Has this ever happened to you?

I get back to work today after my three day trip to Rangpur and the two day weekend. Immediately some handicrafts land on my desk that need to be modified and in Dhaka by Thursday. Today is Sunday and Tuesday is a hartal and Wednesday is a government holiday. Three working days and alot of modifications.

Then I ask myself, why would Prokritee, the organization that MCC created, ask for these handicrafts in such short notice? Oh yes I remember, I saw these handicrafts sitting in the Mymensingh mailbox in Prokritee when I was in Dhaka two weeks ago. Why didn't I bring the package to Mymensingh myself instead of waiting for some other capable person? Possibly because my hands were full of pottery from the village.

Then I jump on my motorcycle to head to Muktagacha to motivate one of our slowest partners to get these samples done by Thursday. I'm terrified that I'm going to die because I haven't ridden motorcycle since long before being home, and I saw a horrible bike/truck accident when I went to Rangpur. Fortunately this partner's designer has decided to come to work today. The last time I visited he had been missing for three days. At that time no one at the project had heard from him, he hadn't answered his phone, and no trace or word of him was found at his house.

On my way back to the office, I stop into another partner, ISSD, to check on the progress of several handicrafts. The executive director is in Dhaka and no one knows when he'll be back. The other man in charge, Nozrul, is sick, but actually he gets sick at least once a week. I heard from a co-worker that he gets paid 1/2 of what my cook makes, so he could be supplementing his income. But the point is that the picture that is needed to paint some coasters that have to be done by Thursday is in his locked desk. Why can't I simply print another picture off the computer? Back at the office I go to the computer, but why is it all unplugged? Oh, neither the CPU of the browsing computer, the stabalizer, or the only color printer in Mymensingh work today. Over the weekend they were possibly struck by lightning. This computer happens to be the only browsing computer in the office. But don't fear there is a new CPU from sent from Dhaka. It's the administrator's, but we can't log on because it is password protected. I call Dhaka to ask her for the password and she is in a meeting. Maybe I'll just wait for Nozrul to get better.

I'm late for lunch and starving, so I head home curious to see what my cook has made. I've told her she will make the new food that she learned in her class or else. But what is sitting on my dining room table!? It sort of looks like pizza, however, I know that it is not pizza sauce, but Bangladeshi sweet ketchup and probably the very spicy bottle that my cook mistakenly purchased. Not only is it bad ketchup, but it is about two inches thick with a few pieces of fresh tomato. There is dough also, but it is so hard I can barely cut it. "How is it," asks my cook? I have no words, but I make her eat a piece. After I ask her if she likes it, she says, "I don't know what bideshis like." Right, but do you like it? Good food is good food.

I need to find leather to use with the coconut beads and some metal clasps for a photo frame. I've tried looking for the leather before and the leather was very weak and broken when I tried to rip it. For the metal clasps I go to a hardware shop, and as always they don't have them and they don't understand. They say we should go to a paper supply store, and the paper supply stores tries to sell us tape.?

Finally the leather. We go into a shop where they make leather shoes. They tell us to go to another shop. They always say this when they have no idea what they are talking about. We try anyway, and find some leather. I ask if I can cut a sample and test the strength. Sure enough, it breaks like I knew it would. Then they take us to another shop where we take our shoes off. A man is sitting on the floor making shoes, and somehow he produces the strongest, thinnest, most wonderful perfect piece of leather.