This weekend was ZuC’s quarterly meeting. The last one was the weekend after I arrived in this country. It was good opportunity to measure the progress I have made in this place:
I know who people are & have made friends with some of the women from outside of Belgrade. I can hold small talk conversations with them in Serbian. I spent Friday night leading an impromptu tour of the center of the city for some friends from Nis and Kosovo. It was bizarre to be a foreigner guiding people around their capital city, trying to explain the sights in my broken Serbian.
Not living in the office makes me much more able to be present and engaged with people when I need to be. I don’t get as burned out when I can go home and be alone any time I want.
I can follow the general topic of conversation without a translator. This is mostly good – I like knowing what is going on without having to depend on someone to translate - but I am starting to realize the tremendous inefficiency of the organization. We spent 15 minutes pointlessly discussing how to layout a sign-up sheet (which, as it is part of an international campaign, tomorrow I am going to check with our partner organization to see what they actually want us to do, ignoring anything that was said in the discussion). I am starting to appreciate why people said, “You’re lucky you don’t understand” months ago. At the time, I thought it really annoying. Now, I see their point.
1 Comments:
At 6:11 AM,
Anonymous said…
I think someday you're going to have to realize that no organization is really run efficiently. G and I certainly complain about the way things go where we work too. You just have to decide how much you can deal with, especially when you're not in a position to institute changes. I wonder about public administration for a future Master's degree -- you could learn what's possible and how to bring about organizational change. I think you do a good job on the analysis part now.
Momdre
Post a Comment
<< Home