Where Has All The Time Gone?
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 26/Sep/2009 15:28, 34 days ago
The more committed readers amongst you will have noticed that there have been significant gaps in blogging of late. While my updates are generally rather sporadic to say the least, recent time lapses have been even longer than usual. So, what, you may ask, have I been doing that has meant I have not been able to fill you in on my Bangladesh adventures? What mysterious activities have occupied my minutes? Where, in fact, has all the time gone?Following months of slow days in the beginning of my placement, the last few months have gone by in a blur. After becoming accustomed to searching for small tasks and excuses to fill my office time, with regular tea and Facebook breaks the norm, I now struggle to find enough minutes in the day. After pages of near-blank spaces, my diary is now full with meetings, workshops, deadlines, and to-do lists. And here lies the first answer to the question of the disappearance of time: I have been working.Now this answer may not seem satisfactory to some of you. Of course I’m supposed to be working, this is whole reason I’m in the Desh: sharing skills, changing lives, and all the rest. And, really, I have been working throughout my time here, dutifully arriving at the office at 9am sharp (or thereabouts… my punctuality, not a particular strength anyway, has become even more fluid as I have adjusted to ‘Bangladeshi time’). And in the office I stayed, until 5pm at least, apart from the odd trip to the local tea-stall, and the standard at-least-one- hour-long lunch break (crucial both for one’s nutritional needs and general well-being).These days, while my office hours have extended somewhat, it is in the office activities themselves that there has been the biggest change. In the first three months of my placement, most of my‘work’ was settling in, learning about the organisation, adjusting, planning, and building relationships with my colleagues: talking, joking, eating (see post below). In the following three months, and since, more actual activities started, and I discovered some of the challenges of implementing said plans. Some challenges are practical: frequent power cuts, lasting hours or even days at a time, limited staff and resources, language barriers, gaps in communication. Some are to do with significant differences in working style: understandings of deadlines, time management, organisationalskills, taking responsibility for implementing planned actions. Some are to do with my job: working in a capacity-building role means working with other people, which requires said other people to find ways to contribute the necessary time in between their many other commitments.These days winter is approaching, which, in this country of many seasons, means I have completed close to a year in Bangladesh. Looking back at the detailed, precise, and oh-so-hopeful work plan developed at the beginning of my placement, I can tell you that little of it has actually been completed. We do have an Annual Report, completed about six months behind schedule, but completed nonetheless. Various trainings can be ticked off the list, and various proposals have been submitted. But more significant is what has been started: slowly, gradually, all our talk of plans and changes and organisational developments are being put into action: monthly staff meetings, rather sporadic in the past to say the least, have taken place each month since May; a website and a gender policy are on their way; an organisational strategic plan, still far from complete, is being thought about at least; to name but a few of the things that myself and my colleagues have been working on.The answer to where all the time has gone is therefore neither mysterious nor extraordinary. The question, however, is one I often ask myself on the still-not-infrequent slow days. I do, at times, look back over the many days at my desk and wonder why so many tasks are still not finished and why so many plans are still only under process. But after almost a year of life in Bangladesh, living through at least six seasons, at least sixty quiet days, and many more busy ones, I know that change is slow. The trick is being able to appreciate the small achievements of the past, and identify the possibilities for future: when change could happen, how it could occur, and channeling all these talks and plans and dreams into action that is followed-through and followed-up. The secret behind performing that magic trick is one I'm still considering however, but the answer is, I'm guessing, the same I discovered after three months, that endless, age-old solution to everything: it just takes time.(Other possible answers to 'Where Has All The Time Gone?', and other possible excuses for not writing, include: the hospital stay, the holiday, the power cuts, the laziness.)