The Office

All the government ministry buildings are together on a large campus called capital hill. Each of the buildings looks exactly the same and although there are signs on the road telling you which is which it can be very confusing as a pedestrian.

The Ministry of Health

The building for the ministry of health is about a 15 minute walk from the main gate, inside its like stepping back in time. The offices here are just like those of the 70’s in Britain, everyone has their own office with a lockable door and their name or job title on a plaque next to it. This makes for some very long dark corridors that are lined with stacked boxes of paper and filing cabinets.

Our project office is room 88 on the second floor, it’s actually the personal office for a HR manager and so it’s quite a squeeze getting the 7 of us in there! At one end there is a small stack of computers; that’s our development server kit!

Our little office

Our development servers!

The ministry only employs one IT guy normally which is no easy job given the number of machines and decaying infrastructure. His name is Teddy and while he’s a lovely guy he would be the first to admit he’s not the tidiest. Check out that switch cabinet!

The switch cabinet

Teddy's office

At lunch there is a short walk to the capital hill cafeteria where you can get chicken, beef or beans with rice, nsima (maize) or chips. There also seems to be an impromptu church service on the grass everyday which even for the non-believers is a good background track to lunch. Check out the video!  

Full pictures available here: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjGf8nz4