Tags
Africa, Avo cado, Banana plants, Garden, gardening, Growing up, neighbourhood, paw-paw, Pharmacy, pharmacy work, Uganda
This is a view from the window of a little hotel where myself and a few other colleagues are holding a workshop, and coming up with a draft for a pharmaceutical sector strategic plan for the next 5 or so years. Yawn inducing, I know, especially since it’s Saturday.
Attention spans are waning as you can see. I really don’t blame us. Yapping for hours on end about objectives, strategies and key performance indicators can have that effect. We take a tea/coffee break when this happens. Then we just keep going for seconds until the hotel staff relieve us by clearing the snack table, which is not pictured here for obvious reasons. We don’t want to look like a bunch of people that meet up to eat tons of food while pretending to get a little work done, um, just in case this obvious reason is not so obvious to you.
All the yapping has taken its toll, member in yellow replenishes energy supplies with cake.
This work is a continuation of last weekend’s work, Friday to Sunday. Why weekends? Because it’s the time we set aside to do work that’s not really our day job. It’s work that needs doing, and we are members of the Pharmaceutical Society, so the onus falls upon us. The more interested members among us, that is. You may call it voluntary work.
A little background: pharmacy is not that well-developed in Uganda, so we set times as members of various committees on the afore-mentioned society , meet, decide what needs doing and improving, map a way forward, formulate regulations and bye-laws, compile our recommendations and send them to/meet policy makers. I like thinking of it as being a part of history-making, in some small way. A change-maker. Yeah, grandiose, that’s me.
This rooster keeps crowing. It’s nice background music to our work, I prefer it to the hum of the projector.
Nice rooster, eh? Also here, banana plant (leaf, really), paw-paw tree, mango tree, avo cado tree. Clockwise, that is.
This whole view reminds me a lot of growing up, and the fun neighbourhoods. It’s every where, really, except the more upper class neighbourhoods of course. This is what a lower mid-level income neighbourhood will sometimes look like – small to larger gardens here and there, with banana plants like you see here.
An aside: To the extreme right of ‘the view’ is this incomplete house in the picture below. This is rather common. People start a construction (of a home, usually) and rise up to this level, then find themselves unable to proceed since roofing is the most costly part of the venture. The rains come and the brick work starts washing away. To resume work, this owner will need to demolish the first two or three rows of brick work, then replace them. A better option still, is to use bricks made out of clay. They are stronger, don’t erode as easily. These here are made out of ordinary dirt.
Do you see the grown bunch of bananas in the mid background? (You might need to zoom in)This lucky owner will be harvesting real soon.
That’s what’s going down. How is your Saturday? What does it look like from your corner of the globe?
The outside views where you’re working are gorgeous, however, it would appear that the room they’ve got you cooped up in could use a little wall art.
It’s interesting to learn about your work. I enjoyed reading this.
What does it look like in my corner of the globe — haha — inches of snow — a ‘winter wonderland’. But we’re comparatively lucky in New York — those who live north of here, like my sister who’s in New England — they got 24 inches! It’s pretty outside my window adjacent the woods of the park.
Thanks for the inside view of your working environment — I worked at Pfizer World Headquarters for six years — quite the many-tentacled organism — I’m still traumatized
A winter wonderland – must be a pretty sight. 24 inches of snow is a lot of slow driving and cups of hot drinks! I still look forward to making my very first snowman some day, though. Haha.
Ah, so Pfizer is not all the prestige it’s cut out to be (over here), there’s trauma too? Lol. Pharma, writing books, recreating public service announcements
, yes I can see the many hats and tentacles 
This was very interesting having been an Administrator of a clinic for women. I had a lot of pharmaceutical reps coming and going.
You are also very beautiful not only in words but also in the way you look.
My part of the world in Huntsville, AL, USA was 60 degrees, however, my poor daughter lives in Boston with 24 inches of snow or more.
Thank you, Linda.
I’m touched by your kind words.
60 degrees sounds a lot like here. Mighty sunny. The few times I’ve been abroad happened not to have been around snow time, so I’ve never experienced it. Maybe one day. I’m rather afraid of the cold though. Haha. Hopefully rainy London prepared me a little for future snow.
Thank you for coming by, and sharing your Saturday with me.