Stuck in Meetings

Last weekend, we had a couple of guys from a company in Canada arrived to begin an organizational assessment of our group here in Burkina. This means that I’ve spent much of the past several days either in scheduling meetings, attending meetings, or travelling from one meeting to another! Does this sound fatiguing? It is.

Of course, I’m interested in hearing what conclusions these guys come up with. But to be honest, their coming to do this right now isn’t great timing. Not their fault. It was an administrative decision (no, I wasn’t involved or I’d have had something to say about it). We have a week-long organizational business conference coming up in the middle of the month for which I still have to get ready. So do a lot of the people they’re interviewing. Like I said, not great timing.

However, even more serious in my opinion is that going to meetings like this doesn’t provide for good stories for this blog! I may have to escape to visit some friends downtown one of these afternoons...

Actually, I was at a meeting downtown a couple of weeks ago. It was held in an air-conditioned hotel conference room. The meeting was three hours long and it’s the closest I’ve come to being frozen in Burkina Faso! It was soooooooooo cold in that room! And I only had a short-sleeved shirt.

The meeting included a meal. I have to admit it was a generous meal. Good food and lots of it on every plate. However, they made a serious mistake. They began bringing the food in before the meeting was over. What they didn’t realize is that as soon as the food arrived, the meeting was effectively over! No one was listening to them anymore. Unfortunately, the organizers seemed oblivious to this and droned on until that good-smelling food was half cold. *sigh*

Anyway, I’d better stop here. I have a meeting to go to.