I thought it was about time you saw a picture of Habib with his broken leg, so here it is. He's been bed-ridden for a fair few weeks, and judging by the attention and service he gets at home I'm surprised he's not trying to string it out a bit longer. As it is, the doctors came to see him at the end of the week and are satisfied that he can now start using crutches to move around a bit on his own. While I wasn't there to witness it, his first attempt at independent movement got as far as his bedroom door, by which point he was sweating profusely and very red faced. He swears to me that the doctors were nonetheless impressed with these few meters... The next step is the installation of some sort of structure made of bamboo (what else?) in his bedroom to help him practice and build up strength again, designed by his sister who has seen 4 broken legs come and go in her family. Has no one thought to point out that this woman is clearly a jinx?!

The reason I missed all this was that I was once again down in Dhaka for a VSO meeting and was stuck there until Monday morning due to another 3 day general strike. Obviously, I managed to make the best of what was I'm sure you realise a very trying situation given that I had to stay with Sarah and eat decent food. The meeting in question was the volunteer committee that liaises with the VSO office to raise and discuss volunteer issues, and it was in fact my last. Having been elected on for a year at last year's conference, and given that the conference will be mid March, my tour of duty has come to an end. It was the first time I stood on an elected committee of any description, it was something I wanted to do, and by and large I quite enjoyed it. We managed to get quite a lot done, fighting our corner against VSO whenever necessary, but we always managed to maintain an open and constructive atmosphere.

As it turns out our last meeting was amongst our most lively. Given that I was coming to the end of my year, I've not been as motivated to argue points in the last 1-2 meetings as I was in the beginning. I would imagine that it is normal to be a little weary of discussing the same subjects with the same people after a year, but that's no excuse when you're there to defend the interests of others. My fellow volunteer committee members seemed to be feeling something similar, and possibly as a reaction to that they were quite fired up for this last flourish. The fact that a few interesting subjects were on the agenda, not to mention a surprisingly dictatorial attitude from the country director as evidenced in e-mails preceding the meeting, all added to the event. The key point of the meeting was us defending our right to raise any issue with VSO that we feel affects a significant number of volunteers. In the end we one our case, with the country director expressing her right to not necessarily answer all our questions or requests! The jousting continued when our beloved country director (and my future boss lest we forget) said that she had the right to ask which volunteers were raising which issues, and we of course defending our right to not reply. Fruitful stuff eh?

The first working day after the meeting, seeing as I was still in Dhaka thanks to the strike, I decided to spend in the VSO office to do a spot of work. By work I mean looking after Habib's e-mails and responding to the never-ending stream of messages we receive from bright-eyed would-be volunteers from seemingly every corner of the world, with the notable exception of South America now I come to think about it... Anyway, so I'm in the VSO office, and I decide that this is an ideal opportunity to get the ball rolling with my next job. Now this may sound like being excessively keen but I've only got 3 months to do what VSO had decided was 6 months worth of work. Of course they over estimated the workload (or so I currently believe) but any head start I can get I'm willing to try. In particular, I wanted to find out a little more from the programme managers about what they have in mind as far as short interventions are concerned. In case I failed to explain this clearly before, the main part of my job with VSO will be working as an adviser on different organisational and management issues to various NGO's that VSO wants to support within its strategic areas. I have even been invited to attend a proper internal VSO meeting on this very subject next week!

So upstairs I go, and luckily 2 of the 3 managers I want to see are in and available. First of all I consult the board on which they allegedly keep track of requests for short interventions. The list shows 5 entries, 3 which require specialist skills in HIV/AIDS and another that seems to be indicating something about making a video. After speaking further with our 2 friends it appears that I am indeed expected to contribute somehow to the video one, though of course details as to how (or even why) are not forthcoming. The 5th one though does sound much more promising in so far as it has something to do with management or an organisation, but the exact needs are so vague it isn't true. What I'm left with then are the ideas of the 3rd manager who wasn't there that day (but who is by far the most clued up and a good bloke to boot) and some mysterious comments from the country director about "assessing" an organisation to see if they're ready for a longer term volunteer.

Hopefully next week I'll have pieced together a fuller picture of what I'm getting into, but even if the worst comes to the worst I can still spend 3 months in Dhaka playing sport, drinking beer, perfecting my CV and surfing the web for free looking for my next proper job. It could then be a lot worse!