Shot! The 2010-Team.

Fellas! 2010-Dreamteam is a little delayed in contributing something to the magnificent GLEN-SA-Blog! So let’s catch up with Anne, Aire and Antonella who already did a good job to inform … mankind about their life and work in wonderful Cape Town.

First three weeks with CoCT (the official abbreviation for City of Cape Town, cool he?) are over and two of them have already been very busy. As we announced back in Europe there were no real projects defined for us before coming here so the first task for Aurore (and also Simon, another Swiss intern who sadly does not enjoy the financial and institutional support of GLEN) was to come up with our own three to four project proposals and present them in a final workshop which has taken place successfullyover one week ago already. But really - a huge task for us and quite a big challenge since we immediately were supposed to get in contact with other people in the administration or further stakeholders who could possibly now something of relevance regarding our ideas. Quite a challenge without really knowing anything about the city!? Anyway we did it and now our projects are fixed.

Aurore is dealing with a school project dealing with False Bay’s Ecological Park. Therefore she luckily can flee the office at least once a week and can spend the day outdoors with pupils. The only problem is the simple transport matter: How to get her there? I’m sure over the next days our boss Stephen and Aurore will find a solution. Today Aurore is enjoying herself at Abalimi's, the NGO Ida, Marika and Matthias are gonna work with.

My own project will deal more or less with the topic that seems to pursue me for the rest of my life. I wrote my BSc about Learning Networks and Energy Efficiency. Since it was quite successful, I suggested to investigate the chances of such a network and trying to built it up in Cape Town, possibly around 2010. Stephen and other people of our Department liked the idea and want me to do this. At the moment it’s really difficult for me since I really lack the necessary knowledge about stakeholders to be involved and similar activities being done already inCape Town and the region. I have to get in contact with “Players” like ESKOM, the South African energy company and therefore I’m struggeling to find someone who could support me a little more in this effort. Anyway – yesterday I had a promising chat with someone of the City’s Energy Department and will get a final answer over the next few days.

I’ve also another project dealing with bicycle traffic within Cape Town. I like it much more but it was decided, that I just spent not more than 25% of my time on this other project I suggested, thus the bigger part will now be done by Abbi, our very nice South African fellow intern here.

So I am quite busy with all my work, but there is still enough time to have talks with the other interns and colleagues. I really enjoy talking about South Africa, whole Africa, Europe … - basically life and the whole world with the other interns, of course especially the South African interns Cindy, Abby, Alric and Akona provide us interesting and most of the time very funny insights in South African life and culture.

So you see, we’re pretty well off here! Looking forward to meeting Matthias, the last GLENnie arriving tonight!

Cheers! martin