Zambia Diary | Day 1, Visit 2 | Meeting with UNICEF

We arrived in Lusaka this morning on the overnight flight from Heathrow. The flight wasn’t as smooth as last time with a two hour delay to our departure after we had already boarded the aircraft. And then there was the screaming child! I really feel for the parents at times like this. But looking on the bright side the screaming stopped once we’d taken off . . . . so only two hours then!

On arrival, we went straight from the airport to the Ministry of Health (MoH) to hand-deliver a letter to Dr Elizabeth Chizema, a Director at the MoH, formally asking for the Ministry’s consent to the ColaLife pilot.

We then went to our friend’s house where we received a warm welcome but a lack of an internet connection and no running water! They’d been without internet access for 3 days – worrying! Previous attempts to resolve the problem had failed. Anyway, by the end of the day the WiMax, line of sight, receiver had been replaced and all is well.

The water supply took a bit longer to fix – the borehole pumped had packed up – but we have water again now.

The highlight of the day was a meeting with UNICEF this afternoon. There were six people from UNICEF were present including: the Chief of Health, Nutrition and HIV and AIDS; the head of the Mother and Child Health Team; the Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist and the Chief of Social Policy & Economic Analysis.

We reviewed progress and agreed the objectives of Friday’s workshop which UNICEF is convening. We also agreed a separate meeting with Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist to progress the development of the Logical Framework for the pilot.

Tomorrow we will meet with three members of the senior management team at SABMiller. This will be crucial to getting their full commitment to a pilot.

And finally, here’s today’s podcast:

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