Nation building

Well, work is really picking up. The past few months I've been doing roads and designing new compounds...but I've been "volun-tasked" to help USAID with some strategic project management. I wish I could describe the gargantuan amount of work being done here...one thing I'm doing is trying to wrap my arms around all the water, sewer, power, civil aviation, and road projects in the country. Its alot of data...just look at the roads: You have major highway projects like the Ring road, then you have provincial highways, then you have city roads, feeder roads throughout agricultural regions...then all the small cobblestone roads being built everywhere. We helped design the specifications for multi-lane highways to building a cobblestone road to a dirt road. Then you have all the water projects like determining capacity of existing reservoirs and aquifers, hydroelectric projects...there's a project to build a huge bridge here...it's got an awesome span length...engineers are fighting to be part of that project, there's all the power projects to provide stable power to places that have never had power before...it's a big undertaking to track all this stuff. From the strategic level, it's mind-boggling to see the amount of construction going on here. Not all of the funding is from US money; the Japanese, Swedish, WorldBank and Asian Development Bank are paying for a good chunk of it. So we get/have to deal with numerous countries...its crazy some days.