It's been about a week since we last updated the blog. Some important updates have occurred over this time. First, the issue of visas. It seemed there was a desire for us to enter the Country on tourist visas, and renew these each 30 days. Tricia and I were skeptical of this because of the readings we were doing. Then came the idea of us doing an initial 60 days under two successive tourist visas, then leaving the country for at least 3 weeks while a work permit and work visa were secured. Now ICMA is pursuing getting the work permit and work visa right away. This could delay our entry into the Country and as a result our departure from Portland by a few days. This would not be all bad as we still have lots to do to get ready. Unfortunately, there is some legitimate interest in getting me over there as soon as possible so that I can have as much overlap with an out-of-area person who's been doing a good deal of work on the project. He's planning on being there the week of the 17th only. So, any delay in leaving only reduces the overlap time.

In the process of working out the financial and benefit arrangements, we learned that USAID has determined that Sri Lanka is eligible for a 20% post differential. This means that as long as this is in effect, I will get a 20% bonus in my salary. This made my day.

We also learned that we will both need new physicals. We hurridly called our doctor, who usually has a long lead time for these kinds of things and begged for an exception. We were luck and got to see him in a few days. The required report called for lots of lab work and tests. On Friday, we both need to go in for our TB test reading and to submit a variety of bodily fluids for the needed lab work. Oh, what fun!

Tomorrow, we're due to get our third and final Japanese encephalitis shot. I think we'll both be glad when these are over.

I think by the time we stock up on our medications, have all of the inoculations, and get the physicals we'll have spent well over $2000. But thanks to employer reimbursements and flexible spending accounts we'll manage just fine.

I had a long conference call with people at ICMA and learned much more about exactly what I'll be doing and what my responsibilities will be over the first couple of months. The program is to serve 30 or so Sri Lankan Cities. It originally was set to serve just 15, but was expanded to serve another 15 in a contract adjustment. Not all of the second 15 have been selected. When they've all been chosen we're expected to have about 20 cities that are Tsunami related and 10 to 12 non-tsunami related. I will be working through 4 regional coordinators that I will have to hire and get established in the various regions of the country. So not only will I have to do recruitment, but I will have to find locations hopefully through partner organizations or larger cities for these resource locations. The name of the program is Transparent and Accountable Local Government (TALG) and the premise is to increase the capacity of local government to budget, manage their revenues and expenses, and create more efficiencies that can be translated into increased service delivery. A pre program assessment has been conducted on the initial 15 cities and must be done on the new cities, once selected. We're going to provide each city with two new PCs, and train them on their use. We'll then train and coach them in budget preparation, expense and revenue monitoring and reporting, improved revenue collection techniques, and other important financial procedures. We will then help coach these cities to take the efficiencies and translate them into improved or expanded services.... particularly infrastructure related. Then we'll do post program testing to document the results.

It's a big job and will involve lots of travel in and around Sri Lanka. The Country is about 2/3 the size of Oregon, but the roads are in really bad shape so traveling the distance from Portland to Medford can take 10 to 12 hours of some pretty rough roads.

We've got to fill our benefit and employment forms tonight. Oh, what joy!

Tricia has been doing lots of house related things, organizing things we'll be taking, making arrangements for on-line billing with utilities, and other billings. Can you believe some utility providers don't accept credit cards or allow on-line billing? So what to do? They put us on vacation stop. And we give them a small deposit for any miscellaneous charges that may come up while we're gone. Voting is another issue, since we don't have an address yet, we can't have our ballots mailed to us. We're going to use my new work address - just so we can get the next round of ballots that are due out in a few weeks. Tricia has also ordered all of our medications for the next year, dealt with the insurance companies to allow more than a 90 supply at a single purchase, etc. You can't believe the minutia involved in doing these things.