Sylvia's Journal

A smartly dressed young man joined us yesterday. He recognized me, though I did not recognize him. He was at the lunch seminar I gave last September about the neuroscience of coaching and amygdala hijacks. We re-introduced ourselves. He is in charge of security and came to check out whether we were secure. When a security chief shows up it worries me. I asked him whether there was any reason for concern – we are after all in Mali with its many groups of angry unhappy people who have easy access to money, drugs and arms, items that are circulating unencumbered in the vast ungoverned space of the Sahara. “No,” he said, “there are no concerns. It’s a routine mission.” He sat at the back of the room fiddling with cell phone and then left. His report will say, “the people are safe.”

The cellphone business is maddening. Some people check their phones (most now have two) frequently (“has anyone sent me a message or text since he last time I checked a minute ago?”). I have come to believe that there is a vast number of bored people – one half sends messages or text to anyone on their list, while the other half are the ones checking to see if anyone is talking with them. I can only surmise that they are bored; or, the one I am supposed to work with don’t understand what the task is, or who have enthusiastic colleagues who are doing the work for them. It can all be linked to confidence: they don’t dare to ask when they don’t understand, and they don’t want to risk exposing themselves by contributing the wrong things to a group task; alternatively, it’s us that don’t engage them enough, don’t create a safe space. The latter we can act on, the former we cannot.  The challenge is both infuriating and exciting at the same time. We have succeeded at least in getting everyone to open their mouth at least a few times – something my colleagues here were not sure would happen.

We have a few women in the room who were sent by their superiors – I suspect it was their turn to get per diem and a nice little vacation out of town, some sort of reward for something. We actually have completely the wrong people in the room, which confirms my suspicion. It’s a workshop on improving the effectiveness of governing boards but of the 26 people in the room less than a handful are actually board members, I believe there is only one executive director. The rest are mid-level staff. Hmmm. The people who write critical books about development (and are right) would say pull the plug. And then I feel just as underpowered as everyone else, when I say, “I can’t,” or “it’s not my call.” I did express my wonderment, but that is easy.

There is one group of 8 people from a semi-governmental structure who are several layers removed from their non-functional board. They didn’t know that there is a draft board handbook. I told them I had it on my computer and transferred it per flash drive. It’s a draft I reviewed two years ago. Nothing has happened with it since. It can’t be finalized until it is validated – a critical process required for just about any document produced in francophone organizations, state or non-state. A draft in limbo for so long is, in my view, missing an owner. It was created by a consultant we hired. So there you go.

The group (not a team although we call them that) also didn’t know that my terms of reference say I will be working with them a half day next Friday (Fridays during Ramadan are essentially half days). The information sent to the chief had apparently stayed in his inbox. It was a bit awkward when I told them enthusiastically that I was going to work with them next week and received 8 blank stares. The problem here is that people don’t feel they can simply go to the chief and say, “hey, why didn’t you tell us.” The idea itself is frightful judging from the response.

I am also supposed to work with another of the groups here next week (four whole days). This group includes its CEO and two board members. It is an NGO that is not dependent on any higher structure, other than its Board. Still, once again my mentioning of next week got me blank stares – the CEO had just stepped out of the room. He too had not passed the message; when he came back in they did dare to mention what I had said and he looked worried, asking me about the dates (these were communicated). He frowned and said that tying up his staff for four whole days might be problematic. I could imagine it would. For a brief moment I thought I could go home earlier, but our team leader stepped in and sorted things out. I am not going home earlier.

With my long run at MSH ending my thinking about the kind of development assistance we provide is also changing, I am not sure what is cause and what is effect. I am acutely aware this time of what is wrong with the prevailing workshop-based and capacity-building approach of development. The many development projects do provide employment, even if it is often the elite that benefits most, aside from a few cleaners, guards and drivers. Development Business as an employment strategy – one astute Nepali observer wrote about this some years ago in an interesting article called Fancy Footwork – a Chris Argyris term.

Per Diem (called “Prise en Charge” here, or sometimes more blatantly “motivation”) is producing a perverse incentive for participating in development activities. And often because of that we are working with the wrong people. A workshop on Board governance with whole teams consisting of underlings? Of course there is fear in such cases – because the courageous change that is needed cannot be done by fearful underlings.

And so we keep on giving those who come, aside from their per diem, concepts and tools. They love these, they always ask for more. I think it is because they give the illusion of action and that is after all what the donors want: actions and results. People come up with indicators that suggest progress (‘document exists, document is validated’). But such things don’t transform. People simply check the boxes and stay in their comfort zone. They’ll go ‘till here but no further.’

This is not to say that people are not learning. I know they are. They are furiously writing down definitions (and get upset when no definition is given) as well as the quotes I insert here and there about transformation – it’s the Promised Land, a place they want to go but feel they can’t.

One participant has studied in Holland for a year, an agronomist. He can’t stop talking about the paradise he encountered in Holland – the food (‘we ate five times per day!’), the abundance in the stores, the way agriculture is done – the phrases tumble out of his mouth how great everything was. As he talks he looks for signs of awe or confirmation from the others at our table. I am sure they don’t like such stories, especially if they have never been sent on such an awesome trip. Most keep talking with each other or check their cell phones. He rattles of the names of the towns he visited: Deventer, Kampenoord, Middelburg, Wageningen and many more places that most American have never heard of.

But when I ask him what, of all the things he learned and saw that year, he could use in Mali, his face fell. “We can’t use any of that here.” I am sure his study was funded by an organization or church who put his trip in their Book of Good Deeds. He had a fabulous time and now has something that makes it easy for him to relate to foreigners, especially a Dutch one. He also perfected his English and I am sure he is a hero in his own town.  But maybe he is not also a bit more dissatisfied with life in Mali.

There were two animals I had overlooked, a big one and a tiny one. The big one is a turtle even bigger than the one who greeted me upon arrival, about two feet in length and nearly a foot high when standing high on its legs. The tiny one is a fawn, Bambi, who at lunch time comes to the door of the kitchen and awaits his (or her?) surrogate mother – a young man belonging to the kitchen staff who comes out with a baby bottle and fills it with milk. The fawn knows where its food comes from and is patiently waiting before guzzling down the bottle. The kitchen staff doesn’t speak much French but one didn’t need language to figure out that the fawn was an orphan and a few months old.

The animals are having a field day with the mangoes and oranges that plop down from the trees everywhere. There are half eaten mangoes strewn all over. I am not sure who nibbles the mangoes and who picks the mangoes clean down to the stones. I watched the turtle for a while as it was working on a mango. It’s a slow process especially when the mango is a bit slippery. But the turtle seems infinitely patient. Whatever is left behind is eaten by another animal and after that a smaller animal and so forth all the way down to the ants and flies who do the final clean up.

The pool is clean now. A few men spent the day scrubbing the bottom and cleaning the filters. But it’s too late now – I am not convinced it’s swimmable; and besides, the Peking ducks are lurking on the side. They seem to like chlorine or whatever chemical is used to clean the pool. The bottom color, which I thought was blue enough has become bright blue (aqua) – the same color as the geese pool which has also been cleaned. The gate to the geese pool was closed and I could tell the geese wanted to swim – it was very hot. I swear I saw them panting. All the animals are acrually quite sad looking, only the turtles and Bambi look happy. But the peacocks and geese and porcupines and ostriches all look unhealthy and sad – with missing plumes and quills, and panting.

Even though sad looking, the ostriches greet me every morning. They are very curious. They walk over to the fence to say hello, and look me straight in the eye. They have huge bulging eyes and must have quite a field of vision, seeing me coming when I can barely see them.  I talk with, existential talk but they don’t respond. I imagine they must be frustrated that they can’t walk free. Apparently when the guests are gone they are let out and have the run of the place; though it’s not much of a run on the cobbled and twisted paths and the low trees they would get tangled up in.

I had a brief moment of uninterrupted, and fairly fast, internet access yesterday evening when I was given the router to take to my room so I could send the updated facilitator notes to my team. But this morning everyone in the workshop took advantage of the ‘free’ internet and we had soon exhausted the balance on the Orange data sim card inside the router. It was never recharged and I will have to wait till I am back in Bamako. I think the same happened to the Canal+ subscription as I was not able to watch any station of interest, not even Grey’s Anatomy.