And back again in India. Delhi and Bangalore this time to make some first steps in the establishment of Fleet Forum India. And as a wise men once said: it is one small step for men and one giant leap for mankind. Or whatever! And although I don't want to compare this with a trip to the moon....it sure feels like all the small steps will eventually lead to the start of something bigger!

I have been working as Fleet Management specialist in Nairobi, Kenya, for several weeks now. My job is to implement the Fleet Management toolkit in the Kenyan country offices and sub offices.

India, a country I don’t know how many times bigger than the Netherlands, more than a billion people in it, Bollywood, the Taj Mahal, really good food (spicy curries….nice!) and sadly also the country which holds the 2nd place (after China) where the most people die or get seriously injured in road traffic accidents. According a report of the World Health Organisation (WHO) every year more than 100.000 people die in a traffic accident and another half a million get seriously injured. Apart from the personal loss and grief the loss of people on the roads costs the country around 64 million US dollar each year!

After two days with many visits to the WFP facilities in and around the Port of Mombasa I finally have an idea of the magnitude of WFP's port operations. The new boom in food aid for the Horn of Africa is causing problems. Good warehousing in the Port is scarce while there is plenty of open space to develop and or warehouses to renovate within the Port’s premises.

After two excellent but still tiring flights I arrived in Mombasa and soon found a very friendly WFP driver to take me to the Nyali Beach hotel just around the corner from the WFP offices. At the hotel Simon currently the man in charge at the office of WFP in Mombasa gave me a warm welcome.

I just like to share a quick message before flying over to Kenya tonight. Over the coming four days, I will visit the Port of Mombasa and help investigating how WFP can increase the efficiency and capacity of its operations within the Port of Mombasa.

I think Al Gore was right….it is a very inconvenient truth to know how much CO2 emissions and other air pollutants you cause because you operate a fleet of vehicles, trucks and motorbikes. And it becomes even more inconvenient if the amount of CO2 emissions is translated into number of trees you have to plant to compensate or even worse….number of premature deaths.

Fleet Safety phase 1 has been officially closed last week during the Best Practice Meeting. And the results are promising!

From sunny and warm Nairobi I say Djambo! Heard that winter in Europe is back again and that I will probably miss all ice-skating opportunities but hey....who cares when you're sitting in an office watching monkeys go by!

I’ve travelled to Nairobi on 04SEP08, after 2 days briefing in the WFP Aviation HQ in Rome to continue with a project previously started by TNT CS specialists.