Sylvia's Journal

I am working a few different jobs, as none is fulltime at the moment. There is the preparation for the senior team retreat of the southern Africa project, a follow up of a retreat 7 months ago – so far I am working from a more or less blank slate, talking with people, a few every day. The design should fall into place by the weekend when I switch back to the Lesotho project, with two events in the next two weeks: one senior staff retreat (government) and a capacity building event with civil service organizations involved in caring for orphans and vulnerable children.

I am also preparing for a trip early November to Bangladesh, a second try after the first attempt in April got frustrated by a multi-day general strike. I am watching with dismay pictures of street protests in Dhaka.

Back at headquarters attempts to define and create the learning organization at MSH are underway. I am working with a cross-organization team with some great minds on it. Although there is much written about learning organizations, we are on unchartered territory, as such an organization wide effort has never been tried on such a grand scale (MSH employs about 2000 people wordwide) and with a dedicated overhead budget.

And then there is the trip to Japan, in December. I am waiting for the contracting to be completed before organizing the travel, which will include Axel and a short vacation before the work starts. After that there are wide vistas of staying put which is a good thing as there are many things to celebrate (Faro turning one half year, Tessa and Steve returning from their road trip, Christmas and Christerklaas, and New Year).

Yesterday I arrived at the airport, got a rental car and found my way back to the MSH apartment.  It took less than a few minutes to get the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road. At the apartment I met the land lady who handy me a lantern, with the bad news that the electricity may well be out for a few days, after a bad storm on Friday that left the posh neighborhood powerless.

I went out to buy food that did not require heat or cold to prepare, which happened to be food I had not had enough of in Maseru: salads and fruits, and a bottle of wine. I prepared my meal before the sun set and was in bed with the lantern on my bedside table and a book when it got dark.  I have been reading a lot as a result of the power outage, finishing Sylvia Nasr’s fascinating story of the people who made modern economics (Grand Pursuit).

This morning I went to the local coffee shop where many other outage refugees were charging their electronics while sipping their lattes and cappuccinos– it created an instant camaraderie, even though I was a foreigner.

After making calls to the right people, one gentleman gave me the thumbs up and headed home. I did the same but realized we must have been living in a different neighborhood as everything remained off in the apartment. I decided to spend the rest of the day at a nearby shopping mall, selecting my lunch place based on the location of the electrical outlets. I had a very slow lunch, in sync with the recharging of the phone rather than the posted hours of the lunch place, to the barely visible annoyance of the wait staff. I left a very generous tip.

Not wanting to go home quite yet I decided to go see a movie (Woody Allen’s Rome) in a near empty cinema (so-so). I drove home before the sun set to make sure I could find my way into the apartment, expecting the worst, but found the refrigerator humming and the lights on.

Now everything is charged again and I am back on the grid, watching TV to see what happened in the world while I was away. Nothing good.

I practically live in planes these days. I am getting very good at ‘grin and bear it.’ After two very full plane rides (an upgrade for the first one – seven hours including a lot of sleep – and a downgrade in the second – 10 hours and no sleep), I arrived in a cool South Africa. Daytime here is like Como and Manchester but night time is a bit cooler. It was 11 degrees Celsius.

I was whisked off to a palatial structure, formerly the grandiose home of a couple which, I was told, felt a little too grandiose after they split up and was turned into a B&B.  I am sleeping in a room with a wildlife motif – scary looking monkeys raiding a baobab tree in the bathroom, grooming monkeys as lampstands and leopard skin curtains. A grand  (everything in this place merits the adjective ‘grand’) terrace looks out over the city from the hillside suburb of Waterkloof.

I hardly had time to explore the place. A sign said there was a spa but I won’t know about it. Before I knew it the alarm went off, I had breakfast and it was off to work with my colleague Megh from Lesotho. We are flying there tomorrow.

I spent most of the day with the senior management team interviewing candidates for the deputy project director position.  One interview was in person, one on a fairly good skype line and the other on an even better Cisco line; still there were periodic outages which made the process a little more tedious, especially for someone just off the plane. I tried to hide my yawns in the afternoon and made myself a cup of very strong coffee – that stopped the yawning.

Getting the right person for the job with everyone agreeing on who is most ‘right’ is tricky when there are so many different needs and expectations.  I wrote down my observations, as an outsider, and will await the decision with great curiosity.

I sampled my first good South African wine of this trip during dinner with two colleagues – the wine will certainly help with a second night of catch-up sleep.

Tomorrow we take off for Lesotho, bypassing the capital for the town of Leribe, a rather depressed place I remember from my last trip when we drove through it – memories of abandoned Chinese textile factories and high school kids in their starched uniforms – wondering what will happen to them after they graduate – where would they go?

In between the meetings I managed to do my first quiz of the Model Thinking course.  I had to revisit several lectures to feel confident enough to press the submit button. I got a 7.5 for 12 answers – something like a C minus I figured – which left me quite proud. Imagine answering questions like this: In the game of life, a world begins with 4 cells in a row in the alive state, and no other cells alive. After 20 updates, what state is the world in? (In other words, which cells are alive at this point?) – I got that one wrong; and this: How many possible preference orderings exist for four alternatives? These orderings must satisfy transitivity. I got that one right. Clap, clap.

The next four lectures are up – I will continue even though it is, mathematically speaking, a bit of a stretch for my mind. Its neural connections for mathematics are rather thin after 4 decades of inactivity.

I had hoped to be able to exchange some of my many miles for an upgrade for the 15 hour flight to Jo’burg, finally having the required fare base, but I was out of luck because every seat was taken. And so I sat in the back of an overbooked plane.

A mother with a four month old baby sat in back of me, with the baby kicking against my back while I was trying to fall asleep. He had a few crying fits in the beginning of the flight. I was dreading the next 14 hours but he fell asleep as did I.  At the end, when we left the plane, everyone sitting around the baby complimented the mom about his good behavior. It could have been a lot worse.

I don’t know why so many people go to cold South Africa from warm Atlanta or other parts of sunny America. The flight was full of kids, from babies to teenagers. I was curious about their stories but only got the one from my section, a film crew, two missionaries and an oil man.

Everyone was in a good mood and no one seemed to mind the fact that we were packed in like sardines, even the big guys and heavy ladies – I did not hear one complaint.

I passed the hours, sleeping a bit, reading a bit and watching an entire series of TED videos, more satisfying than the few films I tried but gave up on. I actually like to watch other peoples’ screens; I don’t care about the sound when the movie is of the action or violent genre. My neighbor watched several Rocky films and on the other side of the aisle a young kid was watching a whole bunch of destructive transformers at work while the beautiful heroine in the white blouse remained spotless despite buildings, cars and flying objects crashing on or around her.

It was still light when we landed in Jo’burg but by the time I arrived at my hotel in Pretoria it was dark. Charles the office driver picked me up and he filled me in on what’s happening in South Africa: the election of a South African woman to the African Union’s presidency, schoolbooks that, half a year into the school year, have still not been delivered in Limpopo province and winter weather in the Eastern Cape with passes closed due to snow, and flooding further down. It’s weird to see snow ploughs at work in July.

The hotel is a block from the office and across the street are liquor stores and fast food joints.  Finding healthy food is going to be a challenge once more.

I had the luxury of one full day to finish my trip reports (there were four different ones), sorting through six weeks of small pieces of paper to accompany my expense report and other tedious chores that kick in towards the end of a trip.

The staff had organized a small goodbye party, including three cakes and a speech, very touching.

I signed for the bumper scratches on my shiny red rental car and handed in the keys. It was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect 6 weeks. I was told that it was nothing. The insurance will pay. Still.

I made the rounds for goodbye hugs at 5 PM when the office empties. Driver Charles drove me back to the apartment where I dined on the last leftovers in the fridge: yogurt with muesli, a small chunk of cheese and a few small sate sticks while watching Private Benjamin, the only program I seem to be able to get on the complicated TV and dish arrangement (too late to learn now).

The suitcase is packed and the sleeping pills are handy for the 11 hour flight to Amsterdam and to Sietske. Goodbye to South Africa, for now.

I found my way to an informal Quaker worship group in Pretoria, not that far from where I live. It was at a private residence – the official Meeting House is in Johannesburg, some 55 km away. To avoid long drives every Sunday the Pretoria group meets at people’s homes every two weeks.

The house was lovely, old, with tin ceilings and old doors, the ones with the top and bottom part opening separately – a feature you find in old Dutch homes – so you can hang over the bottom and chat with your neighbor without opening you house. Unlike the area where I live, with its high walls, electric fencing and people inside being tightly shut out from the outside, where security companies making fortunes from fear, this house was in a neighborhood that appeared to be without fear: gates were missing or open, doors to the street were open, no electric wires nor placards posted in the grass on or in the walls that indicated which security company was in charge. It was in a place where one could imagine the existence of a community.

Inside was also neat. It was refreshing to be in a house without electronics, no sign of TVs, computers, iPads and such. There were two comfortable couches, a table made from a traditional African resting bed with several unmatched vases filled with garden flowers that were picked by kids I imagined.  It was a joyous and happy place.

I was warmly welcomed by a small group – maybe there were 15 in all, five of them kids. There were other visitors, a retired couple, from Concord Friends Meeting in New Hampshire, on a two year Peace Corps stint as teachers in a primary and secondary school in a village some distance away.

A young African woman, who accompanied her partner to the silent meeting from time to time, had noticed, as I had, that there were lots of grey hairs in the room. I also noticed quite a few Birkenstocks or look-alikes, very few painted toenails (mine and the hostess), and mostly white folks in comfortable and sensible rather than fashionable dress.

It was mostly a silent meeting and I liked it; not quite the feeling of weightlessness of yesterday in the salty spa pool, but a feeling of being in tune with the universe. A few people spoke but I didn’t get the messages the words behind the words and so I let them pass like riverboats coming into sight and then disappearing from sight, without a trace.

I commented on the excellent coffee we were served afterwards, with real speculaas cookies, and was promptly given a bag of coffee to take back to my apartment that doesn’t have coffee making equipment. I protested to no avail.

Two people had Dutch roots, one had left Friesland with her family when she was nine – going on a four week journey to the other part of the world in 1954. I told her I used to read books, when I was about that age, about kids emigrating and how jealous I was, living in the house and town of my grandparents, something I found very boring. One book I remember as if I read it yesterday, ‘the boot vertrekt zonder Claartje’ (the boat leaves without Clara) about a family moving to Canada.  The funny thing is that this 9 year old is now a very root-bound pensionada  (‘retired spare part’ she called herself) who hasn’t moved much since long ago while I, feeling so root-bound in my youth, are travelling around the world as if there is no tomorrow.

I slept terribly last night, from hour to hour, an interminable night. I gave up at 5 AM and watched the sun come up over the valley. The day was full of promises.

I worked for a while on my next assignment and then joined the well-heeled folks of Waterkloof Heights/Ridge for a latte at the little shopping center down the street. It was the perfect spot, in the warm fall sun, to review resumes for my co-facilitator in Bangladesh and meeting up for a final debrief with the project director. We talked about the project and when I would come back. I indicated that the project is first in line after the grandbaby is born and my grand-maternity leave has expired.

The afternoon was dedicated to a final soak and massage at the spa. It was twofer day and Katie and I got the ‘flotation therapy’ for free – a half hour in a kind of Dead Sea bath – a weightless float in a dark room – it was delicious and would have been totally relaxing if I hadn’t had to watch out for floating into Katie – suspended at the other side of the small round and shallow pool. I was thinking a lot about the grand-baby, being similarly suspended, in a much smaller space, making summersaults – I had an urge to do the same, feeling what that would be like.

We followed the flotation treatment with a Swedish massage which was followed by a sushi feast. It was good that Katie drove us back as my massage brain was hardly dependable, what with traffic going in the wrong direction

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