Day Twevle

Today I went to a workshop about partnership building with local NGOs for the INGO that I will be volunteering with for the next 6 months. The workshop was lead by a techinical advisor from the New York Office and present at the lecture was the Somalia country team with whom I will be working with. It was an ackward beginning given that the workshop leader used the several American idioms and odd expressions such as "hit the nail on the head" and "let's table that." It was kind of fascinating to watch her try to explain such silly sayings and instruct the Somalia team to take "a 10 minutes AMERICAN break" instead of African. It is true the concept of time is different here but the Africans in the room are professionals and I cringed each time she said it. Beyond that, the workshop was actually pretty interesting and I got to observe how the team interacts with one another and who is the strongest link, weakest link, and who makes the others listen. The team as a whole is very strong and diverse and I look forward to working with them.