Risk Impact Day

Wow, we spent from 8.30am through to 7pm today just working through impacts for what is now our 196 risks. Out of that we now know we have 11 critical risks that must have mitigation plans put to them, and I'm not even looking at the next level down from critical, serious risks yet. We were exhausted, so we've closed it off for tonight to revisit tomorrow if we get time. Tomorrow is a public holiday in Ghana, "Workers Day", so we are visiting another orphanage. We have however hit another milestone today, we needed impact/consequences finished today, and we've done it! Next comes categorising the risks into more manageable sets, and then writing up the triggers and mitigation plans.

Each one of our group is indispensable in this exercise, either asking questions which help all of us be sure our reasoning is sound, or adding insight based on our varied backgrounds. We have always practiced there are no dumb questions, only stupid answers, so I think everyone feels confident to have their say, and our group is high performing as a result. What is obvious to one person can often come unstuck very quickly with the right simple question, or is checked and clarified through needing to explain. If we can't explain it, that's a trigger we probably don't understand the risk enough yet, or we've worded the risk incorrectly. I think through this, our end result should be a very high quality product.

Outside of that, we had film crews filming our work again today, and interviewing us. It feels so cheesy talking to a camera when we're not used to it. And even performing our work felt practiced when the camera is rolling and a big boom mic hanging just cm's off your head. But there was no need to feel cheesy, as it was all genuine work! I hope it comes out good, or that they have a talented editor :)

Tonight we were treated to a North Indian banquet, prepared by the very talented Andal from IBM Singapore (Indian born). Andal has worked very hard to obtain permission to use the kitchen, and to solicit help from the local cooks, but under her supervision and instruction. We had a vegetable feast, and everyone went back for seconds and thirds it was so delicious. Cooking for 12 adults can not be easy, and Andal certainly out did herself. Her family must miss her terribly when this is what they enjoy at home! Thanks Andal!!

It was a nice day outside today for the few minutes we caught of it, but there is a raging storm bucketing down outside tonight. Good, it's been hot, so this will help bring the temperature down a little. I'm starting to climatise I think now, I'm going through less water than 2 weeks ago when we arrived :). The bad part of that is returning to the cold weather in Canberra! I see the zero degrees celsius overnight has started, and it's 26 degrees celsius here tonight by comparison!

OK, I admit I added that last sentence partly just to rub it in :)


- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:7th Ave,Accra,Ghana

Sunday cruise

I was awoken by SMS at 3am today to learn my brother and his wife have just had a baby boy, Kai!! Congratulations to both of them! In Ghana, people are named after the day they were born on, so this newcomer would be named Kwame here, meaning Male born on Saturday. Or Kwasi for Sunday - I get confused as to what day it is back home, and the baby was born at 3:47am, but which morning?

Heading up to Volta region, I made sure I had the video camera ready this time as we passed through the Shia Hills, in case a chance to capture the baboons presented itself. And it did, so Ive a few seconds on video now, hooray!

We arrived at 8am to purchase our tickets, there is no online bookings out here :), then had a wander around a small market before boarding the ship for our 3 hour each way cruise on the lake. Volta is a big lake! An African band played heir tunes all the way up and back, and murdered a set of western songs, but that was all part of the fun :)




3 hours later we arrive at an island where there are dancers and drummers performing on our arrival. Quite obviously designed for tourists, it was still fun. I don't know what it is about me that attracts the kids, but everyone else got off and started walking around the island hassle free. I had 2 kids immediately grab either hand to guide me, and at one stage, another 3 or 4! Why me? Like the kids at the Orphanage they were fascinated with my hairy arms, I told them it's cold where I come from, not like Ghana, so it keeps me warm :)

They were also fascinated with the white patches on my skin. Probably because in some parts Albino's are considered to have magic powers - which could be concerning as historically, some tribes chopped up Albinos to make medicine :). Not here though :)

There really wasn't anything on the island, so after walking around it for 30 minutes, we boarded the ship to head back. As soon as we did, the kids jumped in canoes to go back to their own villages, no one actually lives on this island :). No one went for a swim in the lake, apparently there are all sorts of disease the locals are immune to that we would suffer from. Including nasties that cause all kinds of tumours/growths. We started the 3 hour journey back. Very peaceful and relaxing, passing by lots more islands dotted over the lake:




Dinner was spent at a local restaurant in Volta called Afrikiko. It's a holiday resort on a river, more alfresco dining, very pretty. There is an awful lot of chicken on menus in Ghana, it is clearly a favorite food next to fish, and occasionally goat and beef. The grilled chicken has a pepper spice to it, and is usually served with a black pepper dip called Shito To add a bit of variety, instead of chicken and rice, I tried a more traditional meal of chicken and Banku. Banku is made from maize, and is a white flour looking pillow. It has a sour flavor, and is dipped in either a tomato salsa type dip, or the Shito. It has the texture of soft play dough, and you break a piece off, dip and eat to consume it. Good to try once, but not a dish I'm going to miss back home.

Check out the "Weekend 2 pics" blog entry for pictures over the weekend.


- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Volta Region

Weekend 2 pics

Dividing the toys for the kids:



School at the SOS Orphanage:



Kids playing with Cameras:







Chuppa-Chump Satisfaction Gauruantee:




Salsa Lessons with Thiago:


Volta lake Cruise destination island:


Dinner at Afrikiko:



Banku:







- Dwight!

Location:Tema and Volta

SOS Orphanage

Today we got to sleep in, which was just as well as I was chatting with Vanessa and Natasha until late last night via Apple Facetime - works well on the iPad but does need a WiFi connection to get enough bandwidth. Just after 9am we rolled out of the hotel to head to the SOS Orphanage in the neighboring city of Tema. It took just under an hour to arrive. SOS has a number of Orphanages around the world, and this one was the first, and now the biggest in Ghana. It has 15 houses, which is home for 8 to 10 children between 0 and and about 15 years in each home.

We visited a number of homes, at first the kids were shy, but it only took a few minutes for them to come out and play. They were fascinated by our camera gear, and we soon gave up trying to hold onto it. We handed them over to the kids who took hundreds, if not thousands of photos of EVERYTHING! Photos of photos, photos of the LCD on the back of cameras, photos of us, photos of them, photos of pictures in their house. One boy even turned on video mode and proceeded to interview each of us with a pop quiz :). If they didn't have a camera, they were taking our hand, or hugging our legs, or asking for piggy-back rides - they were all over us, but polite at the same time.

Now, I should explain, I'm the kind of guy that wives complain never show any affection in public. So the sudden onslaught of attention was personally quite intense. My personal real estate had been well and truly encroached and taken from me :). But it was for the right reasons, and they're kids.

We played a game of soccer with the kids, and then the team kindly let me hand out chuppa chumps that I had brought to all the kids. It didn't take long for the kids to catch on, and like circling sharks, I was soon set upon :). Kids are the same worldwide :). The team was great, they ensured everyone had one chuppa chump each, and that there was enough to go around for everyone. There were a lot of very satisfied faces sucking lollipops for a few minutes after that. We had lots of other gifts for the kids too, but we handed those in for the orphanage to hand out later as there was a chance there would not be enough to go around.

Next week we visit another orphanage, and we have more Chuppa-Chumps, so I'll share that experience with the team and we can all give them out. I was grateful to get to do it once as it meant I got to share something on the day too.

Thiago from Brazil has a natural affinity with kids, but he had the girls in hysterics and lining up for Salsa lessons with him. I don't think any one of them didn't line up for a dance and 5 minute lesson, yet every one of them was doubled over with laughter and squeals of delight watching.

I have photos, but Internet is not working too well tonight, so I may have to upload those separately.

After that we headed back to the markets, I was tough as nails this time around though, and paid a max of one third the initial asking price. I picked up a few souvenirs this time around, and politely ignored most sellers.

We arrived back at the hotel at 7pm, and need to leave the hotel at 6am tomorrow morning for the boat cruise on Lake Volta.

- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight

Location:Accra - Tema Motorway,,Ghana

POETS Day arrives again

Wow, we are smack bang in the middle of the assignment now, no longer newbies, the expectation is we are high performing and delivering results as the business end of the assignment is here. The diligence everyone has applied to our pieces of work means we are ready for it, and the team is running on high octane - we all want the best result possible. It's very motivating to work in a team like this, you can see how great things could be and the only adversary is time. The SOW keeps us firmly grounded in reality.

It was a beautiful sunny day here, and the temperature felt like it had dropped back a bit, so maybe only 30 Celsius for a change, and less humidity too. Still doesn't drop below 26 Celsius at night though, so I keep the AC running all night on 22 - it also helps keep mozzies away, too cold for them here. Not that we spent much time outside, aside from traveling to a meeting and back, we locked ourselves into our room of risk once again.

We managed to assign consequences/impact to 107 of our now 199 risks by 6pm today. After that effort we were grateful for an end of week meeting with our sponsor before finishing up the day. You don't really want me to talk about how we assigned every one of those do you? It's just one of things you have to grind through, but the deep satisfaction comes at the end. Wax on, wax off for those old enough to know the 80's movie. So what else can I share with you instead...

One of our team, Thiago from Brazil, reports he has a special friend who visits him each morning. One of the local geckos, they range in size from about 10cm to 30cm from what we have seen. He's not getting rid of it however, they also keep the mozzies away :)

I tried to recover the photos from the Canon camera, which has come back to life. With the help of two of the team members, Gerrard and Petra, we tried recovery software, formatting, everything. Unfortunately, we recovered everything except the photos from Ghana. It turns out SD Cards are not as reliable as I had thought. Lessons here for travelers - don't use big cards and backup often. I had 32Gb card but it fails around the half way mark and can't read any data. Nothing writes out bad sectors on these cards, so if u get a problem like this, you just lose the data. The recommendation then is to throw away the card, don't format it - formatting will make it look ok, but as soon as it hits that bad spot again, "Holy smoke batman" no more photos. It's ok however, as we will all share our photos at the end of this, and I'll pickup the memories from other peoples shots.

Everyone brought down their gifts for kids this evening and we sorted them out into what we will take to the orphanage tomorrow, and the rest for another orphanage next week. We also planned our river cruise for Sunday, and a brief on what we needed to complete next week. I think everyone is feeling the butterflies now that work is in its home stretch before we need to finalize our presentations. There is a real buzz about. I have some pics, but will have to upload separately as wifi at the hotel is down again. There is no telling when it will be up and for how long for.



- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Eight Rd,Accra,Ghana

Breaking the back of the risk log

A number of our team, including myself, woke to find we had no water or at most a dribble today. This made taking a shower, brushing teeth, having a shave, take quite a bit longer than usual. Lucky I have a stock of bottled water which got me around the essentials, and had enough of a dribble under the shower to eventually get the basics done there too. It was an exercise in patience, If it only would hurry up!

We visited the IBM office in Ghana today, hooray! It' a small office, with about 30 staff, hence we share a building with a number of other companies. Inside, it looks just like any other IBM office, with a reception, 2 meeting rooms, a conference room, the country manager's office, and a couple of open desk areas. It's very nice. They advised us that when IBMers are over here on IBM business, the preferred IBM hotel is the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel - 5 star luxury accommodation! It's got everything! Well, it's a few rungs up the rich list ladder from our hotel, however our hotel is still very nice and the staff couldn't be more helpful.





7th floor views:



Lunch was interesting today, we tried out a place called Papeye, which means something like 'for the good of it', or 'giving alms'. I had their grilled chicken and rice, a very popular dish over here, the chicken is spiced with green pepper and ginger. The fun was when we wanted to leave. We jumped in our car, but someone had decided to parallel park directly behind us, we were boxed in. That's ok in Ghana, there are no rules or road laws for this apparently, no fines needed. We just waited until the patron could be found to move his car, in the meantime another 2 cars had also parallel parked in front of him, boxing in another 3 patrons. No one got upset or angry, it's just another day :). Sitting in the air conditioned comfort of our car, we watched while our driver made the negotiations, and we were free about 15 minutes later.



Outside of that, we finally broke the back of logging our risks today, we now have nearly 200 risks, and have assessed a probability/likelihood number for each of them. We also came up with 7 key risk areas from our SOW to evaluate impact/consequence against, and have therefore also started evaluating consequences. We should finish this by tomorrow, but this stage of risk is more fun than the mental grind of researching and identifying risks. Either tomorrow or next week we will start looking at mitigation and a new round of interviews to confirm risks, analysis ratings, and how our clients suggest the risks should be mitigated.
Sorry, no more news for today - we've been working our brains to exhaustion and fingers to the bone, but it is very satisfying to start to see the art and science coming to life.


- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Eight Rd,Accra,Ghana

ANZAC Day

Left the hotel at 7.30am to attend the ANZAC Day service the High Commissioner has on, followed by brunch at the High Commissioner's residence. The three Australians from our group all went, Gerrard, Pipa, and I. The service was very nice, with a special visit from the Turkish ambassador in Ghana.

The brunch was spectacular, the best breakfast we have had since being here. Real bacon, beef and pork sausages, scrambled eggs, omlettes, baked beans, toast, and pancakes! Fresh watermelon or orange juice, lemon cake and of course, ANZAC biscuits in the shape of Australia. It was so good!

We met the French Ambassador who is looking forward to retiring soon and renovating a ruin he has purchased back in France. He was very interested in the IBM CSC program and whether it was also available in France, which of course it is. He thought this was a wonderful program that not only helped a developing nation, but would be very helpful in our careers as well.

We also met lady who started her work in Ghana 31 years ago as part of a Christian organization providing aid. Ghana today is nothing like what she landed in back then, and hearing her stories made me think how grateful I was that things had developed so far, and yet there is still so much more to be done. I also confirmed a number of risks and opportunities for our project through this conversation, so more data and references, yippee!

Back on the real work, more logging risks, will this never end? Looks like we will go into tomorrow as well, as long as we can start mitigation next week, we'll be alright. The room we had today only had an upright fan, no AC, so it was hot, hot, hot. Thankfully a storm came over and cooled things down for a few hours, it was another torrential downpour for an hour that then just stopped. Ghanaians are saying the weather is strange this year, it's usually not this hot, as it's usually raining all day, every day. It's been sunny nearly every day so far. At least with little rain, it keeps the mozzies at bay for a bit longer.

We made a visit to the Food and Drug Board today to keep gathering data for our risk plan, some great ideas came out of this.




To end the day, the seamstress/tailor came to the hotel to take our measurements and collect our fabric. I'm getting a tight little mini skirt that screams "tart", and a crop top so my mid riff can be all it can be, and free :). The seamstress thought a Ghanian shirt would probably make a bigger impression, and a dress for Natasha.

- Keep on Rockin'. Dwight.

Location:Eight Rd,Accra,Ghana