Sylvia's Journal

Archive Page 221

Toil

Published February 21, 2009 On the road Leave a Comment

All day we luxuriated at the Kuriftu Resort and Spa in Debre Zeit, located at a small lake about one hour’s drive out of Addis. We bought a day pass for about 20 dollars that entitled us to a lunch, a swim, a kayak trip across the lake and 25% off on all spa treatments. As soon as we arrived we registered for massage, me the aromatherapy and Liz for the Swedish massage, followed by a pedicure which required the electricity to come back on (it eventually did).

It surprised us that coffee making in Ethiopia required electricity but it was the reason given for an hour delay. When it finally arrived we had already progressed to beer in frozen mugs – the coffee rather substandard (maybe because it required electricity) for a country famous for its beans. The local beer on the other hand was just what the doctor ordered on that fine summer day sitting by the lake, watching the pelicans and other water birds frolic right in front of our eyes. It is a tough assignment.. kuriftu_spa3

The only thing that spoiled the fun was the pontoon boat with its throbbing music that carried a few passengers around the lake. We read our books, I did some water colors while we feigned not to listen to the type A American embassy guard sitting behind us in the company of one male (type B) and four gorgeous young women, everyone busily flirting with the tough guy. We wondered what people would think of the US if this is the only representative of the American tribe that they ever meet, Loud? Obnoxious? Sexy? Exciting? Funny? Arrogant? All of the above?

ethiopia-007 We had a lovely lunch, opted for non Ethiopian, and then regretted that we had scheduled our massages so close after lunch. We were each led into an elegant little room under the large thatched roof with rose petals sprinkled across the floor and the massage table. There were intact roses as well, tucked into rolls of white bath towels and nonchalantly dropped around the room in between the small candles that dotted the floor. sparoom The wall to ceiling window looked out over a series of rock basins full of thirsty and twittering small birds. The one hour massage was perfect. When it was all over we dragged the experience out a little longer with a pedicure, possible because the electricity that operated the pedicure chairs and footbaths was back on.

Sitting side by side we had our calloused feet sanded down, our legs exfoliated, our cuticles trimmed and our nails varnished a shiny red/orange and red/brown. I immediately managed to smudge the nail polish on my big toe.

We ended the day with another ice cold local beer looking out over the lake while gossiping about our colleagues back at home. During the drive back to Addis, we talked and talked as if we were on a first date. I suppose we were, as we have never travelled together. Liz has now moved into my hotel and, although not given an imperial suite, still has a large room that is light years nicer and cheaper than the one at the Sheraton, plus of course free internet. We decided to skip dinner, still full from lunch. Instead I ordered a tiramisu as a late night snack while vegging out in front of the TV, having done nothing work-related all day – this is rare on trips but I can say that Liz made me do it. I know I would have been working if I had been here on my own.

Governments

Published February 21, 2009 On the road Leave a Comment

My first day at work consisted mostly of figuring out who we should talk with to get a better understanding of what people who need to manage and lead HIV/AIDS programs are up against. It is also to find out who would be or would not be interested in the management and leadership work that we are asked to do here on behalf of the US government.

Ethiopia receives unbelievable amounts of money to spend on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. The monies that the country received from the three main funding sources (US government, Global Fund and World Bank) in 2005 exceeded by several million dollars its entire health budget of 2003; yet the staff, both in numbers and skill level, can hardly implement the existing programs. So there is much work to be done. This is not just technical skills training – that is being done by many. What’s less common is coaching people how to work effectively in an environment where multiple groups, local, bilateral and international, are tripping over each other, to do the good work; where agendas, both hidden and overt , do not always match up and the potential for duplication and things falling through the cracks is enormous.

The country has been in the process of reengineering itself and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is on everyone’s lips (and has been for many years now). We have to figure out how to mesh with that as there are obvious commonalities in our respective goals and the BPR process, in spite of its critics, is unstoppable.

Thanks to our colleague Yohannes’ efforts we received the green light from those in charge of civil service reform to partner with a local management training institution. We had wanted more than that, namely the opportunity to talk and learn more about the reform committee’s challenges but that invitation did not come forth – at least not yet.

The Institute is the same I started to work with during my previous trip, now nearly a year ago. But those attempts were squelched because of budget constraints. Now, we are suddenly receiving US taxpayer monies to do something much bigger than what we tried to launch a year ago. Go figure… when everything else in the world is coming to a screeching halt, we get the money we needed last year. It comes from a different pot of course.

If anyone thinks that government work can be rationalized, think twice. There is little rationality or, for that matter, efficiency. It’s the nature of the government beast. Its primary function is not to run like a well oiled machine that turns inputs into outputs (although we like to think it should). Governments exist to satisfy the needs of their constituencies. This is the only thing that can explain why people run for office. Those with the loudest voices or the squeakiest wheels tend to get the most (whether for themselves or on behalf of others without voice). Moreover, many needs stand in opposition of each other. When you think of that it is a wonder that governments achieve anything at all.

In the morning we reviewed the work that Liz had done during the week in an office that first had three desks and three occupants. When we returned from an errand, our seats were taken and our temporary office was full of new desks being put together by a noisy and sloppy crew of workmen. We are in a brand new and not quite finished building that was only a blueprint during my last visit. There was much hammering around us.

Liz had put together a presentation to our colleagues working on the various MSH projects about management and leadership and the resources available to them to improve themselves or others in these areas. People were invited to listen to us over lunch break – and many did – enticed by a free lunch: pizzas with odd toppings, not quite Italy, not quite Ethiopia, not quite the US.

I think we overwhelmed people a bit with the enormous array of tools and models and concepts and were asked to give them a few that they could use right away, which we can and we will.

After lunch we started to focus on how to squeeze all the conversations we need to have into next week. We are expected to hand over a fairly detailed plan on how to spend the money by next Friday 11 AM. It is a short week, we discovered, with a Moslem holiday in the next 5 or 6 days. Which holiday and when exactly no one could tell us. It appears that the decision whether to close offices for a holiday (outside the official ones we could find on the internet) is often postponed till the last minute. As a result one might find clusters of children wandering to school in their colorful uniforms to find the school closed. I am glad I am not a working mom here.

In the evening we were treated to dinner in a cultural restaurant by friends of one of our colleagues in Cambridge. It was an Australian/Belgian couple with two small children who are in the development orbit right now and wondering what their next move will be. Their cross cultural and linguistic challenges resonated deeply with me. Like Axel and me, they too met in a place recovering from a nasty war. There was much to talk about.

Our dinner was served while we sat on low stiff chairs, pushed closely together, around a table woven from grasses on the spongy injera bread. One’s fingers are the utensils and they are never to be licked. At the end of the meal the dishes are cleaned by taking the entire ‘table’ away and coffee is served in the same small cups I remember from Yemen and Lebanon, with popcorn. A few leaves of the herb Rue are put in the coffee. We have this growing outside our garden at home to keep animals out (it stinks).

After dinner dancers performed regional dances. Each dance required a new costume and made me marvel about the variety of styles in this one country. Many of the dances were of the ‘rubber body’ variety and I made us all touch our necks, mine still whiplashed and stiff like a plank. I was very grateful that I was bypassed when one of the dancers invited Liz to shake her body in the same way. Of course the foreigners were easy targets. Liz was a good sport.

And now it is weekend. I like this midweek departure from Boston, with its less than full planes, and then arriving just one day before the weekend starts. Liz is badly in need of pampering, having already spent three weeks on the road, two of which in Nigeria, and so we are going to splurge all day in a spa in a fancy place an hour away from Addis. I needed no convincing.

From groentesoep to imperial suite

Published February 19, 2009 On the road 1 Comment
Tags: Ethiopia

The economic turndown also showed itself on the plane leaving Amsterdam; it was only half full. Once again I had an entire row to myself after my neighbor moved to the row in front of us. That was a good thing because for the 30 minutes that he did sit next to me he imbued the entire row and especially his seat with the smell of Dutch groentesoep (vegetable soup). The pungent smell lingered for a long time after he moved. I have nothing against vegetable soup, I like it, but as a smell on humans it is not so great.

We left Holland a little later than planned because the plane could not disconnect itself from the jet way – as if some mechanical umbilical cord tried to keep us from leaving. It took two batches of mechanics jumping up and down something to shake us loose.

While flying over the Alp and the Mediterranean I watched Oliver Stone’s ‘W’ and was most intrigued by the senior leadership team scenes. I think it would make good discussion material for such teams about what it means to lead at the very top. As a psychologist I was also drawn into the parental dynamic and wondered how much of world affairs is influenced by powerful sons (or daughters – but there are less of those) who feel the need to prove themselves over and over again and show their dads, dead or alive, that they are worthy human beings, while breaking things along the way. The book I just finished (We Were the Mulvaneys by Carol Oates) is about the same topic. I think I have never quite disengaged from my original professional ambition to be a family therapist; a person who I believe does the world’s most important preventive work.

I have observed this dynamic up close and nearby but the harm that can be inflicted on others in the process is usually contained and mostly local, unless of course the family produces a future president of the most powerful nation in the world. In that light Obama’s story is just as interesting.

In Khartoum we refueled and I watched the day turn into night in no time; as a northerner this short twilight is always a surprise. I much prefer our drawn out process and the slow transition from light to dark and vice versa.

The last part of the trip gave me just enough time to scan the bulk of the background documents that I had been saving into one ‘to read’ file. I am lucky that Liz is already there and can brief me on the lay of the land and all the things she already found out after a week in Addis. She’s known as a super productive worker; I have already noticed that.

We landed in Ethiopia exactly at the appointed time and I was out before Kalid the driver, who was sent to pick me up, arrived. He intercepted me just as I was about to get into a taxi. I arrived at the hotel and was given what appears to be the imperial suite, a three-room affair with a huge terrace where you could hold a party for fifty people. It looks out over the red light district below and a good chunk of the city. ethiopia-005 It has several gurgling Italianate fountains with cast iron lovers and vines, a gas terrace heater like you find in cities that use terraces all year round even when cold. There’s more: a vending machine, a gas grill and about 5 outdoor furniture sets (large round tables and chairs) plus a swinging settee. I have a strong suspicion that it is not just for me. In fact, when we did a workshop in this hotel during my last visit this is where we had our coffee breaks. But now, late at night, all is quiet and I am here alone.

ethiopia-006 Inside there are two large flat screen TVs, one in my (king size) bedroom and the other in the living room with kitchenette with its well stocked refrigerator (drinks only), four burners, microwave, 8 kitchen cupboards with only the most essential china and silverware for two, and a granite counter top. There is also a fake fireplace with a plastic log, also of the Italianate style. These Italians surely left their marks here. And finally I have fairly good speed wireless. All this for 60 dollars less than the US-government allowed maximum rate so I am actually saving money for the American tax payer. A flyer on my desk of the hotel group that, I suppose owns this hotel invites me to ‘bring my exhausted sole & depart singing…’ So stay tuned.

Gloom and room

Published February 19, 2009 On the road Leave a Comment
Tags: Holland

The world economic crisis is showing up in the gloomy graphs on the front of the Dutch newspapers and in the empty plane to Amsterdam with room to spare. I have rarely had an empty seat beside me on my twenty years of Atlantic crossings. My first two flights in 2009 allowed me to sleep, fully extended over 4 seats as if in a bed. This is when a good thing is actually a bad thing.

And so I had a good (half) night sleep, full of dreams. The only one I remember is that I was about to receive a visit from some official who was coming to my house to extend a permit for something that was up for renewal and for which I had to show my continued proficiency. I knew I had to bone up on procedures or rules that contained precise numbers that I had forgotten. Somewhere in my (childhood) room there was a booklet that I needed to review before his arrival; but I couldn’t find it and the search became increasingly frantic. And then the beverage cart came through and released me from my anxiety, offering me watery tea in a Styrofoam cup and a tiny cereal bar that is supposed to taste like apple.

Axel drove me in to work yesterday morning. He had an appointment with the brain injury doctor. The visit was a routine check up and things are going in the right direction. But I did notice he forgot his wallet as we got into the car and is easily distracted when he remembers things he should have done/taken and did not – mostly small things, usually with little or no consequence, that show that his executive function is not quite where it needs to be. In spite of this handicap he appears to be handling the complex and complicated job of chair of the town’s community preservation committee remarkably well. But then again, if you work in town you can pretty much leave your wallet at home.

At work there was one more all-morning meeting with our evaluators, this time less powerpoints and more conversation that showed our virtual capacity building portfolio. I have seen it expanding over the years, seen colleagues learn their way into this, including myself in the area of virtual facilitation, and realized as I listened to their presentations that we have come a long way and have much to be proud of.

At lunch time Morsi, Jennifer and I took our intern Nuha out to lunch to celebrate her last day with us, or maybe it is ‘mourn’ her last day. Nuha and I have gotten quite close since we met less than a year ago in the BU course, she a student, and I the professor. We have introduced each other to our respective worlds, hers a world populated by women in a desert kingdom, mine a New England one that includes a lush Lobster Cove, trips in small planes and eating apples straight from the tree.

Nuha showed us pictures of camping out in the Riyadh desert with her female relatives, including a video of singing around a campfire. I have an open invitation to visit her when she is back in Riyadh and participate in such an event. It looks like fun but definitely would require some intense work on my Arabic before I go as it will be a total immersion experience.

The tent is not like what I thought hearing the word; in her world a tent is a like a huge Bedouin tent, permanently set up in the sand on the outskirts of the city, that you can rent if you don’t have your own, and all you do in it is sleep as the days are too hot to be inside and the evenings too cold (close to zero Celsius) and so you sit outside around a fire – it is the desert after all.

I have nearly finished working through my 10 Pimsleur Persian lessons during my commute to work and decided to check with my Afghan colleague Saeed whether I am actually learning something that people in Kabul can understand. He told me that people would notice that I spoke the language of Iran rather than Afghanistan but they would understand me. The problem is that I would not understand much of what they would be saying to me as the words are quite different. I now imagine that the difference is something like between Portuguese and Spanish, where the Portuguese can understand the Spanish speakers but not the other way around. Thus, getting an Afghan tutor is becoming more important now to help me make the adjustments in my newly acquired vocabulary.

And now I am in Amsterdam, waiting for my next departure, just a couple of hours away, first to Khartoum and then Addis.

Women heroes

Published February 18, 2009 Home Leave a Comment

From a vague recollection of my dreams it seems that my mind is already in Ethiopia. But my body is still very much in Manchester this morning. And so is my suitcase; open, half packed for a high altitude Africa experience that requires thinking, rather than the automatic packing response I have for more tropical climates. My colleague Liz who is already there wrote me that it is chilly and pants and sweaters are in order.

I was going to pack light and hand carry my luggage. But the combination of cool weather clothes, Axel’s order for at least 2 kilos of Yergecheff coffee, plus the prohibition by my physical therapist of having anything heavy compressing my shoulder made me abandon that idea.

Yesterday I spent the entire morning, four long hours, in a small and overheated room listening to one powerpoint after another, a show put on for our evaluators. It was a bit much for me – they didn’t let on but I pitied them since they also had an afternoon like that, and today another whole day. I tried to imagine what it must be like to get 20 years of experience in a particular set of interventions (management and leadership development in developing countries) compressed, distilled to its essence, dumped in one’s lap like that. But they appeared engaged and attentive and asked good questions. The poor things also have to read thousands of pages and travel to Nicaragua, Nigeria and Peru.

I stayed late at work to clean off my desk for the next 2 weeks when I will not be sitting at either my home or office desk and my attention is elsewhere. I drove home following Tessa and Steve in the direction of Manchester by about a half hour and consulted on the phone which route to take – it is nice to have scouts like that. Their advice was good and despite the rush hour I made it home in one hour.

Dinner was ready, cooked by Steve and Tessa, and a harbinger of spring: asparagus (not quite from the US but no longer from far Peru), ham, eggs and boiled potatoes. After dinner I packed half my suitcase and went through my travel prep routines while Axel educated himself on CPA politics and practices and then caught up on a movie that we have been watching in turns to arrive at the place where I left off. We finally watched the ending of the movie together, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, with Ingrid Bergman, and cried over its sappy and beautiful ending.

The movie is about leadership, focused perseverance in particular, but men would call it foolishness and stubbornness. It is based on the life of Gladys Aylward, a missionary in China in the 1930s who became a foot inspector and travelled through the countryside to enforce the new law against the horrendous practice of binding the feet of young girls.

This movie was the second in a row we watched about harmful practices that males have imposed on women in various parts of the world to keep them down. The other was Ousman Sembene’s Mooladé about female genital cutting in Mali; also a story about leadership, courage, perseverance, or, if you are a frightened old man who sees power slipping away but still wants to be right, foolishness. I am grateful for all these courageous women in the world, the known and the unknown heroes who added so much to the wellbeing of us all.

Old

Published February 17, 2009 Home Leave a Comment

Yesterday was President’s day which is, for reasons I don’t understand, about buying cars. We would have loved to go out and buy a newer car, especially since our two cars combined are a quarter of a century old and have driven half a million miles. But this has to be postponed. Axel is taking the older of the old cars to our guys over in New Hampshire. They get a kick out of keeping old Subarus on the road. We hope there’s still some life left in ours as there is not enough money in the bank to buy another car while keeping an emergency fund for when the unthinkable happens.

Although it was officially a holiday, there was work to be done by both of us. Axel’s was town business; mine was halfway around the globe. First there was a phone conversation with colleagues in Kabul; then one with Bruce from Chicago who is heading to Northern Pakistan to do what I did in Cambodia. And then there was more writing and reading. It was also time to prepare for our talks during the next two days with a team of evaluators who are coming to check out how we have done as a project and make recommendations about more such work, after our project runs out next summer.

I am employed on a 5-year contract that has been renewed four times now since 1986. I can only hope that it will be renewed again in 2010 but there is no guarantee and this contract could be the last. Although we do know that our new administration’s philosophy is favorable to the work we do, we don’t know what it means in terms of money set aside for such work, now that the talk is all about shovel-ready projects and other boosts for our own economy.

I am back at my physical therapist for work on my right shoulder. The Depo-Medrol/Lidocaine shot in my shoulder, last Thursday, has done the trick and reduced the pain but there is work to be done with muscles and tendons around it. Once again I marvel about the intricacies of the muscular-skeletal construction of our bodies and how everything is connected to everything else. Massages and yoga are good and I am encouraged to continue these practices. I checked out a new yoga teacher closer to home and liked her style. It appears she is a follower from the same tribe that produces most of our local yoga teachers.

Unhurried compassion

Published February 16, 2009 Home Leave a Comment

At Quaker Meeting the idea is to still your mind. I couldn’t for the life of me. It was as if my mind had a life of its own, resisting all attempts to be quiet. I practiced the advice from my meditation tapes and focused on my breathing. But my mind would invent stories, project images that triggered stories and endless to do lists. And when I kept returning to my breathing it tried to intervene physically by making me hot, then tired and then uncomfortable in whatever position I was sitting. While at a cosmic level I was ready to be ‘one with the universe and listen for God’s voice,’ at a cellular level this was being thwarted with a stubbornness that surprised me. Maybe what I was experiencing was the prototype of all good and evil battles that have plagued mankind, at its most personal manifestation.

Axel stood up and spoke about compassion, and so I tried that angle for awhile, being compassionate with that frantic and busy part of myself that cannot rest – but I found it was only feeding it, making it more active, as if I was stroking the ego of, well ehh…, my own ego. When the hour was over I realized that my travel and rather hectic life has been undermining my ability to live in the here and now and surrender to a more quiet rhythm in life’s complex score. I am always anticipating, thinking about what needs to be done next, learned, fixed, gathered, followed up, written, packed, acquired, understood or activated. But there is nothing in there about slowing down, closing or silencing.

I bicycled back from Meeting while Axel passed me by in the car. We arrived home at about the same time, had another fishy meal in the absence of Tessa and Steve, and then drove to Salem’s visitor center. Our friend Merrill who is a story teller for the National Park Service, was on stage to tell stories about the underground railway in Essex County. It was a superb performance that has lessons and morals that are just as valid today as they were then, and once again, it was all about compassion. And I realized that the morning’s experience in Quaker Meeting had reminded me that compassion and being hurried cancel each other out. This was confirmed, I learned later from a video on TED about the same topic, by a group of seminary students who were asked to do a sermon about the Good Samaritan. As they hurried from their class to the church, preoccupied with their performance, most did not notice or pay attention to the man doubled over in pain who was sitting in their path to the church.

Blessed

Published February 15, 2009 Flying , Home Leave a Comment

Next to my computer, open on that page in Flight Training magazine for over a week now, is an article about how to land in strong cross winds (Uncrossing crosswind landings) with a picture on one page of a technique called ‘Crab and kick’ and on the other page one called ‘Slideslip.’ I have been looking each morning at these pictures as I sit here writing. Yesterday afternoon I saw it all put into practice, as Bill set the plane down in exactly that crosswind condition. The wind blew right between the main runways, gusting from 17 to 26 knots. I was glad I was sitting in the right seat. We could hear the voice from the tower over the radio saying softly, ‘wow!’ after the landing. We all agreed.

It was the end of a lovely trip over snow covered landscapes to Glenn Falls in Upstate New York; the place we had not been able to reach last week because of low clouds. This time we approached from the south, flying first west to North Adams, slugging it out against a forty knot northwesterly wind that doubled our flying time. As the outgoing pilot I added another 2.3 hours to my logbook for cross county flying. I have surpassed the 50 miles you need as a minimum precondition for getting one’s instrument rating; something for which I have no appetite (nor money) at the moment.

I landed us in perfect conditions at Glenn Falls airport at the southern end of Lake George. We parked between many other small planes that were taking advantage of the perfect conditions: unlimited visibility and clear skies with very little wind on the ground. At Glenn Falls you could see the snow covered mountain ranges in the north and when we left Beverly we could see the Blue Hills in back of Boston’s skyscape.

It was Bill’s birthday in addition to Valentines day and this seemed enough occasion to have lunch in the airport cafeteria. The tiny 3-table and 1-counter restaurant was (wo)manned by the frightening Tessie the Terror as she called herself. A picture of Tessie in younger days stood on a bookshelf on the side. I think it was made by the same photographer who memorialized Penny in her early days of beauty.

Tessie did things her way and at her speed and made it clear that she was not to be challenged or hurried. Tessie’s place was full of graying and balding men who were drinking decaf coffee and bitching about our new president. The menu had probably not changed much over the years, basic American fifties fare. Bill had a bowl of potato soup (with oyster crackers) and I had a thick grilled (American) cheese sandwich. We split the fries.

Bill piloted us back so I got to be the navigator. We flew a few miles north over frozen Lake George before turning east to Rutland and from there direct to Beverly. I could see the ice fishermen sitting quietly waiting for a bite – I imagined them escaping from wife and household duties. If they were anything like the folks in the restaurant, they probably were much happier out in the open far away from women like Tessie who treated them like unruly and irresponsible little boys.

We flew over Vermont’s ski areas and I could see the skiers get on and off lifts, fix their bindings and slide down the slopes. As we moved further east the winds began to pick up leading us eventually to the crosswind landing that took all of Bill’s concentration and accumulated flying experience.

Back home with my own Valentine, we took advantage of Tessa and Steve not being around and cooked a wonderful fish soup while listening to a detective book-on-CD that plays in the days of the janissaries in Turkey. Dinner was followed by watching one of the 7 movies we brought back from the library, ending a day that was perfect. I fell asleep feeling blessed.

Pink and red

Published February 14, 2009 Home Leave a Comment

It is Valentines day, or Valentimes as Sita used to call it and, although overcommercialized here, still a day to express gratitude to certain people. We sent a bouquet of WBUR roses to Tim and Rhonda who live in Orange and were, on that fateful afternoon of July 14, 2007, picking blueberries near the Gardner airport. We owe them much. The flowers are on their way according to Mr. Fedex, but to the wrong address, an apartment just down the street from them. I hope they get to their destination nevertheless.

Axel gave me a cyclamen plant, pink, for love, and it reminded me of both our mothers who managed to keep these plants alive for years on end. I don’t think I have ever gotten one still looking good after two months. Tessa got a mini version, so we can compare notes. The amaryllis is also coming out today in all its pink and red and white colors – as if it was planned that way.

Axel cooked us a steak-au-poivre dinner that included a spectacular flambé of brandy soaked jus with flames spiking high above the stove and smoke that set all the fire alarms off – leaving us cooking in the ice-cold winds that came from open windows and doors on all sides of the house. But the dinner was wonderful in spite of the wind and smoke. I especially liked the sauce that was not only brandy-spiked but also thickened with lots of heavy cream. Axel had tried to copied Jim’s meal from last Saturday – the smoke part was similar but for the rest not quite up to Jim’s standards if I am honest. Practice makes perfect, apparently; Jim has done it before.

The day ended with a delightful movie about a stodgy British shoe manufacturer who changes his line to produce kinky boots for crossdressers against a backdrop of much psychological drama, such as not living up to paternal expectations, and then all ends well.

That ended an intense workday that was, apart from another set of doctors’ tests, mostly filled with writing for a new book that we hope to have in production later this year, about leadership of course.

And now back to planning our flight for today. There are gusty winds all around Beverly. In order to get to the calm areas with clear skies that are further north and west, we’d have to get through the gusts one way or another. I am waiting for advice and instructions from my pilot buddy Bill, while Axel left for a Valentimes massage.

High touch – low tech

Published February 13, 2009 Home Leave a Comment

The assistant of the shoulder doctor gave me another shot in the arm to quiet things down. The previous shot did that for over a year. I also need to see the physical therapist again for a refresher on the rubber band exercises. We have decided to put off the MRI, so what happened inside my shoulder remains a mystery for now.

The tooth doctor concluded, in less than a minute time that it was not my tooth that was falling apart but the porcelain crown. It had been drilled through in a previous root canal treatment which had weakened the crown. Eating a piece of licorice was the straw that broke the crown’s back. No emergency, just a costly repair that can wait while I get used to uneven terrain in my mouth.

To my great surprise I received my passport with visa stamp and my e-ticket a full 6 days before my next trip, to Addis Ababa. The March and April trips are still up in the air, with the April one probably sliding into the summer. This is just as well as we are in very drawn out and complicated negotiations with a reluctant partner organization that sees its traditional approach to technical assistant (experts flying in and out) questioned by us at every turn. It seems that they don’t understand what we are putting in place of something they believe has worked just fine. We are missing the words and language to describe what is primarily an experience that needs to be had, or at least observed close up.

One of my former students, newly hired by us, is leading the charge. It is a hugely difficult assignment, conducted mostly by phone and email and a few visits to Washington. She’s doing amazingly well but getting discouraged periodically, until I remind her that she is practicing what we are teaching others and that she is doing the work of managing and leading. She’s working the low-tech high-touch angle with a group that works the other way around.

My colleague in Afghanistan got his abstract for a conference in Washington this spring accepted. They gave him a poster session slot which is a bit of a consolation price, but he is on the program nevertheless. The title of his ‘session’ is Low Tech – High Touch Leadership for Health. I don’t think he has been on an international conference program before and I wonder whether they will fly him all the way to DC for this, but I hope they do. It’s a great experience, like a trip to a restaurant that offers a buffet with all the best dishes of the world.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

	Sallie Craig Huber on Rays for real
	Lucy on Probabilities
	Olya on Cuts
	Olya Duzey on The surgeon’s helpers
	svriesendorp on Safe in my cocoon