To the Office

Well, I am not to the office yet. I am awaiting being picked up by the Save the Children driver. I love the drivers. They are always so professional and skillful. I recall in Bangladesh my favorite driver, a man my age, who was a "freedom fighter" (obviously held in great esteem) during their civil war from Pakistan. I noted how that while navigating the long roads through Barisal choked with people walking alongside the road edges that he particularly slowed around children and the elderly. I remarked once that it was good that he did so, since our organization was Save the Children, not Hit the Children.

I was up until late further developing my my implementation and training plan. I have used this one often, but I always like to customize it for each office and keeping in mind the skills of the team that I will be working with.

I have been doing this work for going on four years now and certain things are starting ot fall into place, or rather forcing their way in! By this, I mean the whole scheme of things. When I first began working overseas, and even before, I read voraciously on relief organizations and the countries that I would be visiting. My idea of a relief organization was of a gigantic C-140 transport plane pushing food pallets out the back as it flew low over a distressed area. I suppose that this idea of helping others was based on my ideal of not getting involved (being up in the airplane, but never landing), but also on what I had seen in the media as a child.

I recall the thrill associated with actual trembling when I first visited Save's headquarters in Westport, Connecticut. I absorbed the culture and structure every moment that I was there. The people were so different form the for-profit culture that I was so used to

But now, I have been putting it together in a more cohesive way, and it is only getting more complicated! Reading Mountains Beyond Mountains is further illuminating what I think that I already suspected. More later, perhaps....