Concept note

Posted by Ali

This morning I got to worship only two minutes late, but again no one was in the conference room. I just sat there and waited while looking through the Swahili songbook. There are quite a few hymns and songs that I know so I tried to figure out how to say some of the words to the tunes. Max came about a minute later and then a couple more workers arrived. After singing a song two more workers arrived, but there was no sign of the lady who was supposed to have worship (each worker has the responsibility to put on worship for a week and then it goes on to the next worker for the next week, etc.) so again Max just read something from his Bible and then we discussed it a bit before having prayer. Then I got quizzed on who was who and I remembered two out of the six names (although one person I had only just met), so that wasn't the best percentage, but I told them they would have to write their names down for me or give me a printed out page with faces and names if they wanted me to be able to remember. They all just laughed about that though.

Once that was done, Max and I went back to his office and he explained about what a concept note is and about the project that we were writing the concept note for. This one was for ADRA Australia. We worked on it for pretty much the whole day and finally finished around 4 p.m. On Friday's the ADRA office officially closes at 2 p.m., but we'd stayed later to get the concept note finished and sent off. I'm beginning to see that this job of grant writing is very connected to business. We had to check pretty much everything with the budget that Max already had worked up and I have to admit, I'm not very much of a business-oriented person. Anyway, once the work was done and sent, I went back to my room to relax for a bit. A little bit later, the German girls stopped by my room to say hi and ask how my first few days had gone and to introduce the newest volunteer, Danielle. She was really friendly and totally reminds me of someone that I just can't place. Actually, I'm beginning to think that I've met her before, which I know isn't true, but she just seems so familiar. After talking to girls for a few minutes we agreed that we needed to have some meals together and then said we'd see each other again tomorrow for church.

Later, I went to the kitchen, determined to use the gas stove to make some macaroni for my supper. I looked in all the places that I had seen the matches on all the other times I'd been in the kitchen, but they were mysteriously missing. I checked the tops of the shelves and the fridge and finally I even checked the adjoining laundry room, but with no luck. After coming back to the kitchen I noticed that the top of the fridge was messy and had a bunch of random odds and ends sitting up there so I reached up to rearrange things and clean that area up a bit and randomly found the matchbox under a pile of oven mitts and dish cloths. But alas, when I slid the top open I found the box completely empty. I kept searching the top of the fridge and eventually did find three matches lying in a small glass dish. When I took the dish down to look at it, though, I found that the matches were all used. So, I had absolutely no way to start the stove and I was actually really looking forward to my pasta. In any case, I threw out the matchbox and matches so they would stop taunting me and then made myself yet another open-faced peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich. Now my stomach is starting to gurgle (which comes before growling, at least for me) again so I'd better go to bed and stop thinking about my blase supper. Goodnight and happy Sabbath to you all!