Sylvia's Journal

On Wednesday night Cabul and I were eating our NicaBoca Glory desert (pink ice-cream with crushed peanuts and chocolate sauce) while sitting in a Caribbean looking restaurant, looking out at a starless night with a giant flaming oil rig in the far distance off the coast. (Could this be a real burning platform?) The NicaBoca Glory was a special indulgence to celebrate our achievement. Less than a month ago Cabul had asked whether we could pull off what we just pulled off. I had said yes but only if he came along. And so we did.

The workshop ended exactly at the appointed time and in the envisioned high spirits. All through the morning the facilitators had been facilitating and I had been busy thinking of loose ends that required my attention as well as preparing the materials and photos to be burned on a CD for each of the teams and a few high level officials. Outside the conference room Cabul and Jennifer were preparing for the ritual of handing out the envelopes. This is a euphemism for money. Participants get it on the last day so they don’t cash in and leave on the first day. Frankly, I would have preferred that as it would have separated the corn from the chaff, or at least the really light chaff would have been blown away. When people have no interest in coming other than the handout they receive I’d rather not have them in the room. On the other hand, now that they stayed, we may have planted some seeds.

The preparation of the envelopes required that Cabul make several trips to the local bank which was a severe test of his patience. In this part of the world banks are not there to serve you but to serve themselves. If you expect anything else you are bound to get frustrated. I am very glad that it was Cabul and not me who had to deal with this.

Once the closing speech was made the feeding frenzy started, both figuratively (the envelopes) and literally. Countless drivers came out of the woodwork to claim their envelope and a free lunch. The plan was for the facilitators to lunch together and reflect on the entire workshop and look ahead to the next. This part did not go according to plan. Some of the facilitators returned to the training room to announce that all the food was gone. How 40 people can eat that much food so quickly is a mystery but they did. This did not help their mood; several of them were anxious to get on the road. The discontent came on top of other grudges that were wrapped in verbiage about mismatched expectations. Some of it was our fault and some of it was about the meaning of ‘expenses.’ Unfortunately it was our new team leader’s organization that was seen by all as the miser. I felt bad because such things can create ripples that affect their work here. I am not sufficiently familiar with this country to know whether grudges like that hang around for a long time or are quickly forgotten.

It was a tricky situation that showed how quickly a sense of collective inspiration can be completely eroded by mismatched expectations, or, more seriously, by more basic needs. It also shows that the collaborative spirit was still a very thin veneer. It does make one think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The situation asked for leadership and that is what I then saw in action. The team’s new leader stepped up to the plate, got the anger and frustration out in the open and facilitated a conversation until agreements were reached in which we all, not just me and Cabul, had a role to play. We ended up not doing any of the thorough debriefing I had hoped to do because the last conversation used up all our remaining energies.

I committed a final faux pas by hugging instead of shaking hands. I could tell from the bodies stiffening under the hug that I had crossed a boundary. It was time to part company and go our way. Cabul and I quickly packed up our own stuff and left the hotel even though the restaurant had started to prepare more food and announced, by way of our driver, at 4 PM that lunch was ready. But by then we had just completed our debriefing with the Regional Health Director and preferred to continue down the road rather than turn back for what would be a heavy starchy lunch that I could do without.

After one more attempt to extract money out of an uncooperative bank and a finicky ATM (we did succeed eventually) we were off to our evening and morning of relaxation at the Anomabo Beach Resort – I kept calling it the Anaconda Beach Resort – where Cabul had made us a reservation. It is a hitchhikers and campers place on the ocean, simple and lovely. We took the most expensive rooms (45 dollars) for our night of luxury and had one big bottle of beer each, plus that NicaBoca Glory ice-cream desert.