Sylvia's Journal

We are staying with the daughter and son in law of a dear longtime friend who is hosting our reunion in San Diego. The house has a pool that covers the entire backyard. We are warmly welcomed and take a daily dip in the grand pool. The temperature of both air and pool is perfect – the latter a far cry from the glacial waters of Lobster Cove.

We drove up into the mountains to visit our host’s friends from their Peacecorps days in Ghana. When they returned from Ghana they bought a mountain and started an avocado farm that now produces 100s of thousands of avocados each year. They flattened the top of the mountain and built a dream house with 360 degree views, an enormous veranda with a pool, a hot tub and shaded places to eat and far niente.

All 10 of us descended on the place and were warmly welcomed as if old friends all of us. It was a case of my friends are your friends. We the wonderful Mexican food we picked up along the way, and sat around the table telling stories, serious and silly. We learned a bit about avocado farming and farm help and unavoidably drifted into immigration issues without getting too much into current affairs and our perpetrator in chief (PIC) as he who shall not be named is referred to by some. After that it was pool time, and stretching out in sun and the dry mountain air.

We returned to our various lodging places, tried out a fast food fish taco place in Rancho Bernardino where the tacos were delicious and the beer was cheap. En passant we bought a case of various summer wines to accompany our home cooked Moroccan dinner tonight that will precede the AGM – the official reason for our trip to SD. And today, apart from giving a helping hand to the cook, we are free and taking a trip to La Jolla.

Last Monday, after a busy morning of working on various tasks of Sylvia Inc. I went on a shopping spree at the mall. I used to work from home on Mondays and couldn’t shake the belief that I was playing hooky. I have gotten used to not having to get up early in the morning, but I haven’t gotten used to not having to be at my desk – and since I had been most of the time, it felt wrong to be going to the mall doing working hours. I still have to shed that part of my past life. 

Axel returned from a week in Seattle on the red eye. Within 24 hours he was back on the plane, this time with me, to the west coast for a week vacation in San Diego. I was so ready for a vacation after a week of nearly 8 hour work days.  For he first time ever I used my free companion ticket, compliments of American Express. We got upgraded to first class on the first leg of our trip, to Salt Lake City, and are still in good seats for the second part. 

We are off to the now annual Zugsmith reunion – for the first time on the other coast. Most of us are now retired and can afford to fly to faraway places, if not because of a good retirement arrangement, then at least because of all the miles we have all flown over the years during our international development careers. The ZS Society, as we refer to ourselves, consists of a group of colleagues who started working at the same place more than 35 years ago. I was only there for 8 months, but others for their entire career; some of them switched to MSH and we were reunited again, there went on to other organizations, but we all stayed in touch. 

For a brief moment each year we come together for the Annual General Assembly, the AGM, of our society and act as if we are decades younger – we are silly, talk silly, make up stuff, and enjoy each others’ loving and laughing company. It is a most wonderful group of people and worth getting up at 3:15AM for to catch our early flight west.

I wrote on my Skype profile: free as a bird at Lobster Cove. But this week I have been all but free as a bird – and only took my meals overlooking Lobster Cove. For the rest I was chugging away at tasks that other organizations have specialists for: drawing up contracts, writing proposals, getting a business certificate, opening a bank account, managing my retirement funds, organizing receipts and invoicing, checking the new business cards, populating my website, learning new software, organizing my calendar for next week, cleaning my inbox, and organizing my thoughts about work done in Chapel Hill last week. This is the new reality of Sylvia Inc.

Someone said, maybe you should go back to work – but I couldn’t, even if I was offered a position. I am now in a universe that is so much bigger and grander than the universe of my last 32 years. If I was a medium sized fish in a small pond, I am now swimming in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans – a little minnow, seeing all the stuff that is going on, the work that is needed… the possibilities are endless.

Now, taking my lunch at my favorite spot overlooking the water, three little barn swallows are showing me what it really means to be free as a bird. It is as if they have come to remind me, or maybe teach me something about freedom. 

I watch them as they perform their acrobatics – high up, swooping down, circling back, but always doing this right in front of me. Of all the space they could use they remain right in front of me. They are joyful little creatures. If they do this because their dinner is also doing acrobatics, these insects must be tiny as there are none to be seen from my vantage point, and it is hot, the middle of the day, when most of the insects are quiet. So, joyfulness it is.

They remind me of the aerobatics I have seen pilots do in their single propeller planes: going straight up until they stall and then spiraling back down to earth. At one time I had some desire to learn how to do that but the crash put an end to those aspirations.

And then, just as suddenly as they appeared they are gone. It is as if they know the lesson has been received and written down. Free as a bird requires some luck (which I have and have had), some intention, and discipline and an occasional reminder from the gurus, human or animal.

Incidentally, and probably not coincidentally with all these thoughts about flying, today it is exactly 11 yeas ago that we fell out of the sky, and lived to tell the story. Maybe that is what the barn swallows were celebrating – life itself!

This morning I listed to a podcast (On Being) during which Krista Tippett interviewed Lyndsey Stonebridge, a British literary historian who has immersed herself in the works of Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a German-born politic theorist and philosopher who lived thirteen years as a stateless person, not wanted anywhere until she became an American citizen in 1950. Her books (The banality of Evil, The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition among others) have practically risen to bestseller status with the changes of the political landscapes around the world.

One phrase from the interview resonated deeply with me as they talked about bridging divides in worldview. The phrase is an antidote to the general lamenting that is either dominating the news or triggered by the news (in any form). That phrase is: “…and still…”. It is a poetic line, probably used in many poems, but I see its usefulness in daily life. First of all, in my own daily life, as in “My position at my longtime employer has been terminated…and still…there is work for me to be done.”  And then there are the bombs in Afghanistan, exploding regularly, and still, there are activists and there is good work being done, and people shop and go to the market and celebrate whatever blessings come their way. 

It is a useful sentence to spin people’s attention away from all the dark and evil and hopelessness that the media present us with, or maybe the dynamics in our family, our team, our organization…and still, something has life in it, people have, something is trying to alter things, people are, trying to bring the world back into balance in a million small ways.

A related idea, coined by Arendt, is  the“talking across banisters.” I had an encounter where I could have, but did not, talk across the bannister. It is an experience that keeps haunting me. I had all my buttons pressed by this other person (of course I was the one carrying all those buttons that beckoned ‘push me, push me!)  I lost my good self in a defense/attack routine that I am still ashamed off. I have come to realize since then that I let the limbic part of the brain take control away from my reasonable self (the prefrontal cortex). I went into that  the part that decides in milliseconds that the other is friend or foe, and, as scripted over many millennia, entered into a useless verbal fight. Ughh…and still…

I completed the first part of my first consulting assignment, two days in Chapel Hill (NC) with more trips to follow. It was a fast paced schedule that required an early rise like the old commuting days, followed by a flight to Raleigh/Durham, a full day of work, transcribing notes in the evening after a boring dinner in a boring restaurant of a boring hotel. Welcome to consulting, I hear Axel say.

But it was an interesting assignment that is right up my alley – a discovery trip to get at people’s perceptions of what is happening and what needs to happen as an organizational transformation unfolds. I get to draw on all my training  and relationships that have led me to this place and this assignment at this time. 

One person I interviewed I had last seen when I came in for a debriefing at USAID in Burkina Faso, more than two and a half decades ago. Others were more recent (ex) colleagues from MSH. 

We are all twirling around in one big pot – when fortunes are up in one part of this ecosystem people drift over there, away from the less fortunate elements but the balance tilts and people drift elsewhere again, or back – I am sure that is MSH’s hope as new projects are added to the portfolio and more hands are needed on deck.

I interviewed some people who had done the rounds and served with many of the key actors in the global health space. Having worked for s long with one organization it was interesting, and not surprising, how much we have all in common and how much we are all struggling with some of the same issues, including our over dependence on the US government. Although stable as governments go, it is always influenced by the prevailing political winds. The current winds are not blowing in the same direction as the global health priorities the rest of the world deems important. May be, in some paradoxical way, I a both a casualty and a beneficiary of this circumstance.

My body is slowly adapting to the rhythm of my new life. Instead of waking up at 4:30 I wake up at 6:30AM. I still go to bed early because I am tired, but it doesn’t have to be at 8:30 pr 9PM anymore – 10 PM is now OK.

Every morning feels like a Saturday morning – that feeling of waking up and have 2 full days to oneself (more or less).  When still working I treasured this particular morning of the week and mourned its fleeting nature, Now it’s just another (beautiful) day full of wonderfulness.

Although one would think I am free and a lady of leisure, I am learning about being  sole proprietor, a fancy word for being an independent consultant. I now have to be my own marketing director, business development director, accountant, contract writer, chief administrator, travel agent, web and technology help center. At MSH there are whole departments with experts to do such work. I am a complete beginner in most of these areas.

My learning curve is steep. I am learning from the experts (paid consultations), from friends, from my daughters and from looking things up, or simply experientially. I learned for example that my new MacBook Air’s operating system has troubles with getting me heard on Skype. I am trying to figure out how to sign something electronically as my previous rituals don’t wok anymore for lack of software licenses or simply not knowing how to do such things on a Mac. It makes for hours of unpaid work. But some of the signing is for W9 forms and getting myself into various systems in order to get work. So all this efforts is chalked up to ‘investments.’

I have a few signed contracts, but only one is being executed right now and draws on my OD and coaching skills. I will be traveling but only domestically, a few short trips. It’s an exciting assignment.

My Japan work is also starting to get more and more exciting, with probably more than one trip to Japan over the next year. Maybe I should start to learn Japanese.

The summer is, as usually, going awfully fast. We are about to enter July and the days are already shortening, a depressing thought. But this time I will be enjoying many more days of the summer at Lobster Cove, which is still the best place on earth to be at this time. I had my first swim in the Cove a few days ago. It took a couple of minutes to get kind of numb and after that I swam for  about 25 minutes. I was rather numb when I got out. It took a very hot shower to stop the clattering of my teeth, but it was great.

We are learning as if we are psychotherapists, since we are surrounded by them. But we are also learning as individuals about ourselves; and then I am also trying to translate the techniques we learn and transfer them from the therapeutic setting to the organizational setting. I am learning that what people often refer to as fluff and warm fuzzies has demonstrable neurobiological phenomena attached to them. I am learning that gratitude and kindness change your biochemistry and why loneliness can make you sick, and even kill you.

I am learning about Polyvagal theory and why it is relevant for my work. The need to belong is hardwired into our brain. It is the most recent (i.e. just millions of years versus half a billion years) in the evolutionary survival mechanisms our brains have developed. This need to belong, when not met, can create havoc in families, communities and organizations.

There is a whole lot of trauma in the world, some is acute like our fall from the sky, acts of violence, the sudden loss of a parent or sibling.  But the more insidious trauma comes from childhood abuse or neglect, when parents, or one parent or caretaker, for all sorts of reasons, cannot take care of a child . The child grows up learning particular ways to cope with the instability, chaos, violence and lack of safety that it experiences at home or in its neighborhood.

By age 4 patterns are laid, activating some brain circuits and not others; epigenetic (which genes are expressed and which are not) changes the child’s genetic make-up, putting an end to the old nature-nurture debate. The patterns persist, in non functional ways, into adulthood. It takes a longtime to learn the more adapted, better patterns of engaging with the world because the learning can only take place when there is a sense of safety and security.  This can only be provided by trusting person(s) or an entire community. This is what makes for resilience – we have known this for a long time but its lack of immediate results makes for a hard sell when it comes to resource allocation.

And if such a safe environment cannot be created, then the pattern is carried into the next generation, and the next, a sometimes deadly gift that keeps on giving.

If Europeans think they have a problem now with the influx for all the war-displaced people, they haven’t seen the beginning of the next crisis yet: all those traumatized kids growing up into adults in new environments where they are not wanted. My advice to high school graduates in Europe: become a trauma therapist. And so I find myself coming back to my professional/educational roots, which was family systems therapy and child development.

The journey is finally coming to an end. And as the saying goes, it is not the destination but the journey that counts. Actually, there is no destination. I have not arrived, just turned a corner.

When I started working at MSH it was Thanksgiving week in 1986. My new boss had just left for a month and had written down some instructions on what I should be working on. I was hired as a research associate. I don’t think I had a job description. I was joining a team that had started a 5 year project just a year earlier. It was like a startup.  We were building a road towards better management of family planning projects, laying the bricks in front of us. There was lots of energy in the old mansion of Brandegee – a mini Versailles, built by a wealthy merchant with aspirations. We were surrounded, at least downstairs, by curtains from the Imperial palace in Japan, a life-size John Singer Sargent painting of the merchant’s wife, Flamish tapestries and a vast collection of leather bound books that were very, very old.  Upstairs our deputy project director sat in an office that was originally a bathroom, marble-clad. The toilet and bathtub covered with planks.

MSH was already a teenager by the time I joined. I had an informational interview at the mansion two years earlier with one of its many experts – a gentleman who asked me what my expertise was. If I wasn’t intimidated by the setting, I surely was intimidated by him. I am sure I stuttered, turned red in the face and said I could do anything and I was a quick learner. But he dismissed me by saying that MSH needed experts, not generalists. When MSH won the large global FPMT project that changed. Women started to invade what was essentially a male club. After FPMT MSH was never the same again. MSH partnered with Pathfinder in the FPMT project. I had been working as a consultant for Pathfinder and had led the writing of one of the first books that considered the user’s perspective in family planning service delivery. The quality of care movement had just been born, with Judith Bruce who had written the first authoritative book on the subject. Pathfinder proposed me for a position that was sufficiently vague and open that narrow expertise was not required and probably not desirable. My attitude of being a quick learner, speaking French, and having lived in West Africa clinched the deal.

It was a heady time. Of all the people who were there then Ken Heise is the only one left now at MSH. He was the Zaire man, as the DRC was called then, and ex Peace Corps volunteer who had a vast network of friends from that time. All our sister organizations at that time had ex PC volunteers from Zaire – he was known in this new world I entered. I was not. I also was not sure what I wanted to do and what I was good at. I was a psychologist who had lived in Lebanon and Senegal, spoke French, had an American husband and two young children, lived about an hour’s ride north of Brandegee and was looking for a purpose.

That purpose I found when I learned about MSH’s MT (management training) program that was run in collaboration with the Experiment in International Living. We delivered multiple programs for various management disciplines which were essentially the WHO’s health systems pillars: financial management, pharmaceutical management, information management, human resources management and the management of service delivery programs for Child Survival and Maternal and Child Health. With some twenty participants who had come from all corners of the world, each course lasted 6 weeks full of intense learning about management in a highly experiential way. Relationships were forged then that lasted. More than a decade later I was embraced and taken to someone’s home for a meal in Guinea – he had participated in a course and it had changed his life. I was awed by this part of MSH and wanted more of it.

We also had a formidable team, consisting of worker bees like Ken, Ann Buxbaum, and myself, supported by an impressive cast of advisors, faculty members from INCAE in Costa Rica, from AIM in Manila, from one of the management institutes in India and of course from our own backyard, Harvard.

We had organized the task based on levels: we would develop experiential curricula, lots of case studies (influenced by Harvard and the Harvard wannabees) that would target senior level people, mid level managers and young leaders. Since I did not have a job description and my boss was travelling most of the time, I started to read, a habit I developed then and never abandoned. There was not much written about managing family planning programs – the research and literature was either about managing in the (US) private sector, or about the clinical/technical aspects of family planning. We developed case studies and made a deal with Kumarian Press. We published a lot. And then we started teaching what we were learning. And that is when I truly found my purpose. My first trip was to Nigeria, a place few people wanted to travel to. I joined a team of people who became my mentors, already highly accomplished thinkers and doers. One of them introduced me to the reading list for students in Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management.  Suffice to say I read them all. I now know many of those books are still considered the classics.

Although I started my traveling as the person who hands out the per diem, the gopher, I was able to sit in the sessions and even do a session, on delegation. We used the book of case studies written by David Korten – the only existing grounded book on the management of family planning programs. I prepared about 8 hours for a 2 hour session, practicing in front of the mirror in my hotel room, and then in front of my mentors.

I soon became a Nigeria expert; that was easy in those days: make a few trips to a country most people didn’t want to travel to and you are an expert. So easy, and so arrogant!

Over the years I realized that it was not so much the teaching that I liked but working with the stories of the people in the room and engage with them, dissect their experiences and help them find things that they could do differently, with less agony or pain and more effect. The dormant psychologist in me finally awoke.

In those heady first few years we were one of just a few doing management training focused specifically on the delivery of programs (FP, child survival, etc). There were of course the universities but their teaching wasn’t practical – a label MSH had already earned and which kept differentiating us from the pack. The other actors in the Global Health space then were CEDPA, which also delivered such programs (and was a partner with us on FPMT), but geared specifically to women. CEDPA had carefully managed and nurtured its alumnae network, something I believe was a tactical omission on our side. We neglected the power of relationships – women of whom many would rise to the top, over the years and who could open doors where others could not. Our own Fatimata Kane in Mali was among them. Fast forward and we know that CEDPA was gobbled up by AED which was then was gobbled up by FHI, becoming FHI360. But CEDPA, in my view, left a giant fingerprint in every country where family planning is now normal.

Back to the late 80s and early 90s: the world, it seemed, was awash with money for family planning. Population pressures, especially in Asia, had already surfaced as major drags to development over the last decades, though in many African countries family planning was eyed with suspicion, as a plot by their former colonial rulers to keep populations down. Family planning program managers had to tread lightly. Especially in Francophone Africa where family planning programs were delivered through state structures advocating for family planning was political suicide. As a result progress was slow and the activists often lonely.  The FPMT project created a network when networks weren’t as much in vogue as they are now, but our instincts were good: we had to connect them to each other and create processes and structures so they could learn from each other rather than teach them. The Francophone Regional Advisory Committee (FRAC) was created in 1986 at MSH in Boston. For the following 12 years we managed to bring people together in nearly each of the countries of the members with a fairly stable membership. Over the last 6 months I have met three women who were part of this network; we hadn’t seen each other in 25 years. Fatimata Kane of MSH/FCI/Mali was one of them. In Niger our FRAC founding member became minister and is now retired. In Mali, just a few weeks ago, I sat with another, also retired now. We talked about how the landscape has changed – family planning is no longer a dirty word and, although not at the levels where it should be, contraceptive prevalence has moved everywhere into the double digits.

And then there was AIDS, as it was referred to at first. The HI virus and resulting ‘slimming’ disease took the world by surprise. Early on we decided that family planning service providers should talk about AIDS and provide information and counseling (there wasn’t much else possible then). But the family planning program directors balked, as were the older nurses. Family planning was respectable, AIDS was not. They didn’t want any association.  But when years later PEPFAR started, with all its extra money, top up payments or attractive salaries, the family planning providers left in droves to work in the PEPFAR funded programs. I imagine one can pinpoint drops in performance of FP programs at that time.

And now the world is a different place in countless ways. Recruitment was easy way back, no need to check terrorist lists, no need to go through security checks at airports, Libya and Iraq still run by dictators (only Mugabe is still there). There was no internet – we had a telex machine that brought us messages from the field, long strips of punched paper curled up on the ground when one walked into the office in the morning. Our cable address was ‘MANSHEALTH.’ We had business cards that looked like lawyers’ business cards, Times New Roman type, no logo, no color. Voicemail was still in the future. We had phones that had small pieces of paper stuck to them with the names of our colleagues and the name of their significant other in brackets. We were amazed when we got our first COMPAQ computers, not individual ones, mind you. You had to go to the third floor library where one was installed. We used IBM selectric type writers. The new computers were not portable but, if needed, luggable, with amber letters dancing on a tiny screen, and floppies. To get anything done in the field took patience and perseverance and lots of time. I remember organizing a FRAC meeting in Guinea and getting a Peace Corps volunteer to travel 100 km to the nearest telephone so we could communicate about logistics.

I have worked an entire generation at MSH. Some of my young colleagues were born the year I started, or even later. They believe in MSH’s purpose. MSH’s creation story remains powerful, as some of us experienced when Ron came over this spring to address the JWLI fellows. He saw a need and he saw a problem that he ascribed not to lack of technical know-how but to the lack of management structures and, more importantly, leadership thinking. Over the years we have expanded management to include leadership and now governance, but the essence remains the same: if people responsible for services start to think and behave as managers who lead then the intended results will flow from there. How to operationalize this in a manner that differentiates us from our competition is the big challenge now.

And so I end this reflection on my journey at MSH with a sense of deep gratitude for what this journey has allowed me to do and become: I am clear on my purpose and will pursue it wherever I can: helping people to have productive conversations. I have been able to raise and educate our kids (one and 5 when I started, and now 32 and 37) – and yes, to all the new moms, it is possible to be a professional and a mother, but not without the agony of thinking you are not enough for anyone tugging at you, the sacrifices, the sleepless nights and tearful farewells.  They will appreciate later what it is you were trying to do, and admire you for it. There’s nothing like a good role model nearby.

I have a network of people I know and respect all over the world. I have gained innumerable deep life-long friendships with people near and far. I have been introduced to a young startup in Zambia that closes the loop for me: there are new versions of MSH in the making. There are young Rons out there. The opportunities for doing good abound, and so does the talent, like Ron’s all these years back, to do something about it. MSH can play the role of a wise elder, nurturing this talent and helping these young idealists to expand the work we are so deeply engaged in.

I want to end with something our erstwhile colleague Morsy (Mansour) wrote in the foreword to Managers Who Lead. Before we even developed the LDP, and in the experiments Jana Ntumba and I did in Guinea, we learned that leading is not about technical expertise – in fact expertise can get in the way and serve as a shield. It is also not about the numbers as the numbers can be fudged and require more controls which starts an endless cycle of more controls and more clever ways around them – people have an amazing capacity to spend their creative creative energy on the wrong things.

What we learned and now know to be true, is that what we are trying to bring about is a change of heart, as hearts cannot be fudged like results; hearts are sustainable as long as they keep beating.  Morsy expressed this so well: “what was missing was something inside [people’s] hearts, something that ignites the fire inside all who want to truly contribute or make a difference. What was missing was commitment. The question became: “How can we inspire this commitment in every health service team and team member?” This is the question that health managers around the world are asking. How can we take our limited resources and give the best of ourselves to ensure the quality we want our people to have? How can we not be stopped in the face of inadequate systems and limited resources? How can we motivate our staff to be creative in overcoming obstacles, when there are so many? I believe that when people are committed they can produce incredible results. Even if the systems are poor, with commitment they will find ways to continuously improve them.”

Morsy and Kahlil Gibran come from the same region and so it is not surprising to find that one echoes the other. Gibran reminds us that “Work is love made visible. The goal is not to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” There you go, that’s the work. I hope these two quotes take you by the hand and lead you wherever you need to go.

The upgrade did not materialize but, at the arrival hall of Logan airport my husband did, as did the wonderful weather and greenery of New England that makes late spring such a wonderful time here, and not such a good time to spend in the Sahel.

During my last week of employ I took care of my looks:  a haircut and teeth cleaning, making myself presentable for my goodbye party on Thursday.

Tessa had been on my case for some weeks now to make reservations for a restaurant to mark the end of my career at MSH – a career that marked pretty much her entire life, most of Sita’s and three quarters of my life with Axel. I invited all three to the party – after all, my salary paid for their education and allowed other things that would not have been possible without MSH. We all are what and where we are for a great deal because of MSH.

I had not taken her exhortations to make up my mind of where to eat very seriously. I am used to make last minute reservations – for two in the area we live in it usually works just fine. But Tessa knows better about Boston and wanting a table for 5.  Tessa is the ultimate millennial when it comes to places to eat – she checks out the websites, triangulates and then makes a triage – she did this so well in New Orleans that she is now my go to person for restaurants outside Cape Ann. When I finally made up my mind, a week before the date of the desired reservation, none of her selections had room for us. In one case no reservations would be taken till July. I was chided for my carelessness with the familiar eyerolling sigh of “mohommm!”  She came up with a new batch of restaurants and this time I was decisive. She got us a table online instantaneously – it will be a celebratory dinner with no regard for cost – making a first dent into my severance package.

Today it was teeth cleaning day. It is not usually a topic I describe in my blog because it is not interesting, but today it was. My dental hygienist greeted me with great enthusiasm – her sister’s name was Sylvia, though written like this Szilvia. I guessed, based on how her name was embroidered on her smock (Krysztina) that she was Tsech or Hungarian. Yes, the latter. She spoke with a strong accent and before I knew it, encouraged by my questions, I learned about her journey as a high school grad from Hungary to being a dental hygienist in Beverly MA, with a first stopover in England in the early 90s, when such a thing was not as common as it is now thanks to the Euro zone.

When she learned about my travels she wanted to know if I had learned to travel light (I do and she doesn’t). She interrogated me like a detective to get my secrets (how many outfits, shoes? And what about layers?).

It’s hard to respond to such a barrage of questions when you are in a dentist chair. For one, there is stuff in your mouth, but I also didn’t hear her questions very well. There are all the different noises a dentist office produces, my hearing is no longer what it used to be and then there was her accent. At one point she asked me (I thought) how often I fly. I said about 9 times a year. But what she had really asked me how often I flossed and was rather nonplussed at my answer. “Huhh, 9 times a year? I have never heard anyone say that before.” We soon cleared up the confusion and had a good laugh. I think she will probably remember that I floss 9 times a year. I used to do it only twice a year, just before and just after my dentist visit; nine times would have been pretty good, about once every 6 weeks.

On Saturday I got up again at 3AM and retraced my steps to DC for the second time this week, this time to connect to an 11AM light from Dulles to Addis, the hub from which I would transit to my final destination. The Dulles-Addis flight took 13 hours, on Ethiopian Airlines, member of the Star Alliance for which I don’t have special status – the kind of status (gold or higher) that gets you in the short line or possibly into a lounge.

I sat in the back of the plane, surrounded by some people who were going home, others on their return trip probably people from the diaspora, on the outbound, to visit the relatives or try their luck. Diaspora Ethiopians were lured back some years ago with very appealing resettling arrangements. There were many Americans on the plane.. I assume some of them live and work in Ethiopia and some who go farther afield for their work, like me. Addis is a major African hub.

There are always (always) missionaries on the planes to Africa. They go there on short stints to fulfil their Christian duties – ministering to those less well off. On my plane there were quite a few. They were a peppy talkative bunch, waking me up and keeping me awake with their incessant chatter. The talk, the heat, the noise, the uncomfortably worn and sagging old seats, spaced so close together that my knees touched the seat in front, made this one of my more memorable unpleasant trips.

Among the travelers to Addis was a gaggle of young women wearing black T-shirts that gave them away: Christian nurses on a mission. Their T-shirts said ‘You see a leader.’ I could have gone up to them to ask what makes them leaders but I didn’t have the nerve. I suppose if you think you are a leader, then maybe you are. I only hope that they are leaders of the listener kind, not the telling kind.

I tried to watch some movies to kill time. I watched Blade Runner for a few minutes until the first violent act occurred. The audio was so bad I couldn’t understand the dialogue which might have compensated for the violence; then I tried the superhero movie, without sounds, which was amusing for a while before putting me to sleep. And finally I watched the story of Deep Throat, the ultimate whistleblower who brought Nixon down. It did make me think of Comey and the White house interfering with the FBI– there are more than a few parallels. Someone on my row was reading Comey’s book. It was displayed for impulse buys at the Dulles airport, for people looking for some light reading en route. Everything (nurses, movies, books) seems to be about leadership.