Final Goodbyes in Morogoro

Well we are down to the wire... we leave Morogoro Wed. am for Dar es Salaam with 100 page Final Report, 15 page Executive Summary, and 80 page Text Report in hand.. 

We present to Dr. Alli Mcharazo and his team Thursday am..  Alli asked us to keep lunch and early afternoon open (lunch in Tanzania runs 1-2 pm.) as he has invited us to join his team to celebrate our work.  It is pretty cool as I see him using our work no not only build a Technology and Digital Library Vision for the country that he can shop around to secure gov't and private funding .... but also to energize his young team on what is possible.  It is Africa's time!!

Friday we do a repeat for government officials (Tanzania officials are big on formal welcomes and goodbyes!!) where each subteam lead has 10-15 minutes to present our executive summaries at a farewell dinner. 

Given the pressure of the day ... the teams looked intense but felt good about progress this am. 

SubTeam 1 -  left to right ... Augusto, Francis, Christie, Ian, Xiao Feng  

Sub  Team 2 - Shaun, Pearl, Jonathan, Petra, Ilona

Sub Team 3 - Maria, Aldrey, Ross (missing in action or inaction!!), Sonja, Ashish 

Everyone contributed a great deal to the experience ... I would do it all again in a minute.

We took time at 10 to visit the Morogoro Regional Library for the last time.  Here we are walking Leonard through the mid-term report and giving him a sense of our final recommendations.   He was extremely happy that we had come to help them and you could feel genuine hope for a bigger place for Public Libraries in Tanzania.

At 2 pm. we had a farewell appointment with the Morogoro Regional Commissioner who as it turned out had just been appointed by the government in Dar and had been officially in the job for 4 hours when we arrived. We had a good laugh when we welcomed him to Morogoro having been here for a month!!  

I had the opportunity to impress him with my Swahili ... and instead of saying Jina Langu Ian (my name is Ian)  Ninatoka Canada (I am from Canada) ... I mixed it up... got it all wrong ... again a good laugh for the team.  Maybe I should just stick with English!!

With the meeting complete.. we head back to the Arc board room to
finish  our reports.  Down to the wire just like any other consulting
engagement  I have ever done... but without the official visits.  

We are cleaning up our work room.  Taking down the stickies, our flags, charts ... etal. One of the kitchen staff had asked me 3 or 4 times if she could have my tie.  Had it hanging in our work area.  I gave it to her  this evening.  She had me re-tie it so the emblem showed above  her vest.  The people here have been very good to us ... and genuinely eager to help and ... teach us swahili!  Louise Sien the customer relations manager wanted in the final photo... she is the Maasai l

Off in the am to Dar... Ashish and Xiao are taking a last look at some craft items a fellow has been selling up and selling out front.

Once we were finished our preparation ... we did a first... went to a pub for one of those Tanzanian beers.  notice the sales guy above ... below!!  He gave me a gift of a bracelet which I suspect you will see on my left arm in upcoming pictures.

Francis and Sonja look a bit relaxed after pushing send on
the final reports!!    Turns out we were at the E-PUB... kind of fitting.
  It was interesting to see the flat screen TVs taken down and stored
when th soccer match on TV ended.