And so it goes on

I've written before about the complications of organising meetings, our lifeline in a remote management situation. Negotiating with families for female members of staff to travel, ensuring females are accompanied by male relatives or by another woman and an acceptable man, applying for passports and visas, arranging travel and security planning, ensuring staff don't bring anything through the border (documents, CDs etc) that will get them into trouble...etc.

Now, we have two more to add to the list. One of our researchers has been blacklisted by the Kuwaiti authorities, for reasons unknown. We can't ask questions of the Ministry because it creates more problems - we just have to keep reapplying. So he can't travel for now. And our translator has just had to pull out of this week's meeting after three of his uncles walked into a field of land mines over the weekend. Two were hospitalised, one is dead.