Sylvia's Journal

I am in Amsterdam, in between flights. I slept a bit on the way over from Boston and feel fairly rested even though I skipped most of the night. Just before leaving I changed the header picture of my journal. Another step away from the imagery of hospitals and ill health. Unlike my previous trip to Kenya, I am traveling without my moon boot and look like all the other travelers now, except when I get up. The stiffness, after having sat down for awhile, is hard to cover up.

I said goodbye to Tessa and Steve and also to the Christmas tree, which, as Sita wrote, “decided to run out the door in your absence – we decided not to keep it up until July.” Getting the Christmas tree into the house and then decorated always seems to be Tessa’s biggest challenge. It is an important event for her and Axel, while Sita and I are lukewarm about it. With Tessa going, so goes the Christmas tree. I think it is a good thing because the clutter that comes with the tree and the holidays is beginning to get on our nerves.

I am happy that Sita and Jim are still living with us. I would have found it much harder to leave knowing that Axel would be alone. It has been wonderful to have had both girls here over the Christmas holiday and one of them staying nearby all the time, and for a bit longer

I am getting the quiet reading done that I did not find time for back home, about Ghana and its health services, its challenges and its successes. I recognize elements in some of the success stories that have to do with leadership, a positive vision of the future and the contagion of success. It is not explicitly called leadership but I recognize its manifestations. I think we have found a way to make recurrence of such episodes of success more predictable and less haphazard because of the way we are combining some key ingredients: working in teams rather than alone, creating a shared vision, coaching, holding teams accountable for moving towards a result they selected and a healthy competition between teams. Our approach fits within the large scheme of things as envisioned by the government of Ghana, according to its website and USAID/Ghana. That’s always a good thing.