water bottle in the foreground!

Once the four of us reach Lusaka we are scheduled to do some in country training which includes but is not limited to some motorcycle lessons! Yoohoo! Then Kim and Heather are going to head to Malawi with Dave our trusty Southern Africa director and Thulasy and I are off to spend some quality time with Josephine who has been working with CARE on the Sorghum project for the past year. Josephine has been stationed in Livingstone, close to Victoria falls - so expect some falls photos in my next post.