Collaboration wins the day!

Today was a great, constructive day.

I woke up before my alarm went off but I felt well rested. I never know what to expect from showers when I travel, but this was a nice, hot, strong shower that was just wonderful.

The walk to the office

I got to the office around 7:30. It was a nice quick walk there as I've said many times before. Lourdes has gotten me drinking this espresso coffee that is just terrific. I limit myself to one double per day and that seems to do it for me.

At 8:30 we got a visit from a rep at Unitel, the cell phone service provider. We explained that the packages they offer really don't fit the model that we need. They have "Plan Boss" packages where a boss gets to set the usage of up to 20 users. We have 22 users in each group. We explained this, he listened politely and said he would see what he could do.

When I gave up pretending I knew what was being said
I took pictures.

I almost laughed out loud at myself because during conversations that were entirely in Portuguese, I found myself shaking my head as though I was listening and agreeing with what was being said. I hadn't a clue!

It sounds as though they believe they can make something happen in two weeks so that we can have what we need. It was terrific that they were so responsive.

Afterwards I worked with Mango and Adriano to see how a particular report works and to find out if it would suit their needs. Normally they only work half days on Friday's but at this time of year no one has time for that. We will be working tomorrow, too, as the training for Spray Operators starts -- not my part. That will probably start on Monday.

In the afternoon, I had a bit of a scare. I explained to the team that when they need to fix an error they can log onto the admin screen, click on the record that is in error and then the ... data... is ... right -- uh oh -- where's the data? I went through a rough 90 minutes or so waiting for people to get into the office to find out if we were going to have to find another way to do this. Eventually Brendan came on and suggested one of these, "D'oh! I-should-have-thought-of-that" ideas -- try it in another browser. Poof it worked just fine. So with that threat averted, my stomach calmed down. I have some tasks that I want to work on during the training tomorrow, but I feel as though we are in a fairly decent place for most of it.

I've really enjoyed working with the fellows, here. It has been a truly collaborative process with suggestions and objections and excitement.

Today I was talking to Mango about how the clerks would put away their phones at night. We started talking and the ideas started flying and we developed this special "charging box". The box will be built by carpenters this week. The clerks will, at the end of the day, line up in the order of the number that's on their phone. They will put the phone in a slot on the box with the charging port upward facing so that they can easily be charged. It will be really obvious if a phone is missing because that slot will be empty. In the morning each will line up in the same order and collect the phone. I was so excited working with him and imagining this coming to life.

Shortly after that Miriam arrived from our Bethesda office carrying our phone cases. This came just in time, because now we know we need to make the slots wide enough to accommodate the cases.

Finally, after a long day, Miriam, Adam, Ragheb, Lourdes and I went to a Lebanese restaurant called Bouca Luca (a name that will make most of my neighbors smile.) It was lovely. The weather was beautiful all day and the evening was cool and breezy.

By the way, to the contrary of what I had heard, Angola is NOT a communist country. It is a presidential republic.

More pictures of the day available here.