Sylvia's Journal

I tried to find the fish
Below the surface
Of the dark waters of the pond
Sometimes I saw their lips
Coming up for air
And I thought of the things
Everyone talks about

I watch their lips and search
For what’s below the waterline
Glimpses, vague outlines
And then suddenly
I am showered with
bubbles everywhere,
Like effervescent tablets
in a glass of water

as I listen to Laksmi’s passion
breathing life into her people,
her acts of generosity
Breathing life into is
What it means to inspire

Breathless I listen to Afsana,
Rajani, Tina, Neela, Lynne
Carmen, Anna, Carole, Susan
I have a weakness for strong women
I find so many here
No nothing wrong with the men
But scaling up with heart and care
Needs strong women

Awed by our hosts
Who are flawless in my mind,
A royal welcome at the airport
Whisked safely past potholes and
Frightening oncoming traffic
In the dark, delivered
Safely in this paradise
BRAC taking us in as family

I came with hand luggage only
But now the suitcase doesn’t close
So full of new connections
The weight of countless business cards
Heavy and light ideas
Jumbled together
To sort out during days of travel back

And knowing much better now
The shape of the hidden fish

Rajendrapur, December 5, 2008

By the time of our closing session yesterday, our ranks were reduced by about 50%. Everyday people are peeling off and flying out to places far and near. We listened to an excellent synthesis done by someone whose ancestors came from Lebanon. He did a great job acknowledging individual contributions to his distillation of key lessons; one of those was the absence of presentations about failures. It’s a nice idea, and everyone nodded hard, but I can’t imagine anyone being willing to present their failures in public like that.

I did my presentation in the early morning and asked the audience to tell me whether they always wash their hands after going to the bathroom (the entire 26 seconds recommended), whether they smoke, wear a seatbelt, plan their family, practice safe sex and delegate. I also asked them to be truthful in their responses. Some were and some were not. I knew that some were lying because research in the US (done in bathrooms at selected airports) has revealed that only a small percentage of men wash their hands – in the conference room the percentage was outside that range but the key point was made: there is a huge gap between knowledge and action. The lonely smoker acknowledged that he knew smoking was not good for his health…and yet.

The presentation was well received, but then all presentations were well received. Conferences are not great places for truth telling. Truth telling doesn’t start until people feel safe and connected, which is just about starting to happen, but we are done now. That is always the case with three day conferences, except maybe with OBTC, where some of us have known each other for decades now.
The dinner was organized outside next to the pond from where our fish came from. I wrote a poem about those fish (“The hidden shapes of fish”) which I read later on our talent show evening. Dinner was another fabulous example of Bangla cuisine. This time I ate with my hands, even the soupy dhal. A few brave souls stepped up to the podium, for our talent show and broke out in more or less spontaneous song and dance (the latter not entirely voluntary). We were treated to modern Bangla love songs, English love songs, a WWII Christmas song, and even a long jiddish joke directly from New York. I read my poem which emerged only minutes before dinner started. In between our acts were professional dancers showing a variety of traditional dances, instruments and songs.

And then there were the goodbyes from the people who will not accompany us on the fieldtrip today because they live here or they have done this before. Most of the Indians are going back to Delhi or wherever they live. I had not followed the news about India and was told that the terrorists had done/were planning air raids on Delhi’s airport – it sounded very frightening. But when I went on the internet to read the India Times I could not find anything about this. I suppose this is how rumors are created. But I was happy to be traveling back through Dubai and not Delhi, even though I would have liked to visit with Nathalie for a day. That will now have to wait.