Sylvia's Journal

You can’t say no to royalty. Today’s royalty in Africa are the chiefs of administrative ‘tribes,’ of government ministries and departments. When they arrive late you feed them breakfast, even if 30 people have been waiting in a conference room for over an hour. Maybe they did not even ask for breakfast but you treat them like royalty, nevertheless. That’s the tradition.

So all of us were way off with our bets on how long after the official starting time of 9 AM we would actually begin the formal show and tell. It turned out to be one hour and a half. It never ceases to amaze me that this keeps on happening despite all the rhetoric (and much complaining) about punctuality. I watched people’s reaction intently and was glad that I was not in charge. Some people openly rolled their eyes presumably because they saw the contradictions; others are so used to it they don’t even notice; and finally there are the facilitators who appear to be, as a universal subspecies, in perpetual denial about when people will actually arrive. I stopped proposing to include the expected delays in the day’s programming by padding all the activities with extra time. We never caught up in the morning. Everything got simply moved up. People are used to this. I did not see anyone look at their watch but the participants did decline the afternoon break until the program was officially closed, and the bright yellow ADRA polo shirts and per diem handed out, late in the afternoon.

While the important people ate breakfast the teams used the extra time to get their final presentations in even more final shape. I could not help myself and dragged inserted photos back in shape here and there. People liked it when I helped them look thin again instead of the squashed creatures they had become. Pen drives were exchanged accompanied by queries of ‘how clean is your’s?” or “Are you free of viruses?” With all of us working in public health we have fun with these allusions to safe sex and infections. We, or rather our viruscan software, did ‘catch’ some nasty viruses in the process; Brian, who was first introduced to us as Brain – a name that stuck – lost some files. They were suddenly gone. If ever there was a good reason to back up, this is the place. I travelled with my two laptops, 2 pen drives and 2 multi-gigabyte hard drives. Between the two computers I juggle two versions of MS Office, one readable on one computer but not on the other. It gets rather complicated and it is a challenge and a half to backup the right new versions over the right old versions in such a way that the files (doc or docx) are on the right computer, hard disk or stick and can be opened properly.

During the morning I managed to sit through all 7 PowerPoint presentations without yawning. Listening to the presentations was actually quite enjoyable because they were sharp, tight and short. The facilitators had sprinkled the really good ones in between the less impressive ones but in the end they all came out quite compelling. Yeah for PowerPoint!

And once we started it was one smooth operation from start to finish. The presenting teams were confident and completely owned their challenges, showing results people had not expected possible in only 6 short months. And they promised more results and more impact by the end of the year.

I watched the facilitators guide the show with equal confidence. I was happy. Maybe this is what grandmotherhood feels like, watching the grandchild walk with confidence and seeing the parents enjoy the miracle; that’s how we were all together yesterday morning.

After the presentation a flurry of excited conversations took us through lunch. We discussed a senior leadership program for teams from the central level. The top is usually left out from the sort of practical training district officials often receive. They are occasionally sent to overseas courses but most are theoretical and very cerebral. The senior leaders are very thirsty for having the experiences that their subordinates have, and so the doors are wide open and we started to explore how and what to do. I am thinking about using juggling as a metaphor for learning. I did this many years ago in Turkey and produced some twenty fine jugglers in the process, all wearing suits; they were also to have become better trainers but of that I don’t have first hand experience.

In the evening Naomi and I accompanied the facilitators for a walk on the beach followed by a meal that was slow in coming, and pricy for Ghanaian standards; the worst was my five slice pineapple desert that cost the equivalent of 5 dollars; this in a country where pineapples practically grow by the side of the road as a weed. Everyone agreed I paid ten times too much, so I left the precious pineapple fibers stuck between my teeth for awhile prolonging the delightful taste of Ghanaian pineapple.