Sylvia's Journal

All day we luxuriated at the Kuriftu Resort and Spa in Debre Zeit, located at a small lake about one hour’s drive out of Addis. We bought a day pass for about 20 dollars that entitled us to a lunch, a swim, a kayak trip across the lake and 25% off on all spa treatments. As soon as we arrived we registered for massage, me the aromatherapy and Liz for the Swedish massage, followed by a pedicure which required the electricity to come back on (it eventually did).

It surprised us that coffee making in Ethiopia required electricity but it was the reason given for an hour delay. When it finally arrived we had already progressed to beer in frozen mugs – the coffee rather substandard (maybe because it required electricity) for a country famous for its beans. The local beer on the other hand was just what the doctor ordered on that fine summer day sitting by the lake, watching the pelicans and other water birds frolic right in front of our eyes. It is a tough assignment..

The only thing that spoiled the fun was the pontoon boat with its throbbing music that carried a few passengers around the lake. We read our books, I did some water colors while we feigned not to listen to the type A American embassy guard sitting behind us in the company of one male (type B) and four gorgeous young women, everyone busily flirting with the tough guy. We wondered what people would think of the US if this is the only representative of the American tribe that they ever meet, Loud? Obnoxious? Sexy? Exciting? Funny? Arrogant? All of the above?

We had a lovely lunch, opted for non Ethiopian, and then regretted that we had scheduled our massages so close after lunch. We were each led into an elegant little room under the large thatched roof with rose petals sprinkled across the floor and the massage table. There were intact roses as well, tucked into rolls of white bath towels and nonchalantly dropped around the room in between the small candles that dotted the floor. The wall to ceiling window looked out over a series of rock basins full of thirsty and twittering small birds. The one hour massage was perfect. When it was all over we dragged the experience out a little longer with a pedicure, possible because the electricity that operated the pedicure chairs and footbaths was back on.

Sitting side by side we had our calloused feet sanded down, our legs exfoliated, our cuticles trimmed and our nails varnished a shiny red/orange and red/brown. I immediately managed to smudge the nail polish on my big toe.

We ended the day with another ice cold local beer looking out over the lake while gossiping about our colleagues back at home. During the drive back to Addis, we talked and talked as if we were on a first date. I suppose we were, as we have never travelled together. Liz has now moved into my hotel and, although not given an imperial suite, still has a large room that is light years nicer and cheaper than the one at the Sheraton, plus of course free internet. We decided to skip dinner, still full from lunch. Instead I ordered a tiramisu as a late night snack while vegging out in front of the TV, having done nothing work-related all day – this is rare on trips but I can say that Liz made me do it. I know I would have been working if I had been here on my own.

My first day at work consisted mostly of figuring out who we should talk with to get a better understanding of what people who need to manage and lead HIV/AIDS programs are up against. It is also to find out who would be or would not be interested in the management and leadership work that we are asked to do here on behalf of the US government.

Ethiopia receives unbelievable amounts of money to spend on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. The monies that the country received from the three main funding sources (US government, Global Fund and World Bank) in 2005 exceeded by several million dollars its entire health budget of 2003; yet the staff, both in numbers and skill level, can hardly implement the existing programs. So there is much work to be done. This is not just technical skills training – that is being done by many. What’s less common is coaching people how to work effectively in an environment where multiple groups, local, bilateral and international, are tripping over each other, to do the good work; where agendas, both hidden and overt , do not always match up and the potential for duplication and things falling through the cracks is enormous.

The country has been in the process of reengineering itself and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is on everyone’s lips (and has been for many years now). We have to figure out how to mesh with that as there are obvious commonalities in our respective goals and the BPR process, in spite of its critics, is unstoppable.

Thanks to our colleague Yohannes’ efforts we received the green light from those in charge of civil service reform to partner with a local management training institution. We had wanted more than that, namely the opportunity to talk and learn more about the reform committee’s challenges but that invitation did not come forth – at least not yet.

The Institute is the same I started to work with during my previous trip, now nearly a year ago. But those attempts were squelched because of budget constraints. Now, we are suddenly receiving US taxpayer monies to do something much bigger than what we tried to launch a year ago. Go figure… when everything else in the world is coming to a screeching halt, we get the money we needed last year. It comes from a different pot of course.

If anyone thinks that government work can be rationalized, think twice. There is little rationality or, for that matter, efficiency. It’s the nature of the government beast. Its primary function is not to run like a well oiled machine that turns inputs into outputs (although we like to think it should). Governments exist to satisfy the needs of their constituencies. This is the only thing that can explain why people run for office. Those with the loudest voices or the squeakiest wheels tend to get the most (whether for themselves or on behalf of others without voice). Moreover, many needs stand in opposition of each other. When you think of that it is a wonder that governments achieve anything at all.

In the morning we reviewed the work that Liz had done during the week in an office that first had three desks and three occupants. When we returned from an errand, our seats were taken and our temporary office was full of new desks being put together by a noisy and sloppy crew of workmen. We are in a brand new and not quite finished building that was only a blueprint during my last visit. There was much hammering around us.

Liz had put together a presentation to our colleagues working on the various MSH projects about management and leadership and the resources available to them to improve themselves or others in these areas. People were invited to listen to us over lunch break – and many did – enticed by a free lunch: pizzas with odd toppings, not quite Italy, not quite Ethiopia, not quite the US.

I think we overwhelmed people a bit with the enormous array of tools and models and concepts and were asked to give them a few that they could use right away, which we can and we will.

After lunch we started to focus on how to squeeze all the conversations we need to have into next week. We are expected to hand over a fairly detailed plan on how to spend the money by next Friday 11 AM. It is a short week, we discovered, with a Moslem holiday in the next 5 or 6 days. Which holiday and when exactly no one could tell us. It appears that the decision whether to close offices for a holiday (outside the official ones we could find on the internet) is often postponed till the last minute. As a result one might find clusters of children wandering to school in their colorful uniforms to find the school closed. I am glad I am not a working mom here.

In the evening we were treated to dinner in a cultural restaurant by friends of one of our colleagues in Cambridge. It was an Australian/Belgian couple with two small children who are in the development orbit right now and wondering what their next move will be. Their cross cultural and linguistic challenges resonated deeply with me. Like Axel and me, they too met in a place recovering from a nasty war. There was much to talk about.

Our dinner was served while we sat on low stiff chairs, pushed closely together, around a table woven from grasses on the spongy injera bread. One’s fingers are the utensils and they are never to be licked. At the end of the meal the dishes are cleaned by taking the entire ‘table’ away and coffee is served in the same small cups I remember from Yemen and Lebanon, with popcorn. A few leaves of the herb Rue are put in the coffee. We have this growing outside our garden at home to keep animals out (it stinks).

After dinner dancers performed regional dances. Each dance required a new costume and made me marvel about the variety of styles in this one country. Many of the dances were of the ‘rubber body’ variety and I made us all touch our necks, mine still whiplashed and stiff like a plank. I was very grateful that I was bypassed when one of the dancers invited Liz to shake her body in the same way. Of course the foreigners were easy targets. Liz was a good sport.

And now it is weekend. I like this midweek departure from Boston, with its less than full planes, and then arriving just one day before the weekend starts. Liz is badly in need of pampering, having already spent three weeks on the road, two of which in Nigeria, and so we are going to splurge all day in a spa in a fancy place an hour away from Addis. I needed no convincing.