Sylvia's Journal

Today is our big event for this week. We call it the Senior Alignment Meeting. The purpose is to bring senior government officials on board with our leadership initiative by exploring links between the things that keep them awake at night and the promises of this program. When we did this program in Nepal a couple of years ago only 7 people showed up of the 35 invited and we did not quite get the alignment we had hoped (we got it later). Here it looks like we’ll have the opposite. We would have been happy with 10 people but the latest tally is nearing 40. Whether numbers correlate with degree of alignment remains to be seen.

I went out with a longtime friend last night who I had not seen since I last worked in Ghana in 2004. I had my first not starchy meal (Tigerprawns and haricots verts, or, as they used to be called when we lived in Senegal, Harry Couverts). We caught up and compared experiences of getting close to our sixties; we who always thought only other people got old. I received a good overview of the lay of the land, at least one person’s perspective and received some advice that may prevent surprises. Much of this has to do with expectations and people taking things so for granted that they fail to articulate them. This is what sometimes gets foreigners in trouble. We assume, but we don’t check. So last night I checked. It is all part of the leadership practice we call scanning

During the day we designed and prepared for this important meeting with four members of our newly built facilitator team. To get us in the right frame of mind, we started the day with a wonderful internet slide show called an Irish prayer that was sent to me the night before by one of my colleagues whose mother just passed away. It is about wishing people not smooth sailing and beds of roses but the things that help you through rough times. It was about all the things that we experienced over the last six months.http://www.e-water.net/irishblessing_en.html

We had a very productive day. The resulting design of the meeting today is better than the draft I did on my own the night before. I had used some of the Ghanaian Adinkra symbols that mean something I felt was relevant for this program and us as a team: Two Heads are Better than One; Doing the Unusual or the Impossible, and Unity.

The leap of faith part is that I have not yet seen any one of the team members facilitate. Some people might say that it is risky to do this with such high level folks but for me it is a calculated risk. It will test my belief that facilitation is easier and less likely to go off the tracks if the design is robust. Most of the failures I have seen in meetings were a direct result of not having a design at all.

I discovered that several of the people I met with during the nutrition meeting At UNICEF in New York a month ago are actually meeting again across town, right here in Accra. There is a lot of traveling and meeting going on in the world I live in and I wonder when some of these people are ever home. But maybe people also wonder that way about me.

While I am preparing for the immediate future, as in today, I am also, on the side, preparing for other trips over the next few months, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Afghanistan. I am catching up with my old lifestyle and it makes me happy. The assignments are exactly the kinds of things I like to do.

Up and running was far from my mind for months. Actual running is still not in the stars. My regular walking has greatly improved. I am rarely limping. I can get myself into ADRA’s large SUVs without too much effort. I don’t think people here can tell that I was in a wheelchair four months ago. But still, the nerve endings in the ball of my right foot and in my toes are not back to their old state. Sometimes it feels as if I walk on a wad of cotton balls. There has been no significant change in months now and sometimes I wonder whether this is the way it is going to be. I have discovered there are many people with neuropathies in their feet or toes. People usually don’t talk about them unless you ask. I am learning that this condition simply becomes part of who you are, like a scar. You learn to live with the odd sensation(s). If this is the only lasting damage from our fall from the sky, I have no reason to complain.

I am starting to get sloppy about my exercises-in-the-shower routine. Part of the reason is that the shower is actually a narrow bathtub and the angles and surfaces I need are not right. Once I am out of the shower the tasks of the day call me and the exercises are forgotten. There is also no one else around to remind me.

Yesterday was a day of up and running in the figurative sense. At a little past 9 o’clock we had 10 potential leadership development facilitators seated around ADRA’s conference room table, half of them from the ministry, and over half of them women. Nearly all of them were informed at the last minute, some just an hour before. This was not because of bad planning or anything like that; I considered it in a more positive light: a spontaneous response to the seeds we had dropped about the program and scattered into the wind during the last 24 hours.. The group was enthusiastic and diverse, representing various sectors, organizations and professional interests.

I had planned a full day orientation and team building workshop during which people experienced some of the exercises they are expected to facilitate next week in Cape Coast. That way I would be able to observe them in a group. I saw what they are passionate about and gleaned insights from their long and deep experience in Ghana. We shared our personal philosophies about learning, leading and managing and we reviewed some of the challenges that the teams they will be working with will be up against. I asked one of them to facilitate our own visioning exercise which led to a great conversation about inductive and deductive planning approaches.

We took a break that took twice as long as I had planned because we went to a popular lunch restaurant, another maquis, which required a car. Despite our efforts to be organized and order ahead of time it took an hour before all of us had received our meals. The manager of the restaurant was trying to instill an attitude of customer service in her wait staff but it was a lost cause as all of them, including the kitchen staff, struggled to keep up with demand. It was a seller’s market and thus bad luck for us. But the food was great and so was the company and there was lots to see.

Next to us a large number of Maggi sales people (‘Maggi and Me, the Secret of Goodness’). They were celebrating something. They were all dressed in the same bright red and yellow shirts. I regret I did not take a picture of them; it was such a festive sight. I asked the two white managers, older gentlemen, who did not look half as smart in their shirts as their young Ghanaian salesforce, how one could get a shirt like that and their answer was ‘you work very very hard.’ They emphasized every word in a way that made it seem an unattainable dream and look at the proud wearers of the shirts with some envy. Cabul thought it would be nice to have a uniform like that. It does create an instant and clean sense of belonging. In search of the missed picture I went on the Maggi (=Nestle) website of Ghana and found all sorts of useless but interesting information. There actually was a Mr. Maggi (Julius) who founded the famous cubes over 100 years ago. I did also learn that there is a coveted “MAGGI Homowo Kpopoi Manye” title at the grand final event of the Homowo Festival, a harvest celebration in the Ga community around greater Accra. Maggi sponsors cookouts where, I presume, much Maggi is used. This competition has evolved, according to the site, to become not only a key brand-building event for MAGGI, but also for the ethnic group called the ‘Ga.’ Imagine that, brandbuilding for ethnic groups. I am struggling with the concept.

Today is my Irish-twin brother Willem’s birthday. For one month each year we have the same age. That month just ended today. Happy Birthday, gefeliciteerd!

Yesterday was like the Tetris computer game, where different shapes fall from the top of the screen to be stacked right at the bottom of the screen. Good hand-eye coordination and fast reflexes are needed to guide the shapes into the right spot so that they create a smooth surface for the next series of shapes. If you stack them wrong you quickly get into trouble and to the game is over before you scored any points at all. The more progress you make, the faster the pieces come ‘raining’ down. When a layer is completed it disappears and you get bonus points or are promoted to the next level in the game.

We have been playing this game for awhile. At first, back in October, the Tetris pieces came down slowly but they have been speeding up lately. Yesterday the pieces came down fast and furiously as we had to nail down dates, times, venues, participants, hotel reservations, facilitators, meals, materials and more. We also had to throw ourselves into thick traffic to visit most of the key players in this leadership development adventure. I am pleased with the results, the most important of all is that we were received warmly everywhere with more than pledges of support; we got everyone’s full cooperation, their confidence and enthusiasm.

Our partner, the Adventists Development and Relief Agency (ADRA/Ghana) was particularly helpful and became our graceful host, making their office and conference room available as well as a driver and car. We criss-crossed Accra several times, often searching for our destination. Streetnames are absent or hidden and places are referred to as ‘in the neighborhood of this or that landmark.’ For newbies like us this is a big challenge. Even our Ghanaian driver was stumped a few times.

Halfway through the day I discovered that it was Cabul’s 27^th birthday. It was too late for a decorated birthday chair at breakfast but not too late for a celebratory meal in the evening that included a Margarita à la Tante Marie in a little maquis (open air) restaurant that served a variety of African foods from the region. The margarita did not quite fit the local food theme but it did go, belatedly, with the Chimichangas Cabul had for lunch at the US embassy. The embassy also houses USAID and is brand new; a fortress-like structure that sends out one signal that says ‘America is under attack’ and another that says ‘don’t even try.’ It is discouraging to see our tax dollars at work in such a costly, and in my view unproductive and reactive way. I could see ways in which all that money could be used creatively and productively to create more attractive futures for those who willingly blow themselves up in or near our embassies. Cabul and I are on the other extreme of our our tax-dollars-at-work continuum. I’d like to think of us and this leadership program as good and more creative value for money.

My Guinean ex-colleague and good friend Namoudou Keita, who is based in Togo, happened to be in Accra on leave and joined us for dinner. Namoudou is learning English and since Cabul does not speak French, this seemed like a perfect occasion for Namoudou to practice. That was the theory. In practice there was a lot more French than Cabul could handle. It left him eager to learn French.

Back at the hotel we parted from Namoudou and retired to prepare ourselves for our next set of tasks. I tried to catch the occasional wireless signal that wafts in and out of my room. While waiting for the signal to return I prepared for today’s first encounter of the Ghanaian facilitator team; a mishmash of people from public and private organizations who are interested or have been nominated to be part of the core team that will carry the leadership program forward after Cabul and I return to Boston. Back home we will cheer them on and support them using whatever technology is available, Internet, Skype, cellphones and, if necessary, carrier pigeons.

It was a good start of our trip and I kept thinking, “Something must go wrong now; this is too good to be true.” But nothing did. I have never quite gotten off to such a great and fast start elsewhere. There is something unassailable about having the support from the top leadership of all the groups we are working with: the ministry, USAID, ADRA and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. It proves the old saying that where there is a will, there’s a way, especially if the will comes from the top. The way forward is right in front of us and wide open.

I woke up from a dream about a nursing conference where I was in charge of a session that had a clever name and was about emotions. I remember walking to the session and leafing through the booklet that went with it. It was very fancy with glossy pages but I did not recognize it and it had nothing to do with what I had planned to do during my session. The booklet I had in my hand seemed prepared for a lecture whereas I had planned a series of conversations in pairs and small groups. I had counted on these conversations to produce the content of the session.

The dream was probably triggered by my reading an article last night about introducing participatory community planning events in Indonesia that, according to the author, went quickly off the tracks. It also represents the reality I usually have to deal with when we first launch a leadership development program. Often people expect the expert to lecture people into changing. Gently bending such expectations into a different direction is what I usually need to do in the beginning. There is sometimes resistance to this because the activity of bending, both for the bender and the bendee is not without effort. Lecturers, especially if they have been lecturing for a long time, require little effort or preparation; listeners to such lectures require little effort or preparation, only the presence of their bodies in the room. What I am proposing requires lots of work, from beginning to end.

Yesterday I slept in and found Cabul had indeed arrived as planned. Mamadou had picked him up and dropped himoff at the hotel. We had our cornflakes together in an otherwise empty dining room. Susan Wright from USAID stopped by the hotel to welcome us and painted us a more detailed picture of the context and cast of characters we will be meeting soon. Later, Moussa and Cire, Mamadou’s sons, who look like they are in their late twenties but are actually still in school, one under 20, picked us up in their father’s SUV and drove us through empty streets (it’s Sunday) to Mamadou’s house. Mamadou and his wife Zahara live in a sort of palace. The two crowns on the big black gate prove this. It is owned by a Northern Nigerian Chief who lives next door in a 15-room palace with the same crowns on the gate. Inside the house is majestic. Another couple, Ivorian/Senegalese joined us for an enormous lunch spread, including meshwi (a recognizable lamb) and chickens, looking puny next to the lamb, a large salad and atieke, a couscous-like substance made from manioc. Lunch was completed by fresh paw-paw, mango and pineapple, a real treat for us coming from a northern winter. Cabul got a large dose of French which was the primary language of all present, except the two of us. Sometimes we switched to English and Cabul could participate for a while, then back to French.

On our way home we drove around looking for a simcard for Cabul’s cellphone. The preferred place for this and a carton full of water bottles is the Shell station. The little stores at gas stations are common here too and have become the local convenience stores. Not much in terms of staples but lots for people craving sweet or salty snacks. Apparently, these bad eating habits are on the minister of health’s screen: a retired military by the (first) name of Courage (names are destiny). He believes in wholesome living, good eating habits and much exercise. He reminds me of Dr. Kellogg and his movement in the New York mountains at the turn of the (previous) century. There are some other priorities here that have to do with more basic health problems such as women and children dying during or right after delivery and the scorch of malaria, killing small children in droves.

The remainder of the day Cabul tried to stay up and adjust to the new time zone and I contacted various people I knew and did not know to say I had arrived in Ghana.

We had a delicious local meal in the, once again, empty dining room and withdrew too our rooms around 9 PM for another good night sleep.

I am sitting in the empty lobby of the Alisa hotel in Ghana, because the wireless signal is stronger here than in my room. Except for Cabul who arrived this morning from New York we seem to be the only guests and I wonder why hotels say that they are full when they are not. The place is decorated with large cloth red and green banners, Christmas lights, and, at the airport, soccer balls. The West African soccer tournament starts the 20^th and it might as well have been the Olympics. A Christmas movie is showing in back of me on a very large plasma TV.

In Amsterdam I met an old MSH colleague, Mary Taylor, at the gate for the flight to Ghana. We used to work together at the beginning of our first leadership project, nearly eight years ago. She is now with the Gates Foundation. She traveled light, with hand luggage only, so I lost track of her when we arrived in Ghana. I am not yet able to participate in the mad dash for passport control. I suspect that by the time she settled into her hotel room, I was still waiting for my luggage. I thought about my easy entry into Kenya only two months ago, in a wheelchair. I am now back with the ordinary people who have to stand in line a lot, and wait. The ending of an otherwise easy and comfortable trip was thus a bit more challenging. By the time I spotted my friend and colleague Mamadou waiting for me at the arrival hall I was limping heavily. He quickly got me into his car and left his son Moussa in charge of the heavy lifting of my many pieces of luggage.

We arrived at the wrong Alisa hotel where they did not recognize my name (but also had a room if I wanted it – so much for full hotels in Accra). An employee of the hotel drove us to the right Alisa Hotel in the Cantonment section of the capital. If there is a coup we should be either at exactly the right or exactly the wrong place. But Ghana is, for now, one of the more stable countries in the region. Not that this means a lot, as we can see from Ivory Coast a couple of years ago, or Kenya now. There are elections coming up in Ghana too.

I spent hours unpacking and settling into my small room while watching a movie. I think I watched more TV in those few hours than I have over the Christmas break. My unpacking was interrupted by a Skype video call from home. It is still so amazing to me that I can see into our living room on the other side of the Atlantic, seeing Axel stoking the fire. The internet connection was too slow for me to put my webcam on so I could not give then a tour of my room.