Back to Finland

Jambo!

One month has passed by too quickly in Zanzibar, and tomorrow night it's time for me to head back to Finland. All the village visits are done, but still some analysing of data is needed and report writing. My computer didn't work for a while, but now it's back to the business again, hopefully for a long time. We were supposed to have a discussion on evaluation results today, but there is another meeting at the office, so Markus will have it after I have left. Tomorrow it will be Tanzania's independence day, so no working at least for the locals.

In general after the evaluation I would say that the LIVE-project has been a good project according to the staff and most of the group members, although there have been some not so succeeded groups. 16 groups we have lost on the way from the baseline to today; this requires some attention. Maybe a little bit better planning of the number of the groups and their possibilities in the project should have been done in the beginning. The evaluation has gone quite smoothly, but the individual questionnaires we couldn't make as many as in the baseline survey, due to the lack of time. I also left out some of the questions.

Yesterday I joined Markus, Niina, Juki and Abbas for their field trip in the research project. It was interesting to see how the fieldwork is done and what kind of forests there are in the island. Mostly there are low forests, almost bushes in Finnish standards, apart from the conservation forests. The most extreme part of the field trip was going to coral rag area, which was very difficult to walk in. Especially because I was wearing sandals that didn't protect my feet at all... not a good idea. Now I have a little bit twisted ankle and some cuts in my feet. On the way back we couldn't find the path back in this difficult terrain full of bushes, and when we finally did, we were so relieved.

It feels a little bit sad to leave Zanzibar and the colleagues in here, but it's also nice to go back home to see family and friends. Maybe, some day, I will get a chance to return.

Tutaonana!

Elina