Sylvia's Journal

There was more nastiness in a far north corner of Bangladesh and the strike has been extended one more day. This sealed the deal: the workshop was called off and with that my trip to faraway Bangladesh was for naught. When money is spent like that it is called the cost of doing business; when people travel halfway around the world for something that doesn’t happen it is called bad luck.

Tomorrow I will try to transfer as much of my facilitation skills as I can to would-be facilitators in an audience-less and window-less basement room of the hotel – paid for, and so presumably available to us, and stuffed with workshop materials, flipcharts, markers, even conference bags. A dry run so to speak.

I made a few escapes from the hotel, which is not a bad place to ride out a strike but still, having been here for days now without any action was getting a bit old. We went to a store nearby with my Johns Hopkins colleagues to admire the brightly colored fabrics and handmade crafts. I bought some cards that were recycled report covers, cut in small pieces and cleverly turned into appealing notecards. I also got some local music but since I didn’t carry my CD drive I won’t find out until I am back whether it is nice music. At least it is popular the shopkeeper told me and both old and young like it.

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Sayeed came to pick me up for a West Bengal lunch across the lake. Although he was not pleased with the quality of the food, I enjoyed it. We caught up on about 4 years of not seeing each other, new and old business and friends we have in common.

Later in the afternoon I took a rickshaw to the Dutch Club which is recognizable from a long distance by its bright and wide orange wall and red-blue-white painted gate. If anyone ever wants to pick on the Dutch, they are easy to find. My friend Ellen treated me to a Heineken and a Bangla version of a Dutch cocktail treat, bitterballen.

Ellen and I work in the same field, as does her husband. She is now working for one of my earlier employers. She and her boss had also been invited to the workshop and had already decided yesterday they could no longer attend because of the many missed days. That would probably have been true for many other stakeholders. Calling of the workshop was really the only sensible thing to do.