Day Forty Eight

I’ve been having a bit of a rough time since we returned from Mikumi. When I’m not feeling depressed then something is going wrong with my health. On Tuesday evening, I had a terrible nose bleed. I was dripping blood all over the room, which probably sent the mosquitoes into a frenzy. I rarely have nose bleeds, so I’m not sure what the problem was, but it hasn’t happened again since then. However, the fact that the rainy season is now fully upon us has brought a new set of problems. Since everything is getting plenty of rain – almost daily – it’s all starting to grow and bloom. For me, growing and blooming means serious allergy problems. I can’t stray far from a box of tissues, and I’ve been forced to start taking allergy medication. Ordinarily that might not be a problem, but it’s been making me very drowsy. I’m like a vegetable for most of the day. I haven’t done much work in the past two days, and I doubt they’ll get much out of me for the rest of the week.

Along with the health problems, I’ve just been in a foul mood. On Monday, we had our cluster reflection meeting at the Bahá’í Centre. I wasn’t feeling well and I said I didn’t want to go, but Dr. Sabet suggested that “it would be a good idea” if I went. I didn’t tell him I was feeling well, but I did say that it would be in Kiswahili, and I wouldn’t understand what was happening. He told me I could still contribute and someone could translate for me. Basically, I was going whether I wanted to or not. The first portion of the meeting was presentation of statistics and things like that, but then, for me, it all went downhill from there when we started getting into consultation. I’ve never seen anything like it. One of the friends put forth the suggestion that Nineteen Day Feasts should be held in the sectors rather than one for the whole city at the Bahá’í Centre in order to better empower the sectors and develop a sector identity to assist in the multiplication of the core activities. The discussion was almost entirely centered on how exactly such a thing would be accomplished, and then I stood up to have my say. I said it was a good idea, but that we’d spend the whole meeting working on logistics so we should just agree or disagree on the principle of the thing and allow the Assembly to work out the logistics. One of the other friends stood up and agreed, adding that it wasn’t within the jurisdiction of the cluster meeting to make changes regarding the Feast. Then a 45 minute discussion ensued about the validity of those statements. The discussion just dragged needlessly on and on and on until finally the person chairing the meeting called for a vote (finally). Up to this point, all the discussion had been in favor of the proposal but when the vote was called, over half of the friends present rejected it! Ahhh! Where were they when we were wasting an hour and a half talking about something that was going to be voted against so heavily in the first place!?

At this point, I was already agitated by the lack of focus. After lunch, we broke into our sectors and began consultation on what we planned to do in the next three months. We wrote down all of our goals, and then everyone met back together and the sectors shared their plans. During the sharing, it was discovered that there’s been no set way to count what a devotional meeting is. Some people follow the method we use in the U.S., where a devotional meeting is counted only once (as long as it’s regular) regardless of how often it meets. So a devotional held in my home on every Saturday during a month will count as one devotional instead of four. Apparently, some people count the four. And this inconsistency in keeping the statistics has occurred throughout the Five Year Plan here, so if you look at the statistics then you might see that one sector has eight devotionals listed and another has 60 listed, even if the sector with eight actually had more total meetings. It might not seem like too much of a problem, but successes are measured and goal-setting is done by looking at these statistics.

I couldn’t take it anymore! The older I get, the more anal I get about structure and order and the proper operation of things. It’s been five years since the beginning of the Plan, and they still don’t have a uniform way of keeping statistics! Ahhhh! I stood up and basically relayed that you couldn’t make informed and competent decisions based on statistics that aren’t consistent and uniform, and that someone should set down a national definition for how to count devotional meetings, home visits, and everything else. Someone mentioned that the local Counsellor had said the right way was to count each meeting, meaning four a month in the example I used, but if that's so then why is the U.S. doing the exact opposite? Surely there's some kind of international standard in use across the Baha'i world! I think Dr. Sabet could see that I was getting a little upset, so he pulled me back down into my seat and told me we’d address it at the next NTC meeting. Raising your voice is taboo in Tanzanian society, and in retrospect I guess I could have been a little nicer.

The outburst was a symptom of a larger problem that I’ve been struggling with since my arrival. It’s been really difficult for me to adjust to living in a society that isn’t driven by some kind of efficiency and order. That isn’t to say that Tanzania is a place of mass chaos, but time doesn’t mean anything here. People essentially get things done when they feel like getting around to it rather than when it should be done or even when they say it will be done. Employees of the Bahá’í National Centre in the U.S. would probably have a heart attack if they saw the way things operate here. I’m not necessarily saying the way things are done isn’t right, but it’s just so foreign to me that I’m not handling it very well at all.

A good example is that it’s taken me over a month to send out three letters. First, I had to harass the person that was supposed to write them to write them, which was supposed to have been done a month before. Then I had to wait for them to be given to someone who could deliver them to me. Then I had to type them (they were in Kiswahili, quite a task). I assumed I was finished with them, so I put them in the "Outbox" at the Centre to be put in the mail. A week later, I show up to the Centre and I’m presented with the letters, which someone had removed from the Outbox and corrected the mistakes in my typing of the Kiswahili and the grammar of the person who originally wrote the letter. So I had to retype the letters, and now I have to find a stationary shop – on my own – to buy some envelopes to put the letters in so I can seal them to prevent someone from deciding they’ll just go digging through the NTC’s mail again.

It’s just been a bad week for me. I think once I start feeling better then maybe things will turn around, but as it stands now I want nothing more than to get on a plane and fly back home where I know I can do some good in the Baha'i community. I’ve enjoyed my time with the friends outside of “work,” but all of the Baha’i work I’ve done and I’m supposed to be doing is driving me crazy. Honestly, it's just been a waste of time. It seems like the Cause would be so much more successful here if the administration backing it up was a little more efficient.

At any rate, I should head to bed. I'm going to get my blood pressure all riled up. =P Tomorrow is the Annual Meeting, Friday is the First Day of Ridván and the new administrative year, and Saturday is an NTC meeting. And with Dr. Sabet, the NTC Chairman, out of the country (in Sudan!), I think the NTC meeting will certainly be “interesting.”