Music memories

Re-discovered a CD from a loooong time ago yesterday night and was immediately drawn back into the moment just before I was leaving for Scotland. It's incredible how a simple piece of music can carry so many feelings and memories and release them just like that even after more than 8 years...

what did i do there?

For more information on the Field Training Exercise and what this "playing peacekeeping" was all about, see the following links for lots of pictures and info.

Infos and lots of great pictures: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?p=4600918 (scroll down a little, posts #513-516)

Daily reports and pictures:
Opening: http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=42156
Exercise days: http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=42233, http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=42297 (btw, the women in the picture is one of our colleagues who had great fun acting as medical assistant in the mission!)
Closing: http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=42365

This might also be interesting, more or less like a "field report": http://www.rfi.fr/actuen/articles/120/article_6076.asp

Some comments from my side: It was foreseeable but still I find it a little annoying that the pictures focus almost exclusively on military and sometimes police. Maybe civilian work is not that adventurous to look at... Also, you will find that it all sounds like a great success from what has been written, which we'd also expected. I'd say, in the end it went better than I had thought during the preparatory phase, but lots of "challenges" remain...

winter blues

Just arrived back in Germany this morning and was rolled over by a massive winter blues. It slightly started already during the last days when it was obvious that the time abroad was coming to an end. I have always hated good-byes as they just get me down... and I was beginning to suck in specific little moments, e.g. being at the full moon party in Djibouti, dancing barefoot in the sand to very well-known Salone-style music ("do me"), and when I looked up there was nothing but dark blue sky, stars and the mooooooooon.... So unrealistically fantastic that I literally pinched myself every 10 minutes to make myself aware that i am actually there.

Now I am back here, where it starts to get dark at an hour where I was still at the pool yesterday. Brought a tiny sunburn back as a souvenir :) Now it's all just Damien Rice mood and I'm not at all keen on going to work tomorrow - could do with a resettlement holiday...

Sorry for that pessimistic and negative stuff, it's just that the mere thought of being here in the German winter for the next ~5 months really scares me right now.

Impressions from Djibouti, the first

have to run now to the next meeting... more will follow later!

"Mein Arbeitsplatz ist die Welt" - my workplace is the world

...saw that slogan on the gtz-homepage the other day and at the moment i can only agree. Spent three weeks in Nairobi, Kenya and now had the chance - for the first time ever - to celebrate my birthday in very comfortable 28°C Djibouti. Never been here before and from descriptions I expected ... well, something really horrible with 50°C, basically no landscape etc. I was very positively surprised though! It's cold winter here (...) and the environment is beautiful in its own way - a bit like the surface of the moon, but here and there even with green bits, lots of camels, lava stones, stony mountains dropping into the sea..... Fascinating!

On my birthday I woke up to birthday songs and a cake from my colleagues, which I had never expected here. We ended the day in the hotel bar with colleagues from Germany, Holland, Kenya, Norway, Denmark, Sweden... - I guess, when you're stuck in HQ you sometimes lose this impression, but when you're out there, you can actually feel the world being your workplace and I LIKE IT! :)

Luna is practising...

...F R U S T R A T I O N S T O L E R A N Z!!!

The good thing about it: now I can think about a lot of things that I have seen worse. Helps bringing back optimism :)

Strange developments

In the future, the Fed. Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will be headed by someone who wants to dissolve it and integrate it into the Foreign Office. The topic of peace and security is disputed between the two ministries anyway. Not only content and existence of my job are quite directly affected by any changes in responsibility, but I also believe in the advantages of having a development department separate from foreign affairs.

For the German speaking ones, read here about FDP-"General" Niebel wird Entwicklungsminister.

PS: Habe heute (gute Woche später) gesehen, dass die FDP rapide an Prozentpunkten verliert. Hä?? Wer hat sie denn gewählt? Und warum??? (Nur für den Kick, für den Augenblick? - sorry, das passt hier nicht her, aber bei tragischen "warums" kommt das immer direkt in den Kopf, hehe) Überraschend fand ich das nicht, was an liberalem Input aus den Koalitionsverhandlungen herauskam.... Aber wer weiß, vielleicht wurde die Umfrage in Bonn und Frankfurt durchgeführt, das könnte dann leicht eingefärbt sein ;)

Check this out :)

Have a look at "the reason some girls stay single". Really, do - no matter whether you're boy or girl, single or not, it's not one of this clichee "we hate boys"-single girls' stuff, but absolutely hilarious. Make sure you listen until the end, where he has really warmed up his self-esteem...