JIM

It stands for ‘Joint Introductory Meeting’ (everything has an acronym in Ghana) and 11 weeks in it was a bit late for the ‘introductory’ part.  The purpose of the meeting was to review and change the overarching objectives for my job role which had been written in the placement plan, to better suit what I needed to do.  It was just as the meeting was due to start when the Regional Director cornered me in his office and asked me to help him with his blackberry (no euphemism); he couldn't get it to connect to the internet.  I tried; failed and promised to take it to MTN to get it sorted.  It was then he asked me for lessons on the computer.  Priority: facebook and yahoo e mail!

19 people had been invited to the meeting.  13 showed up and were a mixture of JHS teachers, headmasters/mistresses, SHS teachers, Ghana Association of Science Teachers representatives, GES representatives like Mme Vero and Rose, some Assistant Directors at the Regional Office and the Regional Director himself.  Not a bad turn out actually. It didn’t start on time… that was a given.  The problem was I had already used the objectives to make a work plan (that had been sitting on the Regional Directors desk for maybe 8 weeks…). Although we didn’t exactly cover what we should have we reviewed the work plan I had already produced and it was a successful meeting, albeit far too long. There was of course the obligatory opening and closing prayer for the start and the end of the meeting (who needs to sign a contract saying you’ll do something when you’ve asked god to ‘make it so’). The Director was unable to make the beginning of the meeting so he assigned one of the Assistant Directors to do it who spoke of ‘opening a new page with this VSO volunteer’ (clearly couldn’t remember my name).  The Regional Director arrived and spoke fondly of his dealings with VSO and the good work that had occurred via the partnership within previous roles he had had in the Region.  All of this added up to high expectations and I hoped (and prayed) I could deliver…