down and safe
Safely landed and tucked away in Nicaragua. I'm very confused about what time or day it is, and was wide awake at 5am this morning despite trying to wear myself out by going to bed at 11pm last night. The flight took approximately eleventy billion hours. But at least we got there in the end - several colleagues took a different route and had their connecting flight inexplicably cancelled, ending up stranded in Miami.
Nicaragua is HOT. Hot like Africa Hot. The hotel is a corporate affair, though, so there's wifi and air conditioning.
The conference is pretty cool actually. Strategy for a different region, which means I can approach it with a fresh mind, rather than having years of history and preconceptions weighing me down. And it is a difficult time, with many challenges. Latin America and Caribbean countries are (with the notable exception of Haiti) mostly classed as middle income countries, and are not high on the UK's development priorities. But 3/4 of the world's poor people live in places termed 'middle income'. They are the hidden poor, masked by a growing GDP and structural inequality. So tackling inequality and hidden poverty - rather than the visible poverty I normally work with - is an interesting and different challenge. I'm looking forward to see how things develop here.
In the meantime, despite frequent reminders that I will be unavailable, the moment Africa received my out of office, things spontaneously caught fire and my boss had to email my private email to ask me to call them back. SIGH.
I have a couple of days off in the middle of the conference, so will try to post some pictures of whatever I end up doing.
Edited - this didn't crosspost before, trying again...
This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth. There are
comments there. Comments are welcome at either journal.