Thursday morning, all day Friday and almost all of today were stressful times at work for me. ADRA Canada sent e-mail after question-filled e-mail to Max and me wanting more information on our proposal for women's and children under 5 health, increased girls attendance in schools and decreased violence and abuse toward women and girls. They were all very valid and applicable questions, but each time I saw a new e-mail I felt a little more energy drain from my body. Max was away on a work trip to the Lake district in northwestern Tanzania and I had to field almost all of the questions on my own. Max did send a few answers whenever he had some internet access, but for the most part I had to try to come up with satisfactory answers on a project I am still learning about and a job I definitely do not feel completely comfortable with yet. The questions ceased over the weekend and I had thought the proposal was sent in to CIDA and the stress was finished. Then, last night, just as I was going to close my computer and crawl into bed, I saw a new e-mail. I didn't even open it, knowing it would still be there in the morning. And it was. Today was my hardest day of work yet. The ADRA Canada crew had more questions and these ones were quantitative rather than the qualitative ones I'd been able to sort through on Thursday and Friday. I scoured the internet looking for any possible statistics from the target region or district to compare with national statistics, but to no avail. And then, in a last desperate attempt, I typed something (can't even remember what now) into Google and found, after trying several links ahead of it in the list, a study done at a hospital in Manyara Region. I skimmed the study, not really expecting anything valuable when some literacy rates for the region jumped out at me. I quickly copied and pasted the paragraph into a reply and sent it off to Canada. My main correspondent quickly responded saying that if we could find more statistics from that study about other areas of our proposal, that would be perfect. I went through the study again, looking more carefully this time and found a link to the Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys 2004-2005. Jackpot! That site held all the information I was looking for, and more. I downloaded whole pdf chapters of the final survey drafts and went through pages (most chapters had around 30 pages) filled with statistical paragraphs and then charts to support the paragraphs. Finally I sent off two long e-mails filled with statistics and information comparing males and females, urban and rural, Manyara Region and the rest of the country. Boy, did it ever feel good to find all that information and get it to the people who needed it in order to finish off our proposal and get it ready to be sent in. It felt even better after a receiving a few affirming e-mails about a job well done. I grinned with exhausted relief when I read the last of the e-mails:
"This is exactly what we need-thank you so much, Alison! You are certainly going the extra mile.....much appreciated! Max is lucky to have you around....."
3 comments:
Sounds like hard work to me. Looks like people are happy with you. Keep up the good work.
Wow, that sounds rather tedious and stressful at the same time... it's good to see they appreciate your hard work though! :)
how nice to get a compliment like that.
sounds like you worked hard while Max was gone.
bet you are learning a lot.
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