Yesterday was busy-busy. Woke up at 4:20 or so, tossed and turned for a while, gave up, watched Al Jazeera, ordered breakfast -- much more reasonable than my dinner the night before, although I found out this morning that that's because it was actually, um, free and all I paid for was the room service fee -- and came into the office. The AKDN office here is one block from the Serena; you can see them from each other. The office is an attractive old one-story building with wood floors and a pretty garden in front. Both buildings are on Avenida Julius Nyerere, which is Maputo's main drag.
Work got going pretty much from when I walked in. We went until 6:15 or so. In the morning it was the AKF Moz team and me plus a market development consultant, Raphael. In the afternoon we were joined by the country director for one of our potential partners. Lots and lots of discussion around which crops we should work with and how. For lunch Emma, Aman and I went to a little restaurant down the block. I had spaghetti with salmon and a Coke. Pretty tasty. The later afternoon dragged quite a bit thanks to lack of sleep and jet lag.
Back at the hotel, I talked with Caryn and Leanne about how things are going. They kept telling me to take a break and eat or relax or whatever but it's really preferable to just knock everything out and THEN have dinner and so on. Hard to focus on relaxing if I'm thinking at the back of my mind about getting back to my computer for Skype speaking purpose.
After that I found my way through to the gym, which is tucked away in the spa. When I say "tucked away," I really mean it. There's no signage for it and when I asked at the front desk, the lady just told one of the random helpers they have standing around to lead me there. It would have taken me ten minutes at least to find it on my own. All the exercise equipment is the same brand as the Islamabad Serena and the spa has the same name: Maisha. Wasn't much of a workout but I was glad to get the juices flowing a bit and stretch well.
By the time I had showered and eaten my room service dinner (grilled chicken burger with grilled pineapple and fries), I was too tired to process written words. So I took an Ambien* flipped on the boob tube and vegged to random sports -- South African rugby, the Tour of Spain and Chelsea football TV commentary, anyone? -- until I conked out.
*The stuff works. I slept like a baby until 7:30 and feel good today. Won't be any need to take another one tonight. Duly noted.
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