Day 5

The office was empty when I got here this morning, so I left a note on my boss's desk that said "Hi Townley. I'm here. No one is in their office so I'm going to sit and enjoy my hot cocoa - and Obama's victory." One might argue that reading The Bell Jar (which I'm doing of my own accord, believe it or not) is not quite celebratory behavior, but I enjoyed starting the day with Sylvia Plath and a Grande Hazlenut Signature Hot Chocolate (they have the Christmast cups out at Starbucks, you know what that means) rather than being thrust immediately into the media room with a pile of documents to PDF.

The general attitude in the office has been one of relief. There has been lots of election discussion, lots of hugging and high-fiving, and thank-Godding. That said, an office wide email was sent out this morning reminding us all that "George Bush remains President until January 20, 2009. His Administration and its policies remain the USG operating environment for us until then... It's worth remembering that, overall, USG resources have allowed us to do great things over the past eight years. We may welcome this election for personal or policy-related reasons, but PSI is nonpartisan." In the midst of the excitement that's sweeping DC - the excitement that kept many of us up past our bedtimes last night - it's important to keep these facts in mind. Even if I did roll my eyes a little.

I was sent on my first PSI errand today - down the block to Staples to find an adapter for an ergonomic keyboard that Luke (the aforementioned Mr. Zambia/Zimbabwe) insisted he needed. I was trusted with the PSI Staples credit card, and tax-exempt card, and discount card. Big stuff.

I also attended another brown-bag lunch. This one was a presentation by Henock Gezahegn, the Director of Marketing and Technical Services for PSI Ethiopia. I'll be honest - a lot of the talk went completely over my head. The focus of the presentation was "exploring the Total Market Approach for sustainability of Point of Use water programs." I recognized some of the names of the water purification products that we market, but beyond that, I felt like I'd need a business degree in order to understand the rest. The PSI website breaks down our work on safe water in a more accessible way, and I might have done well to read this explanation of PSI Ethiopia before attending the talk.

Now that I'm finally comfortable in the office, I realize that it's talks like the one Henock gave that help to put PSI in perspective on the global scale. The work that this organization does is huge. It really is. I'm so happy to have the chance to be a part of it, even if some days my biggest responsibility is emailing an ex-pat in Zambia to ask for her cell number so we can update our personnel records.