Superglue (Sekundenkleber)

The phone is ringing and I see it's the school's number. Isn't that one of the most terrifying moments in life?
And then it's that usual random noise in the line since I am still one of those silly MTN users. At least the lady spared me the Hello-how-are-you-fine-thank-you and got straight to the point: Adrian had an accident. He hit his ...fffshhcrkr... he was bleeding quite ...zzzzfkrrrr... and the nurse recommends he should be ...kkkrchhhh... in a hospital. Oh my god! I'm out of the office in less than a minute and at the school in just 15 more, rushing to the nurse's room, it is closed so I bang on it since this is a life and death situation. Someone yells from the inside "WAAIIT!" Ok, that's not my boy, so I rush up to his classroom and there I see him - sitting and peacefully gluing little snippets of the alphabet on a sheet of paper. Just a plaster on his eyebrow. That's it??? The whole story was bad but then again not so bad. While washing his hands in the bathroom he dodged a move of his friend and hit his head on the edge of the sink. The cut was long and deep enough to have it stitched.


At the Surgey they recommended me not to stitch the wound as it will make it bigger and the stitches will remain visible. Glueing would be much better. Wow, how advanced they are here... they have some super-modern-state-of-the-art-medical-skin-glue. Alright then, let's do it.
When they bring the glue, it looks oddly familiar to me. And yes, it is plain superglue, the type you get for a few thousand Shillings in any second class supermarket down the street. The nurse confirms "yes, we always use this stuff as it is the same like the medical glue, but it is ten times cheaper." They squeeze Adrian's wound together, a few drops of superglue and a a minute later he is out with a new plaster on top of it. That's it?! Amazing, what modern medicine can do these days.

DED is no more...

I used to work for DED. Now DED is no more. Am I unemployed? Fortunately not ;-) ! But my organisation has been merged in to its bigger brother: GTZ. We’re all one big family now, we’re the GIZ („Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit“ which unofficially translates somehow into “German Organisation for International cooperation”).

Before this merger, there were three German government organisations busy with providing technical cooperation to developing countries:

GTZ, by far the largest organisation, worked in a business-like style, receiving concrete work assignments from the German Ministry for International Cooperation with strict and contractual obligation to be fulfilled. GTZ usually funded large projects in cooperation with local governments (e.g. rural electrification, water and sanitation infrastructure, or financial sector development projects). I.e. they usually came with lots of money and few expatriate staff, setting up offices in the capital, hiring local administration staff and experts, and worked towards reaching their indicators and achieving their project goals.


DED provided almost nothing but German (and European) technical experts relocating abroad and supporting a very wide variety of local organisations, associations, ministries, companies, etc. DED also funded the salary of local (e.g. Ugandan) experts. DED also worked mostly at “grassroots level”, i.e. outside of the large cities in rural areas, trying to create a direct impact and working with individuals or through organisations that directly impact on individuals’ livelihood.


INWENT has an extensive network of branch offices in Germany where they deliver all kinds of intercultural, preparatory and introductory trainings. They also have offices in developing countries focussing mainly on training related issues and projects.


And now, all of us have merged into one singular and large body of organisation called GIZ. Cool thing! It was hard enough to grasp this thicket of organisations myself - explaining it to someone else without extensive background in international cooperation and development was next to impossible ;-)

So, now what? On Monday I'm reporting back to work... what will change? Hehe, of course the first thing to change are the business cards and the email address, the rest is yet to come, but I'm excited about this merger and I am convinced we'll all do a better job if we act in concert. Stay tuned!