goodwoodenship

Running on Empty

Yesterday I walked from work to a girl called Susannah’s house who was introduced to me on email by a friend in DC. Whilst sitting in her living room trying to make friends with her flatmates I kept getting irritated by a mosquito that was checking me out as a potential docking spot. Irritated I tried several times to kill it but my depth perception has been screwed up by exhaustion and jet lag (my expert analysis) and I kept missing. Eventually I decided on another tactic, when it landed I’d swot it. Less room for error that way. In the middle of a story Susannah was telling it landed, on my forehead. At which point I hit myself in the face.

The mosquito got away but I did manage to completely annihilate my dignity.

Today  I was asked to take minutes for a series of one hour high level meetings between the visiting Vice President and Donors, the VP and UN representatives etc. In the donors meeting the tensions between diff ambassadors and their opinions was incredible. And amusing. At one point one guy started tapping his foot, then shaking his head, then he put his head in his hands, then he turned to his neighbour and whispered something - like in some well written play he built the tension up to the point where you were desperate for him to speak, I almost stopped the others to say "but wait what you’re saying must be wrong - HE has something to say".

Eventually to the relief of the room, he finally snapped and decided to speak. He started with "The obvious point that you are all missing is…" which immediately won over his audience. By the end of his analysis the conversation went like this: Him: "Were you there? I didn’t see you there…" the other guy: "I’m just saying that he can’t have said that" "Oh really so you weren’t there but you know do you? Strange, because I was there" "He works for me on this topic and I know his position and he can’t have said that because it is the opposite of our policy" "OK I must have imagined that he said that, I must have gotten it completely wrong" "All I’m saying is…" etc Shortly after this exchange he got up in the middle of someone else talking and left.

I felt quite smug about finally feeling more mature than someone despite being in a setting where the average punter was some sort of director or high level diplomat, over 40 and male. Throughout the meetings I kept finding myself making eye contact with a various different people. I’d smile, they’d give me a strange smile back and then look away in that embarassed way you do when in a meeting and unable to support visual contact with verbal. I started daydreaming that maybe they thought I was someone important or were trying to work out where I fit in in all the politics at the table. Maybe they were just impressed by my efficiency and speed at taking the minutes. I sat up a little straighter and tried to look very professional and competent, my mind raced ahead to being entrusted with all the projects they were discussing and single handedly being able to sort out the politics that cobbles all attempts at a peace process here. At the end of three meetings like this someone eventually came up to me and said, "excuse me do you know you have a little ink on your face?"

I’ve looked it up on google and a little ink in Sudan actually means a large circular smudge on the cheek, one line across the forehead that breaks and then continues down the opposite cheek to the smudge and to finish off the visage a perfect beauty spot of blue on the chin.

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