Sylvia's Journal

I am at Schiphol airport waiting for a connecting flight to Boston. I have decided to not let anyone know I am here so I can finish my reports; the next trip is very soon and I don’t want to work this weekend.

I am out of Africa. It is a traditional call I make to Axel, announcing my new position on the map. I do this early in the morning while he is still up the night before. This time I got Sita on the phone as well. These are some of our small rituals.

I left Tanzania somewhat deflated, without an ounce of energy left. The road trip back to Dar es Salaam took a lot out of me; more than I at first cared to admit. I emerged from the car in pain and stiff as a plank and then my mood began to change; from the high spirits of having accomplished what I set out to do to feeling hopelessly inadequate in the face of overwhelming odds.

Each time I leave Africa I am more confused. The more I learn, the more I know. And the more I know the more I know what I don’t know. And in times like these, when my mood is low, I wonder how I can be of any help. Everything appears to be related to everything else. It feels a bit like untangling miles and miles of hopelessly tangled up yarn. You look for a beginning or an end, to start untangling. And then, not being able to find either one, you take a pair of scissors and create a beginning and an end. From then on it is slow going. Sometimes you feel you are just making things worse; instead of one gigantic tangle, you create a whole bunch of slightly smaller tangles, all as daunting as that first big one. The worst part is that seemingly well-meaning efforts at untangling actually mess things up. I am referring to the hundreds of models, tools and approaches that are being offered by helping hands, some incompatible yet offered to the same people. It is a bit of a lose-lose proposition when I begin to think like this: I am either adding to the tangle – so why continue? Or if I think I am not, I can fool myself by using reasoning that is self-serving, also called arrogance. Of course I have to remind myself that these words and sentences come out of a particular mood. I don’t always think like this; I would not have lasted this long.

Yesterday morning, Isaac and William had asked me to say a few words at the opening of their leadership program, now in its third day, “people would like it.” Participants don’t often see the folks who developed the materials they study. I asked the participants what has changed for them as a result of this program. It was hard to get volunteers so I called on people by giving them the microphone. It is always a struggle, anywhere in the world, to get concrete examples; people tend to use words that are titles of workshop sessions. Up front only one member of a team sits at an otherwise empty table. I asked her what happened to the rest of her team. She explains that one is in the internet café checking up on a letter and the other she doesn’t know about. Getting participants to apply what they learn about being pro-active directly in class is hard; I challenge her to be more active and get her team complete by taking action now. My exhortation clashes with the polite attention that is given to foreigners. Nothing will happen until I leave, if then.

I checked out and paid my bill and then went to the other hotel where the AIDS meeting was held. I arrived in the middle of a morning discussion and I could sense that the meeting had heated up from yesterday. Some agencies had not delivered on promises according to the government representative from one region. Another demands that these discussions are frank and honest, rather than the usual Tanzanian mode of exchanging pleasantries. I so wish I could follow Kiswahili. The session is conducted in the way that Mandela describes how his father held court in the Eastern Cape. The Chief (Chairman) sits in front facing the people who are seated in semi-circular rows facing him. What is billed as ‘plenary discussion’ is actually a very disciplined and choreographed process allowing people to speak, one by one. Their words are addressed to the chief, but everyone listens attentively. There are few non-verbal cues for me to gauge whether they agree or not with the speaker. Sometimes there are a few smiles or hmmms. This is not dialogue but serial monologue. Occasionally I get a translation. I am learning that the reporting process does not accomplish its purpose. Reports are missing; they appear to describe inputs and outputs, or maybe process, but say little about what is different as a result of their work; they also appear hard to read. Imagine nearly a hundred of those. It is no wonder that there is no feedback loop.

I am trying to figure what is at stake for the different groups in this meeting. It appears to have something to do with the modalities by which the national secretariat reaches civil society. The creation of new, temporary structures that consists of NGOs or consortia for the implementation of the project is supposed to help ‘push the money down’ where the government does not have the capacity to do this on their own. The temporary structures have two main purposes: building the government’s capacity at the regional, district and local level and managing the grants given to civil society organizations to produce a string of small victories in the battle against HIV/AIDS. It seems that these two are not always meshed together as they should, but implemented in parallel. Some government people are indicating that the capacity building has not happened and that they don’t know what is going on. Of course in all this the enormous amount of money involved muddles everything. Someone remarks, “If you have a lot of money you don’t need to involve anyone, you can just go it alone.” As an American citizen who contributes her tax dollars to help foot this bill, this is of course not what we intended.

One of the women wears a dress made out of US-Tanzania friendship cloth. If there was an archive of special occasion cloth you could trace the visits of important people across Africa. This includes presidents as well as religious leaders. When we break for tea I take a picture of her, with a separate zoom into Bush’s face. It’s the kind of picture you see in obituaries – depicting a much younger Bush. I wonder about the design and production process of the cloth. Was there an official request, an official picture provided by the embassy? I can just imagine Laura and George sitting with a photo album on their knees, and Laura saying, “George, I think this picture would look fabulous on the belly, bosom and back of a lady in Tanzania!”

At tea break I sit with three women from local government. I ask them how the process of working with the facilitating agencies has been for them. At first they are cautious in their responses but soon they loosen up. They complain about something that I hear around the world. It is a complaint that is wrapped in communication language but that I have come to see as a symptom of something else, maybe a deep-seated fear of inadequacy? It is constantly fueled by the absence of acknowledgments and appreciation for work well done, or by the carelessness with which people communicate (or forget to) with one another; the sense of inadequacy or incompetence is thus reinforced; self protection then leads to resentment of the higher ups, since they are causing this feeling after all. If you belong to a minority group, like the handful of women in this meeting, the resentment is doubled. Instead of spirited engagement we get resentful entitlement. Money has to come to the rescue to ‘motivate’ or ‘facilitate,’ a pervasive belief. This is how I believe we mismanage the most precious of human resources we have: the energy to invest one’s time and creativity in doing a good job. I am re-reading Elliott Jaques about Executive Leadership. He states something that I know to be true from personal experience but also from watching others: “People are spontaneously energetic with respect to the things that interest them.” Could we possibly try this notion on others?