Sylvia's Journal

Since my last post the world has changed, again. I finally turned off the TV with its endless telling of Paris stories that were no longer news. We are all so connected to France that the list of people who could have made the wrong choice that night is endless. It reminds me that ‘making the world safe and secure’ is a relic of the past. In fact, one wonders whether we, in our fragile bodies, could ever be totally safe and secure.

Here in Pretoria things are calm and some would say, almost sleepy. But I know such things can change on a dime. I am not going to worry about that as it would make no difference whatsoever.

I designed and facilitated the last meeting of Board and senior SA staff to focus on the most critical challenges they have to deal with in the next few months, and we ended with a round of ‘what have I learned,’ giving everyone a last chance to speak out to the whole group. They are currently all in the air or have already landed.

After our goodbyes I had lunch with K and J who have married in the meantime and are in an exciting phase of their life. They dropped me off at a hair salon that is all but sleepy, with its loud thumping music, colorful hair dressers of both sexes (colorful in both dress and hair style), with mirrors everywhere. It is a frantic place. The massage of head and neck that comes with the washing before the cut is one of the attractions. Still, I was grateful my haircut was done quickly as I could only stand so much of that beat. As usual (I have been there a few times before) the cut was expertly done and very inexpensive, allowing for generous tipping.

I Facetimed with the Blisses and then with Axel to reconnect with home, finished my reports for my assignment in Madagascar and started to prepare for the next, a little outside Johannesburg. My colleagues for that assignment have arrived from DC and we enjoyed a nice meal together. Today is a half rest day and half workday. On Monday we are off to our retreat center.

This morning I read the newsletter from our Quaker group and the query for the month of November seems right on target:

Do you respect the worth of every human being as a child of God? Do you uphold the right of all persons to justice and human dignity? Do you endeavor to create political, social, and economic institutions which will sustain and enrich the life of all? Do you fulfill all civic obligations which are not contrary to divine leadings? Do you give spiritual and material support to those who suffer for conscience’s sake?

The workshop I am attending is finishing tomorrow. I am getting to know my Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) colleagues from Honduras, Peru, Nigeria, Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa and headquarters. They are struggling with the very difficult question of ‘how do you know whether organizational development and/or leadership & governance interventions have been effective.’ The M&E team at headquarters has to make pronouncements about the efforts in many countries, rolled up to single indicators at a high level. Our funders demand it – which makes sense – the US taxpayer (Congress) wants to know what difference the tax dollars made. But the behavior changes that turn non leaders into leaders cannot be brought about with a switch, or within project times; or, in ways that are predictable, A produces B produces C.

At an individual or organizational level, I can ask, “what do you want?” and “how would you know what you want has been achieved?” For me that is enough to determine whether the intervention(s) made a difference. But for a project that has 100s of people working on several continents, this micro view is too complex to define and too expensive to track.

I do sit in on the end-of-day reviews of the facilitation team and the revamping of each new day as an observer, but they are in charge. I have other responsibilities that are slowly filling in Thursday, a day I realized only recently was un-programmed and thus free; but no longer so. I will have another chance to practice my coaching skills and work with one of the Pretoria teams that may benefit from some reflection time.

When I get back my schedule has opened again – it was filled with two assignments that would have kept me busy through much of the Fall. But the trip to Pakistan is probably off for now due to visa delays and another has fallen through because I didn’t have any Global Fund credentials. I may have gotten my summer back after all. I know some people who will be happy about this.

I spent the entire day yesterday with my ten colleagues from the project here in the funky guesthouse where we met last time. We had asked for the Chinese room but people were staying in the bedrooms around it and so we returned to the Louis XV room where we had started our retreat 7 months ago.

We sat around a large dining table that was set for royalty when we came in. We had the staff remove the silver goblets and decorations, the crystal candelabras and the huge silver center piece, a terrine filled with moss, so that we could see each other across the table. We sat on damask covered chairs, a little rickety and creaky, but very elegant.

A pheasant and loud quaking ducks darted in and out of our room. The ducks were probably the babies that wandered in and out last March, chased by the mothers. Now these same mothers are grandparents, just as I am.

Outside on the wide porch two oversized South Africans were enjoying a healthy snack in their white bath robes. We talked about Bion’s dependency assumptions while they considered their next move: more food or massage?

After an exquisit lunch of poached salmon we discovered that the 10 people in the room represented nearly all the stops on Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (individuality vs collectivism; high vs low power distance; high vs low uncertainty avoidance; masculinity vs feminity and Michael Bond’s time orientation (long versus short).  It was extraordinary, given that these data points came from only 10 people as they considered their own places on these dimensions and the places they’d put ‘their people’ on.

We explored more diversity in learning styles and modes of handling conflict and a small committee is looking at gender. Some experiential exercises anchored the conversation in actual behavior – we may see we do this, but when in a competitive mode, most of all revert back to our defaults – a status we are not always aware of.

Given the extraordinary diversity, it is actually a miracle to see this group so productive and successful. But the success comes at some price, the mental energy it takes to navigate all these differences.

I am preparing for my departure late tonight. The expense report is done; the report is on the program for this morning – a time of endings and new beginnings, with two plane rides serving as the transition between these two states.

Every morning, like brushing my teeth, I dutifully vote 10 times for Razia jan on CNN’s heroes page. She is one of 10 people selected who are now vying for the top spot. I don’t know what the prize is but I am sure it will benefit Afghan girls and that is what matters. Please cast your votes here.

I am back in Pretoria for the home stretch. Today I finished the design, after having run it by the chief last night over dinner. For the retreat we are returning to the same fantasy place (Illyria house, Chinese room) where we were 7 months ago.

Since the business center (a chair with a computer and a printer) at the hotel was not functional (empty ink cartridge) a colleague was so nice to come and get me and installed me at her home office while she was preparing dinner. When I was done I joined a little Dutch boy in baking cookies – the same boy who I had met, with his parents and 5 siblings, two weeks ago. We are good friends now, especially since we got three times the expected number of cookies from the dough and we got to taste them to make sure they were alright.

I am trying to catch up on my two Coursera courses and dutifully do my quizzes at the end of the week. One of the courses has a feature called SSC (screen side chat) with a doctoral student or lecturer reviewing the four topics that got the most votes on the discussion forum. Imagine having to comb through posts from 100.000 students every day.  He acknowledges the authors of insightful questions and manages to make the course feel quite intimate. At the end of each week we are asked to answer questions about whether we believe the teachers care about us (yes!), whether it feels as if he is present (yes!) and such.

I am beginning to suspect what the business model might be and it is all about learning. Imagine getting all these real life stories from 100.000 people – there must be at least 1000 research papers hidden in the discussion forum.

My neck is still tender from the Thai massage Katie took me to. The satin curtain-enclosed massage spaces reminded me of the Thai massage house in Kabul, which was eventually closed when the masseuses didn’t get their visa renewed (supposedly because they were taking away jobs from Afghans, ha!)

The massage was long overdue after two weeks of way too much time in front of a computer – and as a result rather intense. I kept wondering whether to ask her to reduce the pressure a bit but then she moved to another part of my body.

We completed the morning’s outing with a sushi meal at what is becoming one of my favored restaurants. I ordered a copy of the meal to take home for dinner.

I have nearly completed my week of inquiry into the senior team’s functioning, with only two more interviews to go.  The patterns are beginning to emerge from the heavily populated mindmap in which I am pouring the answers to my questions about progress, stand stills, informal norms and desired outcomes of the retreat. Getting the ingredients out of which to fashion the design of the senior team retreat was the reason for my one week trip to Pretoria. I consider it a success.

Friday night I participated in a ‘make-your-own-pizza’ night at Katie’s and Josh where a Dutch couple from Venlo with their six small children were busy fashioning the pizzas, even one with chocolate and marshmallows, which I let pass. It was an evening with much kid energy and great conversation about lives lived overseas and speaking Dutch (I passed the test).

Everything is changing again in Lesotho. The senior leadership retreat is indefinitely postponed as key participants were summoned by another ministry to do work that can’t wait. My counterpart has been transferred to another ministry and so we go back to square one. As a result my extended stay makes less sense and requires rescheduling on the Pretoria side as well.  In the meantime all the flights home from South Africa are filling up – it is amazing how, even on weekdays, all the flights (and there are many) are full.