Sylvia's Journal

Being at home means that one is always on. On for chores, on for paying bills, fixing stuff, grandchild duty, preparing for attendance at this or that event, learning, doing paid or volunteer work. Looking back at my many years of travel I realized that in this COVID year I have missed the switching off that planes allowed me to do; the empty time between take-off and landing. That is the time I would be writing, a kind of writing that comes from being in the ‘off’ mode. When you look up from writing in a plane (or even in a hotel room), there is nothing that summons one to action as when one is at home. Now, here, at home, I can count several things that need my attention, without even turning my head. In planes and hotel rooms there are few summons (do this, clean that, fix me, cook me, plan, etc.). Those off hours are like the time between dusk and dark or dawn and day – just broad shadowy outlines of what is out there.

I have articulated some new intention. They do require some doing but without the ‘check the box’ end point: writing for writing’s sake, playing the ukulele without having to make it to the next level on my Yousician score board, and (stationary) biking without the need to cover a certain number of miles at a specific pace. 

I have always been a driven person, may be because, as number 4 in a family of 5, I had so much looking up to – things I wanted to do but could not yet. In my adult life I was driven to take on assignments or reach levels of performance or completion that always included stretching. It is a very hard habit to shake now that I am approaching retirement. I still take courses that require completion, but these now come without certificates, just the completion of an experience that enriches me.

I completed one such course in March, four half Saturdays, with a wonderful coach in South Africa.  I learned much from her about Ubuntu coaching and the South African greeting of Sawabona (I see you I hear you). I recognized the role reversal taking place this late in my life/career: instead of being the white teacher with a class full of black people, I was the white student surrounded by a teacher and class full of mostly black South Africans.  

When I look back on my life as a teacher in the international development space, I see the arrogance of it all – exporting American (or may be European) concepts and techniques about management & leadership, team work and performance and pouring these down the throats of people who have learned to admire (and may be even be envious) of ‘the west.’

I have kept a diary since the late 70s. Once (this must have been during an ‘off’ time, possibly a very long plane ride), I extracted sections from my handwritten diary entries for an (unpublished) piece called ‘Invisible Ink.’ In my introduction I wrote:

“When two people or two groups come together in a consulting relationship, when one person or group gives advice to another, there is a lot more present than what’s visible. Each party comes to the interchange with years and years of baggage. Each person or group has had good or bad experiences with authority, stereotyping, exploitation, conflict and its consequences, with power. Each individual also comes with a self that has defined itself in terms of competence, likeability, attractiveness, smartness and significance, and has either seen this confirmed or disconfirmed in his or her interactions with others.

This is the invisible ink that is written in the margins of our interactions with others. It is usually not readable unless held over a flame, which sparks the behavioral manifestations that hint at some of these experiences. Of course, this is also the stuff that doesn’t make it into reports, and sometimes not even into our consciousness.” 

When asked by former colleagues who are preparing MSH’s 50^th anniversary events, whether I was willing to chat with one of them for an hour about stories, I agreed. And, in preparation for the call that took place yesterday, I re-read my Invisible Ink piece and shared it. 

The trips and experiences described in Invisible Ink are as vivid in my mind as if they just happened. That is the nice thing about journaling. I am sure I would have forgotten many aspects of these trips, not so much the facts (dates, places, assignments) but rather the feelings and reflections about the experience. And now, all these years later, I see how I struggled with this unidirectional flow of knowledge, the cultural dominance (if only I had known about Ubuntu then). I think we (as a tribe of Northamerican/European international consultants) have done much harm in these exchanges that often weren’t exchanges at all: teaching people to be direct when direct can be insensitive or asking for honest feedback when that goes across everything people have learned as children. To speak truth to power when that can kill you.  I, a Dutch person at heart and an American for most of my professional life, still believe that directness and feedback and speaking up are good practices, but now know that these are good practices for me. 

In my retelling of stories to my MSH colleague I picked out several where I ended up the learner. Those were experiences I created for others. They triggered strong responses from my students by doing something that was taken out of the Dutch-American context and plopped into an Arabic, Afghan, Kenyan context without thinking about consequences. And these are only the few where people stood up against me – imagine the countless ones where people didn’t dare to. These were the missed learnings. Now, however late in life, I am (re-)assembling those learnings and, hopefully, be a better person for it.