Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 May 2004 13:24:06
Last few days have been a bit busy, and I'm really supposed to be studying and essay writing this afternoon (I'll start it in a minute, really I will). Yesterday was interesting and diverse - I started off reading through some project evaluations from Moldova, and was really interested by my reactions to them. When I first got involved with the charity (in the mid-late 90s) I was much more evangelical than I am now, and I've felt increasingly at trustees' meetings that I've been the voice of vague woolly liberalism, which has always been welcomed and appreciated and gently ribbed, and that's all been just fine, it seems to work for all of us. Reading the reports, which were from our partners who are all very evangelical, I found myself baulking at some of the phrases being used, and I think I need to examine my reactions and reflect on them carefully before I go to Moldova. I don't want to cause offence, nor do I want to impose my own agenda, and I think I need to very carefully reflect on whether I do have an agenda other than to enable them to reflect on a particular aspect of their work so that it can be developed positively, and to gather enough good data for my dissertation. I don't think I have any agenda other than that, and I respect their work enormously even if I wouldn't use quite the same descriptive language or measurement criteria, but it's good that I at least acknowledge that my being more liberal may cause some conflict and colour my views of the work and of the data I collect.
In the afternoon I then headed up to Stevenage, which is the most nondescript town with virtually no character as far as I could tell, for my godson's 2nd birthday party. As I've not seen him since his christening which was nearly a year ago of course he didn't have a clue who I was, and as I arrived just as he'd woken up from a nap I didn't get the most ecstatic of welcomes! Good job I don't take these things too personally! I was expecting half a ton of mad kids but there were actually only a few, but his big sister (who's 4) more than made up for the lack of kids in volume and energy. I also had a valid excuse to eat some kids party food without feeling too guilty (weight this morning is 74.5kg, not great but could be worse considering the amount I ate yesterday).
After that I headed back into London and met up with some people from the OU Development course for a drink and a meal. We ended up at a stunning Turkish restaurant and ate wonderful food in very large quantities. It was really interesting chatting with people about where they're at in the course, I'm the only one currently doing my dissertation, and so I ended up fielding lots of questions about what I'm doing, which helped me clarify and explain the fairly vague proposal I have thus far. Some of the questions will also be really helpful in focussing down on what I'm actually looking for in doing the interviews with partners, I always really like discussing these things with other people on the course as sometimes when I'm in the thick of a piece of work I can't see the wood for the trees, whereas other people can illuminate particular issues I'd not considered. What was very bizarre though was that, after a relatively mindless kids birthday party I found myself sitting for the meal between two people who, it transpired, were really into shamanism. So soon after talking about Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, a conversation about trances induced by psychotropic Amazonian plants and fasting for three days in total solitude in the middle of a Welsh forest seemed like quite a paradigm shift. To put it mildly.