18th July - 1st August - Jalsa Salana UK 2008

The most exhausting time of year for me is the end of July. Every year the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community hold an annual convention in the UK - in recent years this has attracted in the region of 30k people. The members in the UK form the bulk of the volntary team that manage all aspects of the event.

As a child the three days seemed long and it was always hot and lots of walking around. As a teenager i got involved with the duties around the event, that was even harder. Over the last 5-6 years things have gotten tougher each year as my role has grown and as ive been involved in more senior roles. The period of time through which duties are required is 2 weeks. Tough.

The build up to Jalsa 2008 for me has meant lots of organising and administration. Its meant co-ordinating and dealing with lots of people and arranging meetings, finalising minutes, creating maps, and producing rotas - i'm not running a department, but it feels like it!

Now its coming up to the crunch time and this weekend gone was a very tiring one - the next 10 days are going to be a huge test. To be effective the duties in the three days of Jalsa [25,26,27th] have to start very early with the traffic + car parking areas being the main ones to plan / worry about. So i'm gonna have some very early starts and long tiring days. Gonna be tough! I have a good back up team and i hope they will be able to chip in fully - just one day of work left and then it will really begin…