I think I am the very last semi-road warrior to discover a lovely, natural solution to not being able to sleep on planes…melatonin. Many people have told me that melatonin is produced by our body and as we age many of us don’t generally make enough of it to get great nights’ sleep. That’s not usually my issue at home (I don’t get enough sleep by choice), but I have never been able to get any really useful sleep when crammed into an airplane seat. Flying first class might help – getting into one of those sleep “pods” – alas, no miles, no dough, no pod, no sleep. This time around I took those tiny little melatonin pills – amazing…two or three hours on the first leg, and nearly EIGHT of the 10 hours coming into Lusaka! I don’t sleep that much at home.

I arrived in Lusaka almost bright eyed and bushy…well not quite – but it was very weird having the Smart Care folks asking me every five minutes: “Aren’t you tired?…wanna crash?…HOW are you still awake…?” This went on until late afternoon, and I worked a full day. And here I am writing this at 9pm…now getting tired 😉

Quick recap of the day:
Lynn Langit (my dear developer evangelist buddy who has been volunteering and commandeering the ranks of other Smart Care volunteers for a number of years) and James (the so-nice Zambian driver who is the sunshine of the team’s life) met me at the airport. My luck held and bags arrived fine, and James took us on a bit of a roundabout city tour in an attempt to sidestep a huge traffic jam caused by an accident that went on for a few miles. I could definitely see growth in Lusaka since my visit three years ago – many more modern buildings, better roads in some areas, and a lot more tourists on the plane from London than I remember the last go around. It seems that because Zambia is a relatively peaceful and definitely progressive country amidst many in Africa that are developmentally farther behind in infrastructure and technology adoption, it is attracting global business ventures in addition to the ongoing health and medical assistance that has been a mainstay for so long. Lusaka is very much a gateway to South Africa and safari adventures in Botswana, Zimbabwe, etc as well.
I will be staying with Chrys Thorsen, an incredibly talented technology trainer and content developer. Chrys has created the first version of end user training and “train the trainer” materials for the Smart Care system and has done a fantastic job in getting it out to the field (the clinics where the system is being deployed) for a first round of evaluation. My work with her and the rest of the training team will be to “v2” what already exists based on feedback gathered already, as well as create more training content for new system modules.

I will work closely with two people along with Chrys: Machalo – a young Zambian college graduate who is doing her internship with the Smart Care program; and Biko, one of the senior Smart Care trainers. I am thrilled to have the chance to work with them as I know we’ll add very different and important perspectives on the most effective methods and styles of teaching/training in this country…they will bring insights about teaching styles and methods that will and won’t work based on the culture here. For example, storytelling may well be a “best practice” teaching method here – resonating better that “stand up” lecture style presentations of procedures…it will be very interesting to find out.

I am fading – time for sleep. More tomorrow.