Smelling good

The team I am working with arranged a meeting with regional staff to explore key issues facing school education. There must have been about 50 in attendance. My heart sank when I saw the layout of the room - very traditional with gender segregation and the team on a high platform. The meeting was scheduled to last 4 hours. Mostly in Arabic. I don't speak Arabic.

We're not going to get a conversation going ...... We tried for an hour and a half and we didn't ... Someone appeared with a microphone which was given to each speaker ... I have a theory, once someone has a microphone in their hand, there will follow a speech ... I gathered lots of evidence for this theory.

Part 2 was better.

When I asked them to give me some strengths of the system, it was hard for them .... Not because there aren't strengths, it's just hard for teachers to admit it. Even when they got there and told me, there was always a BUT.

Someone said teachers were the most important people in the process. I disagreed. Pretty firmly.

Given that I might not be invited back, I took the opportunity to visit the souk. Because of frankincense, the souk majors on perfumes and incense. It smelled good.