I met Jaishree yesterday night. She was just like used to be, humble 'n thoughtful. She visited Aceh, Nias and Jogya as evaluator of the disaster response programs of YTBi and its partners. One of our conversations last night was the fact that the flowing of aid in Aceh has reduced the participation of the people. It's NGO and other humanitarian agencies fault who provided the aid regardless the culture and the participation of the people. Yes, it's not a new issue. It's good she got that point.

Another issue we talked was about the fact that people (NGO activists) were very often trapped in the project implementation. Huge energy spent for reports, administrative works and things to fancy donors. This somehow very often make us forgot the initial mission why we were here. Is it only for project implementation "an sich" or something beyond it? Something down deeper. This clicked me. Yes, I realized I've been here now for three years but yes I feel something not fulfilled yet. That's it. The question why am I here? Reflection. And it's not only about me personally but also with all the teams, the staff, the people in LPAM. I realized that we might be good in programs implementation but something down deeper should be recalled again. We need Annual Reflection. I am thinking about it now. We need to remind ourselves again the mission for social transformation, how to build dignity of the people, to "not depend" on the aid, to fight for the self-esteem, to say no for the commercialism, enlightening.
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Tomorrow, I am leaving for Medan to meet Anant and auditors. What I understand is Anant is trying to help the administrative work of LPAM. I won't blame anybody here but yes the fact in this mid August, the auditing was just started. It should have been completed since he required me that. Yup, I think it's my weakness for not asking hard the x treasurer to deal with the auditor. Yup, I have to pay the price for that by going back again to Medan in which I prefer staying here to complete my works.

Oh yeah, Mike and Patrick from London, Anant and Iskandar from Medan visited us on the last Monday, 13. Nothing special for the auditing except that the letter from Andrew in early days when he agreed on our proposal through email instead of issuing 100 papers of agreement. Once Mike and Patrick found that letter it was sort of finding the clue. I had no idea at all about that but what I thought was it was not fair to judge Andrew for the past regardless the situation. In my perspective what Andrew did was the right one to make the relief operation run as expected. Well, no clue at all...