Sylvia's Journal

Sometimes I think we, meaning the development community, have created the monster that we are now fighting, each one in our own way. As I researched the regional AIDS commissions (HAPCOs) that we are supposed to focus on for our management and leadership capacity building I found more Google hits than I could ever hope to review in my lifetime.

I downloaded the most important and most recent ones, which took a while. In the process I discovered that everyone and their brother has been ‘building the capacity’ of these folks. The World Bank helped with money and experts, probably flown to Ethiopia in Business Class; the Germans helped them write job descriptions and mainstream HIV/AIDS awareness and policies in all the ministries; UNICEF helped them develop a strategic plan that covers everything and the kitchen sink; there are more, no doubt.

I reviewed one of the regional HAPCOs’ strategic plans that took 2 years to develop and is now at its five year end. I wonder what came of all those intentions. Burn-out is all I can imagine. Not that nothing has happened. I think a lot has. There are spectacular numbers in all those reports about orphans sent to school, people on treatment, people counseled, anti-AIDS clubs founded, leaflets and condoms distributed and much more. But when I read about the internal organizational weaknesses that were identified I kept thinking, ‘what has happened about those?’ Are they working better in teams now, communicating better, coordinating and setting priorities, etc.? All I can see is that more structures, more documents, more plans, more steering committees, more task forces are created than you can shake a stick at. Of course each new group of people makes coordination a little bit more complicated and demanding. Sometimes I think that we deal with our inability to tackle the really messy and intractable human problems by creating all these structures and documents and what not. It gives the illusion of doing something at least (reminding me of the old saw ‘don’t just sit there, do something!’).

I feel for these ‘hapless hapcos’ with all these people taking them to workshops, coaching them (often written as ‘couching’), asking them to account for all the monies given, or maybe even hiring the good ones away. And now here we come, with more offers to help, but also more distractions, more reports that will have to be produced, more accountabilities. I do think we have something to offer them but realize that that is what every consultant who shows up thinks too. And then I read in one of the reports that people, locals and foreigners alike, are disappointed with the Ethiopian communities for not taking any ownership and putting their own scant resources into the fight against AIDS. Should that surprise anyone, given the avalanche of external inputs?

Before delving deeper into the capacity building avalanche Liz and I did some more sightseeing. It is Sunday after all, a day of rest and the focus of our sightseeing were two churches and two musea.

We visited the same buildings that I visited last time, on top of Entoto Mountain. It was a beautiful day with spectacular views over the city and on the other side of the mountains with views that reminded me of Switzerland. Back in town we visited the National Museum and took a look at Lucy’s skeletal fragments and a reconstruction of her standing up that was done with help from an American museum according to a little plaque in a corner of the glass case. Lucy’s bones are 3.3 million years old – a number that I find hard to grasp. I wonder what Lucy would think of us and our world if she were to come alive now. Magic and wizardry, probably.