Sylvia's Journal

The facilitator said ‘May God kill you,’ and everyone laughed heartily. When asked why this was so funny in this country where many are killed in the name of God, I was told it was an icebreaker joke. Sometimes I don’t get things here at all.

I watched more of the joyful proceedings of the leadership development facilitator refresher training that started on Sunday and the ease with which the team approached the task. This time we were hosted by the Blood Bank, in the Leadership Learning Center there that we equipped and the team there that we helped to become stronger leaders. They have some impressive results to show for it.

I had already arrived there when the security alert came per SMS that the city was on high alert and unnecessary travel across town discouraged. My staff was scattered across town and I phoned each one to determine whether they should stay where they were or move. I stayed where I was and made it safely back to our compound at lunch time. Nothing happened, luckily.

In the morning I heard that two Big Heads, one from our country and one from our host country were meeting today and that one Big Head wanted the name of one corrupt senior ministry official to give to the other Head, like a head on a platter. I got the symbolism. It was a nice idea.

And as the implementing agency in health, we got a last minute request from our own government to provide the name of this person. In theory this sounds reasonable, but if you want to continue to work here and live, providing a name is a terrible idea, even if you had hard evidence.

This is where most of the anti corruption efforts go off the cliff: On the one hand people don’t dare to whistle blow for fear of reprisals. The assumption is that the powerful will never be caught but you, as the small whistle blower will.

On the other hand the people who are supposed to certify transparency and clean books are the ones who ask for bribes to certify you as ‘clean.’ If you decline to pay they will certainly dirty you, your name, your reputation and create big problems for you.

This is what our host was threatened with, not an academic issue. With the labyrinthine government regulations any auditor can find irregularities in the way you run your organization and blow them up into something illegal.

He asked me if we could include ‘ethics’ in our leadership program. I wonder, will that make any difference?