Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons, that was the name of a very popular game when I was a child. You could get it both as a role play and a computer game. Somehow those words are coming back to life, but with a very different meaning.

The dungeons are the dungeons, nothing new about that. Generations of IMD students have shed their blood, sweat and tears down there. And it is all still there, at least it smells that way some times. :-) We are spending the whole day in study room 7 these days, trying to squeeze some of all the ambiguity out of our ICP project on Street Children in Nairobi. We have built up a frame work to help us understand how NGOs work and we have now started calling other NGOs to plot them into the framework and get reference points. That way we can much better understand how our organization, Koinonia, operates. These days we even have some additional help as Daniel Brosseau from last years class helps us fill in the framework. Daniel spent six weeks with Koinonia back in April and May, so he has a lot of the information we need. Now that we have created the framework and understand the NGO 'industry' better, it has become much easier to understand the situation in Koinonia. When first introduced to the project in May it seemed a bit overwhelming.


And what about the Dragons? Well, I was talking about our internal ones. Such as the fear of needles. Here we are yesterday getting our vaccinations for Kenya. Gerald takes it pretty easy, though.


We kept the doctor busy for more than an hour. It was no easy task to put together the vaccination 'menu' for a Malaysian, a Romanian/Israeli and a Dane that were going to Kenya. In usual Swiss style it all worked like clockwork, though, but came with a steep price tag.



It is late August and 33 degrees in Lausanne. The picture is even taken at 5 in the afternoon, so it has undoubtedly been even warmer earlier in the day.

Thorsten