Sylvia's Journal

I was ousted from my hotel room because the arrangements for extending my stay till airport departure time were made too late. So I spent about 8 hours hanging around the hotel lobby. This turned out to be fun.

There are many conversations to be overheard and interactions to be observed. I like people watching. I love airport arrival halls for the same reason.

I witnessed a few occasions where western ways of doing things bumping hard into Kenyan ways of doing things. There was little variation: one party responds with polite apologies. The other has a slight temper tantrum and fails to hide impatience, exasperation. Both parties retreat for a moment and then go over the same territory again. More apologies, more exasperation. If there were to be thought clouds over people’s heads each would say: “they just don’t get it.” But we usually don’t say what we think – especially when we are in such a cross cultural minefield.

It is a scenario I have seen (and at times been a participant in) that is played out over and over again as worlds collide, either forcibly put together or in well intended encounters on what looks like a level playing field. In the past we knew that these fields were not level, now we pretend they are. Worse, we fail to notice that the landmines that have been placed there over the centuries.

This is what makes my job so interesting. Being here only for a little while makes it easier to be the detached observer, something I wasn’t always able to do in Afghanistan.

We completed the vision for the Kenya Institute for Health Systems Management. It is as practical and complete as it could be given who was in the room. The final activity consisted of public commitments from key stakeholder groups on how they can and will support the fledgling new institute as it takes its first steps.

Several of the participants, in a series of self-revelatory statements, mentioned that Kenyans are very good about making big plans, conceptualizing stuff and then dropping the ball when it comes to implementation. I assured them this was not a unique Kenya quality and that it had something to do with either not owning the vision or plans, being too ambitious in scope, or finding the complexity of implementation, while none of their other work had disappeared, simply too much.

We’ll see in a few months. The group certainly had reached some momentum by the time we finished. The original ending time was 4:30 PM but we were done before lunch. The closing act took another 45 minutes and included a special African clap that is rather involved, a lengthy vote of thanks leaving no one out, an exhortation about change management that appeared to inspire everyone much like a minister inspires his or her flock on Sunday, and more claps.

Everyone left with a button, immediately pinned on. It should have been a lapel pin, stating that the wearer was a founding member of this new institute. The pin idea got sunk because there were too many logos that needed to be included. Since the elections some years ago that left Kenya in flames and with two dueling presidents there have been two ministries of health. Add to that MSH as the midwife of this institute and USAID as the financier, it was simply too much to squeeze on a lapel pin. No one seemed to think any less of a button.
It gave the wearers a special status. These buttons are of a limited edition, only for those who helped to build the vision from scratch. Maybe one day they will be collectors’ items on E-bay.

And then we drove back through the dense traffic that streams relentlessly in and out of Nairobi, all day long and into the evening. I was deposited at the hotel I left two days ago for my last night in Nairobi.

For dinner I took a taxi out to the house of a colleague. It still feels a bit funny that I can walk out of the hotel – I had to suppress a reflex to pull my scarf over my head – and take a taxi from the taxi stand, walking unaccompanied.

At the house I found dear old friends I had not seen in years, all of them having become moms (of boys) over the last four years. It was an evening of countless stories about everything, including about much reviled facebook which, nevertheless got us talking for at least an hour, engaging those who loathe facebook, those who love it, and those who claim they don’t ‘do’ facebook.

And now I have checked in for tomorrow’s flight and am preparing for the final deliverables.