Someone get me outta here!

Remember my famous last words on my blog from India last year? “P.S. The Congress site is voted on two years before the actual date and last year in Turkey, Tunisia and Quebec were the contenders. Unfortunately, there are politics in JCI and “the family” instructed their National Organizations how to vote so next year it will be in Tunisia which is destined to be worse. Needless to say, I was rooting for Quebec….


There was a shouting match the other night between a few of our guys and Ikbal (Leandro, our Meetings Director who’s from Brazil pronounces his name Ickyball), the Tunisian Congress Director over several issues. The first was the registrations of the Tunisian members. He wanted JCI to accept post-dated checks and we have refused over and over again but he won’t take no for an answer. He has lied repeatedly to us about the number of his members that will be attending and we’ve tried to reason with him. Undoubtedly, he has already collected their money and his members will be screwed because we will not bend on the issue of cash or credit card only. The next thing was the fact that instead of holding the opening ceremony at the same expo center we’re at, they have arranged to hold it at a gymnasium (which is far more expensive) that has stadium-type seating with no backs on the seats & is a 30 minute drive so all the delegates must be shuttled by buses. Also, for the closing gala they signed a contract for almost 600 more dinners than necessary and are only serving fish. They weren’t going to even have water until Arrey went over there and negotiated to lower the dinner number and add water, soda & wine. The kicker is that the Tunisian organization assured us all along that they had all these sponsors, monetary help from their government & the Ministry of something or another. When it came right down to it, they had no help and no money so JCI is getting stuck with all the bills. Before we even left St. Louis we had already paid over $300,000 in expenses. It’ll probably end up costing us over a million dollars. We’ve had to cover our backs at every turn. Leandro has volunteers stamping the meal tickets for the registrants with a JCI stamp so the hotel can’t screw us by adding more to our bill.

For the first time in the 7 years I’ve worked for JCI the Congress is being held in a dictatorship. It’s quite evident since there are posters of the President plastered everywhere – reminds Pedro of Chavez & Venezuela. The food is not so good. There are these sandwiches called chawarmas that are like big pita pockets with chicken & cabbage & stuff that I thought wasn’t too bad but after I had two within 2 days, I’m done with them. There’s a buffet just like any other resort with the same stuff on it every day. I’ve been having 2 hard-boiled eggs & 2 slices of toast for breakfast every morning and chicken & (hopefully) potatoes for lunch. Once again, I’ve skipped dinner a few times and had cheese-peanut butter crackers that I brought along with me. We did go to an Italian restaurant here at the Medina which was pretty good but I ordered tortellini and it ended up being ravioli with nothing inside. I can’t wait to get to Italy for some good food………