Land slide ahead

We have started the process of going to the Chiwogs to conduct Zomdue for the formulation of the 11^th FYP and we started with Khailo Chiwog. Halfway through the farm road we could see a land slide ahead. My mind suddenly went to the walk through the short cut filled with small and big, green and yellow, assorted leeches and I gave an involuntary shudder. But upon further investigation we found that if we were able to remove a big boulder and we could pass through. Luckily I had three men (Gup, Livestock and Agri) for company and that which had always been a disadvantage worked to my advantage that day. Of course, I was not total useless – I stood beside them and gave them moral support J After that episode we were able to continue our journey without any obstacles despite the steep road and the heavy downpour.

The journey to have lunch was an even bigger adventure amongst a pool of very slippery mud, leeches and screams. Instead of the Ugg boots on my feet, the famous Gumboots would have been a better choice but I didn’t have the latter and I chose the former as protection from the bloodthirsty leeches. Somewhere along the way, the Gup who was piloting the journey, lost a shoe in the mud and walked barefoot onwards. In spite of everything, we were to find a little humor in that, although I am not sure somebody would beg to differ.

After lunch we made our way downwards again because that was where the meeting was schedules to be held. The participants included men, women, the old AND kids. Just as I was happy that I would finally be rid of the creepy leeches outside, we were swarmed by flies inside which I had to keep chasing away because they were so annoying. Sadly its numbers were intensified by a million fold with the serving of tea. Halfway through the meeting, it started to rain outside again and my mind wandered to the return journey and the disastrous road but I tried hard to bring myself back to the matter at hand.

Despite the murmurs and the kids fighting, screaming and making hell, we had an animated discussion with a very vocal group. They had no problems expressing their opinions, which was excellent for us and we were able to get very good results even though they had to run outside once as their peaches were being attacked by monkeys. It was a very different atmosphere from our usual meetings but in a good way. I had a great time and although I was looking forward to a similar adventure in the other Chiwogs also but except for the flies and leeches there were no other similarities (of course we got the same excellent results from the other Chiwog Zomdues also but who cares about that huh! Hehehehe)