Sylvia's Journal

We finished our training and split up in three teams, one staying here (with me), one going north, close to the Malian border and one going south – all three regions bordering either Liberia, Guinea or both. Each team consists of staff from the central ministry of health, from MSH/Abidjan, from our staff in the region and local health officials.

This morning they practiced sessions they will be doing next week and everyone gave feedback and everyone learned a few tricks of the trade or something about themselves. There was even talk of leaving one’s ego home – not raised by me, though I often think this. Many of the participants are doctors in senior positions and being vulnerable is not something they are used to – but most people took this challenge in stride. I saw a few people transform in front of my eyes.

Tomorrow we will move to another hotel since UNDP reserved all the rooms many months ago. It will probably be one star less (which means 0 stars) and I have to pack my suitcase for the 6^th time in 4 weeks.

For our last night together the two women I have been dining with at the hotel each night, took me out to eat “poisson braisé”. The fish we had at our hotel all week was OK, though not exceptional. The street fish we got tonight was exceptional.

The driver took us through the streets of Man to a main drag where all the women lined up with their fish. The hotel had cooked sweet potatoes for us and gave us a plate to take to wherever we were going. I can’t quite get over this: my colleagues buy food and then give it to the hotel to cook and they serve us and don’t charge a penny. My colleagues are not in the last shy about this. “Why not?” they ask, “it’s cheaper when you buy the food outside the hotel.” Well of course, I think, but that’s how hotels work. But the restaurant manager happily takes the pineapple, the papayas, the sweet potatoes and cooks or cuts them and serves them to us without giving us a bill. It appears completely OK.

Maybe this is the same surprise that Africans have when they come to the US and see us waiting for a red stoplight when there is no other car in sight. Or when we get a ticket mailed to our home and we obediently put a check in an envelope and pay our fine. Many Africans find this bizarre.

We ordered our fish and then waited for it to be served for an hour which gave me plenty of time to observe the scene around me.

A kiosk across the street read “verywhere you go,” which I thought would be a good title for a book. There were kids the size of Faro (probably older), shoeless and unsupervised, and kids the size of Saffi riding on their mother’s back; there were young girls waiting for something to happen, just standing there and older boys hanging out. There were “salariés” as employees are called here, eating with colleagues, probably because their wives or mothers live far away and so they fend for themselves and eat out for a few dollars. There were “vendeuses” and little boys selling stuff, going from table to table. The boy sold packs of paper napkins – a captive audience that eats with its hands the greasy fish and sauces. The vendeuse sold deodorant. She was young and beautiful and at every table with only men she was asked for a demonstration and everyone got to smell the pink or white or yellow sticks, made jokes, with an occasional buyer. Her charm got her to show her wares. I saw a great deal of poverty and the desperate jobs that come with it.

The salaried people (including us) all had at least one if not more cellphones. Many have them in their hands – few clothes have pockets. Everyone who was sitting at a table was focused on their device. Even couples, the one next to us ordering a large coco cola and a bottle wine sat silently side by side looking at their phones. My table mates, during the long waiting time, spent a good chunk of that time playing games or talking on their phones. This cellphone disease that has cut out conversation has spread around the world, wherever I go.

Although participating in the Thanksgiving celebration on Skype doesn’t satisfy all the senses (smell, taste and touch), it did satisfy some (sound and sight). I connected three times during the day, following the various preparations from early morning (nothing on the stove at all) to mid-day (giant turkey in oven), to ‘nearly there.’ We remembered last year when the electricity went out and we huddled around the stove melting the snow for tea, coffee and other liquids. This time things were easier.

I got to show my face to Saffi who doesn’t quite understand the concept of ‘Oma,’ and see Faro being a bit too helpful in bringing in an egg from the chicken coop, egg dripping on his hand. An information session on the fragility of eggs is clearly in order.

I learned more about the various creative endeavours of the members of my family: Sita has already made ceramic mugs, Tessa showed the ring she has made and Axel is making art on silk. Sita asked me what I wanted to learn to do, other than knitting and embroidery. I had to think a bit. Woodworking I finally said, something I did two decades ago at the local vocational school, but now I travel to much to take scheduled courses. I made a coat rack, fixed a set of drawers, made a clothes valet for Axel and saw horses – all in good use still. More than 5 decades ago I learned woodworking in France during a summer camp. I made a small stool, turned a salad bowl and egg cups. I love the feel of wood and see a rough piece of wood transformed into something of beauty. Actually, I like transformations, period. Even here, in five days I saw some transformations, good ones.

I can’t wait to be back now and am counting the days – 14 days to be exact, and two more assignments remaining. It’s been a great trip so far but I don’t think I am going to make it a habit to be away for 6 weeks, unless Axel comes along.

Every day it is getting a bit hotter – we are moving into the rainy season here in the mountains and the humidity is mounting by the day. Air-conditioning is a great invention.

We have completed three of the five days of our training of trainers. The design I adapted from the previous TOT is working fairly well thanks to my foresight to make comments about what worked and what didn’t work. Still I am making adjustments as we go because this time our focus is a little less defined and this requires that we explore things in more depth. Last time our focus was given: increase the retention rate of people on antiretroviral therapy – a problem that has created sleepless night and much head ache at the top of the ‘pyramide sanitaire.’ In our previous program it was a tangible problem that was addressed successully.

Now the focus is intersectoral coordination with regard to Ebola and other epidemics – prevent, detect and treat, or “préparation et riposte” as they call it here. Coordination is a lot less tangible than HIV patient retention rates; some people think it is simply meetings but everyone knows that bodies around a table doesn’t necessarily make for good coordination. But something was done right here as Ebola never entered Cote d’Ivoire even at the height of the tragedy next door. I am trying to figure out what that ‘something right’ was.Today we are going to find out what good coordination means to the three regional teams that are represented here, and hope we can tap into that experience.

The team of experienced trainers is stepping up to the challenge as we bring on board a new cohort, with a few hiccups here and there. One hiccup that startled me was when the participants received their facilitator guide materials: 500 pages, a two hole puncher and a four hole binder. It was quite a sight seeing all these doctors punching all these pages with those punchers. It took 45 unplanned minutes. I have learned over the years to put plenty of padding in my time budget and so we could absorb this hiccup as well as those related to ‘la francophonie.’

The participants are slowly molding into teams – they’d better as they have a big job to do next week when we go ‘live,’ and start on Monday with three simultaneous alignment meeting in three frontier regions with Liberia and/or Guinea.

We will divide in three facilitation teams, consisting of a few experienced facilitators – the ones that already completed a successful leadership program in the eastern part of the country – and then the ones we are training right now.

As usual, since the training is experiential, there were countless ‘anxiety’ questions when we started on Monday. That mist is slowly lifting, and those not very engaged (what? another training?) are starting to get engaged. I am doing few sessions myself and coaching mostly from the sidelines. I am proud of the team that is so passionate about the work of leadership development.

My colleague R was correct; we arrived exactly at 6 PM at the hotel in Man. The roads were pretty good except for some 20 km where the driver was zigzagging across the road trying to avoid holes in the tarmac. Luckily there was not much traffic on the road and the zigzagging was possible. These roads are not wide and large trucks can take up more than half.

We had lunch in Yamoussoukrou in a maquis, a small roadside restaurant serving traditional fare for very little money. Yamoussoukrou is famous for its enormous basilica that is visible from far and stands in sharp contrast to its simple and chaotic surroundings. Nearby is the family compound of the former president Houphouet. It is enormous and reminds me of the palaces of Chinese emperors; surrounded by 4 meter high walls that are interrupted on each side by enormous gates, it looks unassailable.

The whole team that I trained more than a year ago is now assembled to continue its cascade training. Enthusiasm is high and everyone is very confident. They are going to run the show – my contribution is the design and serving as a coach on the sidelines. It is now entirely their game.

Man is located in a beautiful hilly part of the country that could be like the foothills in Switzerland. We drove past hills that look like enormous boulders sprinkled across the otherwise flat land. The hotel is located on a hill and every room has great views. Everything is clean but the black spores of mildew are everywhere. My cough, though never completely gone, returned during the night and my voice is affected again. The octave test showed I am regressing.

There is no internet in the rooms and the dangle I was giving is from the wrong company, one that doesn’t work here. This may be a problem. On the one hand being out of reach of emails is appealing; on the other hand there is work to be done after hours that requires an internet connection. Thanks to a mysterious little box that my colleague  R has I can leach off her internet connection and post this while it is still hot.

I watched the news and wished I could connect to my sister in Brussels to find out what it is like to wait for nothing to happen. It seems a big dilemma – you want something to happen so you can stop waiting while you don’t want something to happen because people will get hurt. How long can one close down a whole city?