Third week in Kalongo.....

Ciao a tutti,
Yesterday someone of you complaint to me because I didn’t update the blog yet. I’m very sorry but the last week was very busy. However, from tomorrow I will try to describe my experience day by day. Taking into consideration that I stay in the office the most part of my week, someone of you will be interested to my work project I’m going to report while someone of you will be more interested to my “soccer weekend”.
As I already said my week was very busy. After a first assessment of the administration department of the Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital, I started to develop my job. I stated three main priorities:
• Building the budget for the next year;
• Assessing the current cash flow situation;
• Developing a new accounting system using a SW called Pastel.
In order to build the budget for the next Financial Year (starting from July 1,2010) I decided to organize a visit to every wards of the hospital and to the 4 stores. The aim was to understand how the IT department registered the attendance of patients in each departments (for revenues side) and how the inflows and outflows of stocks are managed in the stores (for the cost of sold side).
This kind of job was very cool. Me and Valerian went through the wards and the stores of the hospital every day asking to employees how they used to register the patients attending the wards, how the procedures of inflow and outflow of drugs and medical sundries work and how the hospital collect money from patients. It was very funny because in each ward we supposed to be patients coming to the ward and we asked to nurses and doctors to show us what they used to do. I have also the opportunity to meet some doctors that explained to me their experience in Kalongo. One of those is Dr. Patient. He has the perfect name for a doctor!
In addition, outside of the hospital, there is a technical department. It is in charge of the maintenance of the hospital but there are some problems within it. The main issue is the lack of trust between the technical department and the hospital. We are going to develop a plan to sole this kind of a problem trying to rebuild a good relationship between the management of the hospital and the manager of the technical department.
During the free time I try to increase every day my friend relationship with people living here. Next Saturday I went to visit a high school not far from here where they performed some athletic competitions.
I was impressed by the performances of some guys in the high jump. They are able to jump 1.70 meters using an old technique that in Italy we called “sforbiciata”. In addition, I went the town with Didier, a young Congolese priest who is in Kalongo in order to learn the local language. We went to a bar to see a soccer match and to drink a beer. I also learnt few expressions in the local language. “Atchumabee” is good morning, “Irimabee” is good evening.
If I finished to work not too late and during the week end, I go to the football field for jogging. A lot of child, around 10-12 years old, used ask to run with me. I usually tell them to run before me. The problem is that after 10 minutes I’m not able to follow them. Here I realized why the athletic competitions are dominated by black people!!!
Finally, I think that someone of you want to know about soccer. Yesterday I played again 3 hours and today I cannot move my neck. What can I say? Only that I’m almost 30…;)… So I decided to organize a world cup. Until now there are 6 team willing to participate. I hope to add more team…
And today….. Forza Italia!!!!!

p.s. I’m sorry if I didn’t upload more pictures but the speed of internet connection is quite low.