Happy Braai Day!

Before I get to what has been going on, I'd like to wish all my South African family and friends a very happy Heritage Day. I hope that you have enjoyed the public holiday and celebrated it in true SA style by having a braai.

So yesterday, before I went to the cocktail evening, I said that I was going to take it easy because I had an early morning meeting. Well that plan went out the window almost from the moment I got to the bar. I sat at a table with the participants from the Seychelles – I should have realised that from that moment on my evening was never going to finish early! So there I was, a lone South African, with four Seychellois, two Kenyans and copious amounts of free Tuskers beer. The snacks provided were really good. I didn’t try the goat but all else was very tasty. I’m told that the goat was good too but by the time I had decided to try it, it was all finished. One of the Kenyans was nominated to find out if there would be more coming and he assured us that there would be. But alas this was not to be and the poor guy will be remembered for promising us barbecued goat and not delivering it. At 1am everyone decided that we should call it a night and getting up from our table realised that we were the only ones left and in fact all the other tables and chairs had been packed away. The only staff member around was the security guard who had an uncanny resemblance to Batman.

Some of my accomplices: Roy, Elisa and Vincent all from Seychelles.

Waking up early was, to understate it, trying. After some coffee though it was all systems go to tackle the issue of finding a solution to replacing our current referencing system to one that works. Fortunately I had some great backup and a solution was reach without any bloodshed :-) and it seems that everyone is happy with the proposed way forward.

Once that was out of the way, the normal daily session got going. This was very interesting and dealt with trends in the climatology of the Indian Ocean due to global warming, climate change and the impacts on fisheries and also building adaptive capacity to climate change. I know that there are some doubters out there who think that global warming is just a myth but the evidence of the change in ocean temperatures is now very strong. There are some really fantastic initiatives in the region which are aimed at assisting fishers to adapt to the changing situation but it remains to be seen if these will be implemented.

Tonight I am due to have dinner with my ex-project leader from the World Bank and two other South Africans. Hopefully I will be able to stay awake and make meaningful conversation but that seems an impossibility at present. Hopefully my second wind will step up to the plate shortly.

Have fun and take care.