How to write a report.

     I am a little brain dead right now as I wait for my Granddaughter Charlotte's fifth birthday party which starts at 11:30 tonight.  Normally this is not a problem and I love that I can stay up for the party.  We are going to try to Skype.  Usually, the Internet can't come close to handling a video stream, but late at night is when it seems to be at its best.  Fewer users, less sun interference with the signal, maybe some space time continuum thing that brings Liberia a little closer to the U.S.  I don't know the real reason, I just learn to appreciate the mystery.  Since the Internet was spiffed up last week (to where is is merely slow and unreliable rather than positively atrocious), I felt it was worth a try.   But I am still brain dead despite my excitement and let me explain why.

     Heart to Heart International helps support it's operations in Liberia with a generous grant from USAID, Humanitarian  Response.   They do require extensive reporting on the grant and rightfully so, it is the US taxpayer money.  Reports are due quarterly.  We had reasoned that since the ETU had only been open for a month, that the quarterly report would be due after three months of operation, so we submitted a request for extension.  Somehow, that request got lost and we were notified of that the extension request had been turned down and that the report was due in two days. Never having submitted a USAID report, I started gathering what I thought was required and we developed the report.  Hoo Boy was I wrong.  So much more was required but no one here had submitted one before.  Thus began a 9 hour thrash in trying to simultaneously develop the additional data and to get the data entered into a persnickety program that was best described (with substantial understatement) as not intuitively clear.  

     Well, we made it through by 7:00 PM but I will admit to being butt sore and brain tired at the end of it.  In a way, it was fun.  It certainly is a challenge when you have to figure out something when the instructions are very little help.  And we did get it done.  But next time, we will know to start a little earlier.  And no, they didn't teach us about this in Medical School.