The joys of working

Scott and I are excited to have no work travel for the next few weeks, especially after a 5 week spell with one of us being gone.  I travelled for 2 weeks to Mozambique and Scott for 3 weeks to Afghanistan, leaving the day I got back.

This was my first trip to Mozambique, let alone Africa, and I had a great time.  My two supervisors and I traveled there to hammer out the details of a project we're going to evaluate that is designed to improve the nutritional status of children 6 to 59 months old, namely through increasing their consumption of micronutrient powders.  What we didn't know until our third day in Maputo is that we were allowed to cross the boarder into South Africa on our official passport. Usually we're not allowed to use the passport for anything other than the trip that was planned and approved a number of weeks prior.  By Friday evening we booked a weekend trip to Kruger National Park!
Breakfast and some dinners by the beach - what a hotel!

 A view from the office where we often worked.  It's no Dhaka!

Photos from our 1.5 days in Kruger. It was a WHIRLWIND of a trip - definitely a successful whirlwind.  We saw The Big Five within 1.5 hours on an evening drive, we were chased (literally) by a rhino (luckily while we were in a car), and we camped out on top of our car...

 Working hard...NOT! - but it might be a fun EIS recruiting photo :)

 My two supervisors and I

 This is the rhino that chased us. He was marking his territory...

 Then stared at us as we slowly drove by and then...I'm not joking when I say that the next time I looked out of the car to see him he was less than 6 feet off the back of the car and angry.  That was a life changing experience.

 Another rhino from a safe distance

 Once we had calmed down after the rhino experience, we went on a short walk with this lovely man to look at some cave drawings

Scott went to Kabul and Kandahar to enjoy all inclusive excitement behind armed guards within fortified compounds.  On his actual birthday he went out in Kandahar in an armored convoy to meet with local businessmen, including a raisin factory manager and a pomegranate trader, and conducted the most surreal interviews he's ever conducted because he was in a flak jacket and had men with guns all around him.