Meetings, endless meetings and an Internet Drought

I thought that it would be another blog-less day as we have had an Internet drought most of the day but fortunately the connection has been restored, just before a major riot broke out. It is amazing how dependent we have become on the Internet to keep in touch with the world. It certainly does make my life less lonely while I am travelling.

Yesterday we finished the first meeting, the end of project meeting. I have to say that these two days were characterised by the most spectacularly bad chairing of a meeting I have ever experienced. It really is terrible when the chair just loves the sound of his own voice! And to add to the problem, he was rude to other participants and when there were discussions he allowed them to meander all over the place letting everything go over the time allocated. As a result of this there was no time for me to give my presentation and it has been moved to Friday. Amazingly (or not) the chair did not inform me of this and just skipped over my slot. Later the French representative asked what had happened to my presentation and the response was "I told you that some of the presentations would be carried over to Friday". We were not sure just who he told but it certainly wasn't anyone in the room. I was actually please for the move though because I don't like having to rush through a presentation or to have to skip portions because of the time constraints as the remaining presenters had to do.

Today was the start of the second meeting: a special sitting of the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Commission. This meeting is to discuss the status of the commission and some of the tasks that the commission needs to carry at the conclusion of the SWIOFP.

A friend remarked that if anyone just looked at the photos on my blog and didn't read the text, the reader would believe that I was just on holiday. So here is my view for the day which is not as pretty as the view from my room that I get to see only in the mornings before the meeting starts (I don't see it at the end of the meeting because by then it is already dark!).

And because I can't resist taking photos outside whenever I do get a chance, here are two photos from the hotel, one of the front of the rooms taken from the beach and the other of the baobab tree behind my room.



Location: Kunduchi, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

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