Wadi Mussallem

I spent three days in one of the kitchens that I think I wrote about earlier. With two Philippino colleagues (Sam and Salvador) I went to Wadi Mussallem, the name of the camp. I felt honestly bad for the supervisor there. The kitchen was just a mess and was so dirty. The stoves for instance were creating big black fumes. Terrible. Rajesh, the supervisor, was pretty desperate about it.

Anyway, after taking rest for one night we started working in the morning with the observation phase. Having collected the data we analyzed the most urgent problems and drew up an approach plan. This we discussed with Rajesh. He was happy we were there.

And in the afternoon the fun part started. We sat together with the entire crew and explained the program for the next couple of days. Since I don't speak Hindi very well and they only speak "shuee shuee" English, Rajesh was translating. But there is this big language problem so communication goes slow. Funny also. Then after the meeting Sam did a basic training on personal hygiene and food training. We introduced basic things like the "clean as you go" cleaning concept. In the evening at 9.30 we started to do a deep cleaning of the kitchen. This took to 2.15 am. And not even halve of it was done. But it was a good start that helped to clean the kitchen and reorder it. They day after we focused more on hygiene practices in the kitchen and training the supervisor. I enjoyed it very much. I took on the attitude of being strict and patient at the same time. It worked very well, I hope... It was for me a great experience. It is harder to instill change in people's behavior. I tried to give Rajesh some good tools to work with for the future. I just hope he succeeds. That will make me happy to :-) So that might give you some idea of what I am working on here in Oman. I'll post some pictures of my work soon too.

Ow. A nice thing. This weekend I am getting new furniture for my apartment. I am looking forward to sitting on my sofa with a good cup of coffee...