I finally got properly back to the grindstone this week, and my word what a lot I've got to do before the Smith family descends on Dhaka for Christmas in less than 3 weeks! I'm finalising the strategic plan and a new staff manual, developing a new project proposal format and approach, helping Habib to prepare a presentation about the course he attended in Colombo over Eid, preparing a presentation and report for the next VSO-CARE quarterly meeting, designing a training course on giving feedback and coaching staff, not to mention investigating the extent and nature of the conflicting instructions our area offices apparently receive from BRIF and donors. To make matters a tad worse, Anne said goodbye to BRIF this week hence seriously reducing the little team we had to work on our various projects. In all seriousness though, she did arrive at just the right time 6 months ago to give me some company, and we got a lot of good work done too. She'll definitely be missed around here, especially by her adopted dog Lucy!

No sooner though had Anne packed up her bags, dumped some surplus supplies on yours truly, and got on a bus to Dhaka, than a new Australian volunteer called Daniel turned up. He's here to do a couple of work camps over 2 weeks, so won't be staying very long really as part of his world tour after university. He looked totally spaced out when he arrived on Thursday, and said this was due to seeing another white face in such a remote location. Even the locals have stopped giving me such bemused reactions, which I suppose is actually progress and should be welcomed.

The main event work-wise this week was the second and final day of the time management training Gill and I devised for CARE and its partner NGO's. This took place on Wednesday i.e. World AIDS Day, and this apparently explained why only 7 out of 17 expected participants actually turned up. A diverging theory had it that the current rice harvest had reached a critical moment... Anyway, we pitched up at the CARE office the afternoon before to finalise the preparation (which had been done before we arrived - now there's progress) and discuss matters with Nils, the expat boss of the 2 muppets we worked with. What started out as a fairly normal professional chat soon descended into a blazing row when Nils forced us into giving our negative feedback on the way things had gone in front of his staff (not good), then told us that we were rude to criticise his team and they had much more work to do than us! At this point I waded in saying that it was actually quite offensive telling us we didn't have much work, and that nothing was to be gained from having a "who works the most" pissing competition (and yes I did use those exact words). Things improved soon afterwards, and we were able to discuss our contribution to the next course they plan running on resource mobilisation i.e. fund raising and obtaining useful resources from local sources to broaden and hence secure a NGO's support base. In the end Gill and I reviewed the training guide an UK-based consultancy had produced for them (at who knows what expense) that night and told him how bad it was the next day. He agreed with us - more development money well spent then?

What of the training itself? Well, we got off to a cracking start by beating our previous best and starting a full 90 minutes late. Remember, this was a time management course... Anyway, it all went really well, and I have 2 good reasons for believing this. First of all, we asked the participants how much time per week they had saved since attending the last course. The senior participant got to his feet and said that he didn't know how much he saved each week but that he had gained 2 hours per day. PER DAY!! And he wasn't alone either, as the group reckoned an average between 1.5 and 3 hours per day was accurate. Astonishing result! In the afternoon, and by popular demand, we ran a session about delegation and how to do it effectively. It wasn't terribly participatory, but the punters seemed happy, and Habib told me on the way home that most participants had planned to leave at lunchtime but stayed because the course was so good! Oh yeah, our training course rocked!!

I'm not too sure if I'll have anything interesting to say next week as it's going to be work work work until the 16th when I go down to Dhaka to meet my family and friends for our Christmas holiday extravaganza. Having said that, strange things even happen in the office. For example, when was the last time you had to escort a goat out of a room during a meeting?