Ignored proposal

Posted by Ali

On Friday afternoon as we left the office Max told me that we might have to work on the ADRA Australia proposal on Sunday, since we hadn't really had any time to work on it together and the first draft is due on Oct. 5. I wasn't overly excited about that idea, but I knew that we did have a deadline so I agreed to work over the weekend. Well, yesterday he didn't seem in any hurry to go to the office and work on the proposal and I didn't make any mention of it either (doing that would be equal to the kid in school who reminds the teacher there was a quiz scheduled). Instead of working, in the mid-afternoon Max told Staci to come let me know they were playing badminton and ask me if I wanted to join in. I thought that was a much better alternative to work and so Max, Davona, Staci (for part of the time) and I played badminton. It's been a long time (probably since high school) since I've played, but it was really fun.  Actually more fun than I remember it being in high school.  The only problem was the slight breeze which did its best to hamper our efforts at aiming the birdie. Oh, and the African sun coming out from behind clouds just a little bit into our game. I wished I was wearing shorts instead of jean capris and then I noticed that Max was wearing shorts. I wonder if maybe wearing shorts on the weekends, when it's mostly North Americans/Europeans on campus, is acceptable? If they ever ask me to play badminton with them again, I'm going to ask if I'd be allowed to put on shorts. I mean the net is behind the Church's house and the only Africans on campus during the weekend are the CoL nannies and the gatekeepers.

This morning I was fully expecting that Max and I would be totally devoted to finishing the proposal and sending it off. But I ran into him just as I walked through the gate to the ADRA side of campus. Max was heading the opposite direction and took a few minute to let me know that he'd be spending the day in Njiro, an area of Arusha, in meetings with the Tanzanian Union. He'd gotten the call last night and needed to be there. So, once again the proposal took a backseat and I spent the day trying to finish editing the finance manual that I'd started working on last week. I'm pretty sick of it. There's only so much finance and accounting information that I can pretend to be interesting in and 60 pages is about 57 pages over my limit. Here's to hoping we'll actually get that proposal done in time tomorrow. I'm just a little nervous that we won't make our deadline, but also thankful that at least this is only the first draft...