Mystical Experiences about Ancestors and T-shirts

Seeing that it is almost naptime on a Holy Friday, it is only appropriate to retire to the private suite in my humble residence, pour myself a stiff one of Moroni’s best smuggled Malagasy toddy and reminisce a bit over the significant events of the past few weeks.

HRIs more regular readers may have noticed that I have kept silent lately. That has to do with my natural avoidance of taking any position that may harm this organization short to medium term (I am willing to take positions that will harm HRI long term, as long as "long-term" is defined as the time after I have retired with a comfortable pay and the negative consequences will befallen my successor). 

Like any self-respecting executive director of a cutting edge life-saving organization, I prefer to avoid taking any position that may put me at odds with the complex world of politics. Post-factum, once significant consequences are obvious for everyone to see I am ready to shout. 

I have lost very little sleep over the news from Egypt and Tunisia. Initially I was worried that the disturbances will ruin our hard-earned good relationships with local authorities (built over decades of generously funded life-saving capacity building projects implemented by HRIs affiliates). But then, when it became obvious that some sort of change is unavoidable I instructed our office in Cairo to shred all archives and be reborn as a voice of change, ready to work with whatever system will be in place once the enthusiasm is gone.

Just like old days, in "CIS" (for our younger readers, back in the day "CIS" was a donor euphemism for “former soviet countries that no-one can place on the map”).

I am more worried about ongoing stuff in Bahrain, but then our affiliation with the small Kingdom is mostly related to venues for life-saving meetings, an important but manageable matter, with several plan Bs in the region .

It is my habit to have Nathan the intern walk a few steps behind me and carrying my standard issue I-pad, ready to hand it to me discreetly should I have a need to study something.

That's exactly what i was doing (studying something on my standard issue ipad) when I felt a warm wave entering my Abercrombie & Fitch khakis (my trouser-ware of choice when at the tropics). I immediately understood what was happening - I was having a mystical experience and his most divine of incidents was caused by the following message from far away:

It was finally happening.

Ever since I took over at the helm of HRI, it has always been my ambition to re-create the genealogical tree and the map of all HRI affiliates, the details of which were forever lost in a fateful excel incident years ago (the memory, the horror, the horror). Now, after all these years a first sign that my search may be bearing fruits. While the full list of affiliates may remain impossible to re-create, I discovered the First Affiliate, The One, the Afiliate that Started it All: Noah's Ark International, NAI

I will forever be thankful to Blurred Vision International (BVI - HRIs most sinificant faith-based affiliate) and Mr. Warren (a BVI reasonably paid consultant) for pointing it all out to me. It was there all along but it is so obvious, isn't it? Mr. Noah, NAI's executive director and my professional ancestor has still many a good lesson to teach HRI affiliates. Among them, my favourite three:

1. Always stay close to the donor, whatever happens and do everything they tell you even if it does not make any sense (imagine Mr. Noah would have ignored the donor's advice about the flood and emergency preparedness);
2. A good disaster may be bad for some people, but if you play your cards well, it is always good for NAI and the ones close to it;
3. Take credit even for stuff that is hard to prove; moreover, busy yourself with stuff that is hard to prove and focus on "telling the story", in a compelling, donor-approved way;

However, it is not all rosy in this business and while we're on the subject, I would like to use the opportunity to provide some constructive feedback to BVI about the mentioned Tweet. As i said, i very much appreciate experiencing the heat wave in my khakis and I remain forever thankful for the support with inferring about The First Affiliate and all, but I must point out that the reference to mosquitoes in that tweet could have been dangerous. Here is why:

1. First of all HRI affiliates make a pretty good living off those mosquitoes, so that's quite obvious there isn't it, don't wanna ruin that;
2. Then there is the small matter of claiming credit for donor targets. of all the animals, mosquitoes are the hardest to claim credit for, as they are not technically on the ark, right. they are more like hovering above the ark, which may not be in full compliance with donor requirements for claimable indicators; of course everyone interprets these standards to our own benefits but you don't wnat to go out there and yell about it on twitter;

The toddy is running out and the mellow afternoon sleep of the hard worker is upon me but I cannot let Nathan go with my Ipad before I mention this - I have always maintained that t-shirts are a smart way to do development. In any form. Recent events involving BVI have not only confirmed that but they have shown, for the second time, that t-shirts can also create excitement on the web, where everything worth mentioning is happening.

As far as i'm concerned, the Pittsburgh Steelers are the champs. Ask anyone in "Africa". 

Dr. K's Diary - Roughing it in Nicaragua

Compliments of the season all, and I do hope everyone managed to combine their R&R with all that leave accumulated from overtime, for a decent 6 weeks holiday on top of the 10 days during which the HRI affiliate you are working for has closed this time of year, at least for people of a certain status.

Of course, for people above the certain status, such as yours truly, such seasonal strategies make little sense as I rather indulge in the sort of holidays that also pay some DSA and cover my minimum incidentals while I endure the indignities of travel.

For instance, I am presently in Managua and am dictating this dispatch from the Real Metrocentro, one of the very few choices for the discerning aid worker on duty travel to Nicaragua. Back in Comoros, Nathan the intern, reinvigorated after a well deserved holiday spent at the bosom of his family in a mythical country north of Mexico is taking notes off a state-of-the art videoconferencing facility, recently installed at high but well justified cost in every HRI office worldwide.

Like our donors, I love the fact that we have embraced technology innovation so warmly but allow me to go on record with the controversial statement that technology has its down sides as well, including the fact that I can’t dictate this dispatch in my Y-fronts while watching the telly, but have to put on a HRI t-shirt and pretend I actually think about what I am saying.

In case you wonder what I’m doing in Managua, well, on behalf of HRI and in close cooperation with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Justice, I have just signed a 15 year, multi-million award with the funding agency of a country south of Canada, for the joint CVTP program ("Comprehensive Vocational Training Program").

Part of this program, HRI has committed to "coordinate" the cultural orientation and vocational education of thousands of Nicaraguans deported assisted "back home" from the country South of Canada. Most of them fled Nicaragua with their families in the 70s and 80s, when they were toddlers, but hey, that'll teach them to engage in drunk driving while holding the wrong passport.

Once "back home", the ones that do not join the lucrative US/ Nicaragua narco-cooperation head straight for the east coast to work with local fishermen around in the search and rescue of discreetly packaged 45lbs parcels of cocaine, thrown over board by fellow returnees that have fused their love of two countries in the "loggie" business of south-to-north supply chain management, in those rare cases when the technically-advised counter-trafficking police unit reluctantly pretends they try to intercept drug trafficking, to get that photo opportunity that will keep donors happy.

HRIs job will be easy – using our vast experience and expertise, “coordinate” the development of highly participatory courses and training of trainers trainings (TTT) that will “create an enabling environment” for these wayward youth to become carpenters, plumbers, and perhaps even drivers or other "support staff" for HRIs office in La Barra. It’s a sound plan and it will succeed of course. Or else the local partners will need more absorptive capacity building, which we will be happy to provide, at a competitive cost.

Besides, there will be no shortage of summarily deported  returnees in need of humanitarian assistance around these parts anytime soon and as long as that is the case, money will keep flowing form the country south of Canada to sugarcoat the whole affair for the benefit of the Nicaraguan authorities. Finally, the whole thing will be presented as “aid” to the sort of critical taxpaying public that dedicate themselves equally to advocating for cycling lanes, encouraging consumption of organic lattes and stopping, like, all the bad stuff in, like, Africa.

And this is how, again, everyone wins – I just hope that HRIs and my personal contribution to this cause will be well reflected in the cables going out to the capital of the country south of Canada.

Continued Success in 2011!

What I Learned from Wikileaks - How to Write a "Cable"

Whatever you think of Mr. Assange and his leaky crew - and incidentally, thinking can get one into serious trouble in this business, as quite a few HRI former employees can attest - one thing that must have been noticed by anyone worth their salt is the tone of all those "cables" (in case you wonder "cable" is classified code for "email" - an ingenious first line of defense, a diversion: "cables are hardware, not here for hardware, damn they're good").

Anyway, as i was saying it's not WHAT the cables say (although like many of you i was stunned for example to hear that Pfizer, long-standing PPP parter of HRI, was playing dirty in Nigeria - you see like you, I always thought Big Business was dominated by honest, enlightened companies doing the right thing, pillars of decency such as Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs).

Nope, it's HOW those cables say what they say that we all notice, a style that comes as close as I have ever seen to shameless bragging, patronizing and not-exactly-refuting-any-possible-assumptions-that-would-give-the-author-more-credit-than-deserved. It is familiar to me because, like I, many successful HRI employees and representatives of important partners and donors master this style and I do not think I am wrong to assume that it is also favored by quite a few readers of this here humble newsletter as well.

Could that be a coincidence?

For the benefit of those who have no idea what i am talking about: imagine an embassy employee that is one day approached with information by a dissident in a country run by an evil, nasty government. He'll hear the story and then choose to send a "cable" - the style options at this employee's disposal can be boiled down to two main ones:

1. the "straight forward": "i have been approached by so and so who told me this or the other" and
2. the "I am fucking awesome, me": "because i am such a skilled diplomat, i have finally managed to obtain access to a very reliable source (i may have put my life in danger as well, but i am fine, thanks for asking) that has confirmed all the suspicions I had after comprehensive and very discreete investigations and complex inferences and deductions - that this or the other thing is happening. Besides i am such an amazing writer I bet you are reading this in awe, can I get a promotion out of this shithole please".

You get it, right?

You may be wondering what this has to do with the important work we are doing here at HRI. Well, don't wonder about it now - wonder about it next time you organize a life-saving workshop about building housing* in Haiti for example, and you notice that your own local Emma is not happy with the "branding" of this initiative. A good guess would be that she probably won't plan to go back to her desk and write "our partner HRI has just implemented a workshop, lives have been saved, good on them".

That's right your failure with the branding has just limited her style options, as good a reason as any other to get your shitty organization de-funded.

* don't you just love the gerund in this? Style options for euphemisms are, like, limitless.

Best Practices in Procurement for Hardship Postings

Don't know about you but I have chosen to spend this year's Day of the Turkey in Nairobi, sipping overpriced French wine at my temporary residence in Gigiri and passing time exchanging harmless anecdotes with other expats confirming local stereotypes about the people of Kenya, whom we know so well as we often change planes here and sometimes enjoy  lattes in the basement of Sarit center.

That, plus the combination of good weather and “affordable help”, which has kept Nairobi at the top of HRIs strategic locations for years.

In spite of what you may have speculated, my long silence of late has nothing to do with the fact that I was completely absorbed by cooking the books to demonstrate ever increased cost efficiency and accountability (that, frankly, is business as usual).

Nope, my silence has to do with the fact that HRIs V-sat connection in Moroni has failed and we had to procure a new one. Our back-up V-sat and the Thuraya data plan were both still functional, but, besides updating our Facebook profiles, we could not be seen making do with just that, as it would have compromised the urgency of the procurement process.

To procure the new V-sat, we first flew in Ian the consultant, a world-class IT expert based in Cape Town and a regional member of HRIs global network of experts maintaining our infrastructure. After three weeks in-depth assessment, his 63 pages report, reviewed and endorsed by HRIs IT department, put forward a surprising finding: the V-Sat is broken, we need a new one and while we are at it we should also “upgrade” our servers and firewall.

Given the urgency we immediately activated our global procurement department based in the New York admin center, a team of experts that have helped many a HRI office and affiliate to procure similar equipment in the past. Being 100% committed to procedure, they went ahead and collected quotes, a process that only took three weeks or so, at the end of which they could share three comprehensive quotes that were closest to the required specifications. 

Since neither I nor Nathan the Intern know anything about technology, we added a few extra days of pay to Ian in Cape-Town, who promptly suggested that the best company is actually not on the list, but a company he knows and trust in Cape-Town. He made some solid arguments so we went head with his recommendation and hired this company in Cape-Town, which may have been ever so slightly more expensive than the ones on the list, but Ian assured us they are small and nimble, which is always worth paying for on a market dominated by slow, monstrous, inefficient mega-companies.

Another argument in their favour was the fact that they actually import the equipment from a company based in Dubai (this one happened to be on the list of quotes), and ensure a “thorough quality check” before delivery – an important detail given my and Nathan’s technical hopelessness. Additional costs also include the transport and custom clearance for the equipment to Cape-Town, pre-assembly and transport to Moroni.

Of course there were additional “hidden” costs, but it’s all money well spent as these are the realities of procurement in Hardship Postings. And to be fair to them, the fact that they eventually shipped the V-sat with a wrongly sized dish was not their fault. As it could happen to anyone, Ian  forgot to compensate with dish size for difference in latitude when he “adapted” the assessment he has done for HRI in Sudan back in 2008. (“Adapted “ is an euphemism for “Ctrl+R” in MS Word (or “Find and Replace all ‘Sudan’ with ‘Comoros’).

At a reasonable additional cost, plus travel for “technicians”, the new dish arrived last week and,  as you see, we are back online. This sort of rapid reaction combined with cutting edge technology has kept us on the top for all these years.

And, in case you wonder how come, from the relative comforts of Gigiri, Nairobi, I am affected by these technical challenges in Moroni, well the answer is actually two answers:

1. HRI takes security very seriously – we only connect through a VPN that runs behind the firewall in Moroni; and
2. Don’t you just hate typing on your I-pad; 

How to land a HRI job and survive savage attacks on the industry

Despite spending more than half of my life in "geographically intriguing and historically fascinating" locations (euphemism for "shitholes"), I have retained a strong desire for recognition and acceptance in more conventional, home-based circles and for these reasons I maintain subscriptions to several high-brow publications that reach me regularly through complicated and expensive systems involving document delivery companies and forwarding rules at HRI's various "administrative centers". 
Sure, these days I could easily have these publications delivered on my standard issue I-pad, but that would deprive me for one of the most important uses of high brow magazines: conspicious reading in planes, generating thoughts of "cultured, thoughtful individual, in spite of rough life in hardship postings" in nearby passengers. With an I-pad I would just be another aging hipster on a plane.

It is all about the image in this business.

Think about it: sooner or later in most jobs, there comes a point where the results of your work are more or less visible, for everyone to see. Not in this business, though, and not at HRI, where success is defined in "burn rates", "leadership of past complex projects involving cross-sectoral cooperation" and "commitment to capacity building" often defined by the statement that someone's "local assistant" was "exposed to learning opportunities". Short of an unlikely scandal, feud or fall-out with the wrong guy there are few tell-tale signs to give away the good candidate from the bad one.

But then it doesn't really matter, as the new job will be all about "strong leadership of dynamic team" and "delivering against indicators", which is another way of saying print t-shirts and organize workshops with people paid to attend and not likely inclined to rock any boats.

Which leaves an important question open: as an employer, how does HRI decide who gets what job, when going through thousands and thousands of applications?

First of course, there is the degree. You gotta have the right degree, otherwise any HRI employer will understandably feel nervous about allowing a young and unexperienced "westerner" to lead a team of "locals" many of which have 10-15 years hard-core experience (known in HRI interview jargon as a "diverse team"). This degree must also be from a "reputable institution", which not only ensures a comfortable intellectual inbreeding so necessary to a business that has been implementing the same strategies for decades with no significant results (except vast collections of "lessons learned" and many, many 300-words success stories), but it also keeps present and future decision-making among the ones for whom such degree at reputable institutions is within reach for solid reasons mostly involving the accident of birth. This fact has naturally generated further growth in expensive degrees offered by some of the worlds leading institutions, in "poverty alleviation" and "aid and development" and if you will take one single advice from me, here it is: fucking get one, whatever it costs.

Then there is the experience. You can't run a "complex project" without "significant experience" can you? Which creates an excellent opportunity for well-educated young people with some resources to their name and some time to spare, to bob about for a year or two, in "Africa", gaining the necessary experience to land them the dream HRI job in the future.[**] During this time they learn all the good habits from their supervisors, ensuring what we like to call "continuity of ideas".

These two criteria alone will ensure a vigorous initial selection and the reduction of applications from thousands to merely tenth, most of them solid-looking candidates of familiar socio-economic backgrounds. But then what? Now comes the point where the instincts of the interviewer and their extensive network of contacts kick in to ensure the ultimate success of the recruitment:

"You were in sudan, were you? have you met my friend Pat from OCHA?" or
"You're into livelihoods, what do you think of Margaret from FAO HQ?

Their responses to these hard questions should pretty much clarify what they're made of and how effective they were in their previous jobs in meeting the right people - another undisputed sign of success.

What you do next is you ask them about how they will "lead and inspire" their team. The successful candidate will speak with humility about how important it is to "listen and learn" - a theoretical concept learned during their "povery allleviation" degree - after which they will hopefully drop an anecdote or two about how they learned a few words in Lingala during their previous posting, an objective, telling achievement.

Finally, it really helps if their references are from people i know personally, so i can call them up and be like "really between you and me how is this guy" - the ultimate test.

And so, reader, have we built the cutting-edge organization that we are today, on the shoulders and commitment of our excellent employees that have taken us all the way to the top of the industry.

Which brings me back to the high-brow  literature i mentioned. Just recently in a plane, i happened to sit next to the representative of an HRI competitor partner in the Emirates business class headed for Nairobi. She started talking about some article, which i haven't personally read but according to her was a savage and entirely unjustified attack on our whole industry. I couldn't but agree of course and we continued our conversation over vodka tonics at the Northfolk (which will surely lead to closer partnership among our organizations).

In this business you must develop a hard skin and live with the fact that that's what you get for sacrificing yourself for the wellbeing of the poor and the vulnerable. Rabid critiques from high-brow magazines (how would they cope with all the hardship?) is just one small extra adversity we have to put up with in this hard but spiritually rewarding job.

[**] the ultimate trump in "past experience" if of course experience with that or the other donor, a detail that may just help propel you all the way to the final step of the recruitment process).

Patricia and The Horse

Somewhere not far from Bredjing, "Africa", a fleet of white HRI-branded landcruiser and escort vehicles slowly negotiate the preciously little space between the dusty huts that collectively form “the village”, coming at a halt in a spot of shadow next to a trip of goats munching on green plastic bags.

The occasion is a strategic meeting between HRI’s Livelihoods Team and Abdulshafi “the Horse” El Noor, a reformed rebel leader and local dignitary whose “community” needs to be included in a “livelihood mapping exercise” completed by HRI, on behalf of “the country team”.

The HRI delegation is led by Patricia, nutritionist, yoga enthusiast and HRI Regional Livelihoods Program Manager who, as always when “in the field” is wearing her shalwar kameez kit acquired from an “ethnic” shop in Columbius, Ohio, offset with a cotton head-scarf bought en route in Nairobi Airport. She’s carrying her trusty Nalgene flask and a recently acquired SLR camera and has managed to re-composed herself after an unpleasant argument in the car over the intensity of the air-conditioning.

She doesn’t know it yet but this meeting will define her from now on. It will influence her career and be forever re-lived in her memory in increasingly romanticized terms. For years to come, in conversations there will be a point when she will say something along the lines of “when I was dealing with the warlords in Africa…” either impressing people or making them cringe, depending who you ask.

It wasn’t hard to get The Horse to agree to have this meeting. Khaled, HRIs fixer Liaison Officer, arranged it by means of “technical expenses”, further sweetend with promises of “capacity building” involving Khaled’s men.

What Patricia doesn’t know is that Khaled is one of the Horse’s men. As a matter of fact, all HRI employees in Bredjing are, but that’s another matter.

The meeting takes place in the “community center” – a rundown structure built by Blurred Vision (HRI affiliate) that is used daily to shelter goats from the mid-day sun. The horse has a spacious house of course, fully air-conditioned (with electivity produced by a generator “capacitated” by HRI as part of another project), but Khaled advised him it would be better to “keep it real” for Patricia. A few kids playing in the dust with a few donkeys nearby completed the perfect picture.

And it was the perfect meeting as well as that most unlikely intersection of two very different worlds. To Patricia “the Horse” was the stereotype of the "african warlord" and to The Horse Patricia was the stereotype of the "clueless westerner", lost in an unfamiliar reality, too young and inexperienced to matter. The discussion never went past niceties plus one awkward joke each, both lost in translation (although Patricia thought the horse was ever so slightly hitting on her).


At the end it was an “amazing experience” and a photo opportunity. But it was also a significant HRI success (the "mapping" will be completed, reports will be written, backs will be patted, further funds will be raised) and ultimately a confirmation that the good order of things around Bredjing, Africa will be preserved: The Horse and his people will continue to pretend they are "cooperating", and HRI will continue to pretend money doesn't change hands.

And, just in case you are wondering, that stock constantly disappearing from the warehouse is nothing but normal “shrinkage”, really.

Protecting Children - All the Way to Easy Streets

Saving lives here, there, everywhere is what HRI does, but we really shine when it comes to protecting children and women. I mean, who would disagree that children need more protection and care than everybody else, even more so in emergencies. Not the donors, that’s for sure, and therefore not us.

First thing you want to do when you are in the business of protecting children is find a nice location and make sure you get it properly re-enforced – we’re talking high, blastproof walls, boom-gates, shatterproof film, the works. Once you enter the main gate, you are in the parking lot, secured with extra ram-proof structures and tire-cutters and packed with ballistic-blanketed, well branded vehicles (“HRI – our children are our future”). Then you walk through the second gate, past the admin office, the radio room, support service, through third gate into the programs compound, where, in a windowless office-container surrounded by green patches of flowers, sits the “Manager of the Protection Unit”, a highly qualified HRI old-hander, distinguished among other desirable qualities by an astounding ability to speak and write volumes without giving away any hint of practicality, all while appearing earnest and very articulate. Much of his speech is a random combination of “Effective protection”, “societal structures”, “social support systems”, along with “increased capacity” and “safety and wellbeing”, put together by an advanced algorithm hardwired in the head of any successful child protection expert.

The distance between this section of the compound and the main gate is not accidental, as the protection program team do very important creative, intellectual work the quality of which depends on a quiet, professional environment, impossible to achieve anywhere near the main entrance, where hundreds of women and children are crowding up by the gate day in day out, out of some bizarre instinct that remains unshaken in spite of the regular yelling sessions with the security officers who try to "create a secure corridor" for this or the other vehicle driving important people in or out of the compound, to and from life-saving meetings.

This quiet environment does get occasionally perturbed by some drivers’ insufferable habit to reverse through the alternative gate in the back, aiming for the water-pipe, where they proceed to washing the vehicles. The combined sound of the hose, idling engines and the driver’s banter has been known to break the manager’s calm and his habit of coming at the container door yelling when that happens earned him the nickname “The Wife” among the drivers. Two things drive him particularly mad:

1. The fact that, during draught, they waste water that is otherwise intended for the precarious green sections between the containers (it’s the small things); and
2. The fact that they allow unauthorized children into the compound, compromising important security protocols (some drivers “delegate” the washing to children);

The next thing to do once you have the compound set up is find a hipster photographer and fly them in regularly to take the sort of pictures that increase the quality of any report, website or calendar. Good pictures are matters of the soul, and the idea here is to offer the photographer an opportunity for “an amazing experience”, which means that trips will be taken to “the field”, as represented mostly by the “informal” squatting camps that spring in the vicinity of any HRI child protection compound, where women and children rest and cook when they are not being yelled at for queuing in front of the main gate.

 

Finally, and crucially, find some local partners. This serves at least three important purposes:

1. You ensure you can channel efforts into “building local capacity”, the cornerstone of any successful child protection enterprise;
2. You increase your chances for continuous future funding, by using the absorptive capacity strategy (in combination with those pictures); and
3. You have someone to blame in the unlikely event that somebody will ever question what children were protected and how.

The rest is pretty straight forward – engage in “Technical Advice” and workshops on anything from school curricula to PTSD and before you know it you have a solid child protection portfolio that will keep this part of HRI on easy streets in years to come.

Dennis The Malaria Expert

On the fourth floor of a building somewhere on the north upper teens in Washington DC, a man in a striped suit is lost in his thoughts, confortable in his orange ergonomic chair. His desk is cluttered with highlighted email print-outs, brochures, newsletters and info-sheets from all over the world and a sizeable number of rubber balls, plasticine and overpriced toys, distributed at one of the recent management courses he attended, along with advice on using them to boost creativity.

His office walls are covered with malaria campaign posters and his shelves are stacked with campaign mugs, key-chains, bumper stickers, lanyards and other time-proven anti-malaria weapons, perfected by this business over decades of successful life-saving work.

His name is Dennis and he is the man in charge of HRIs “Administrative Center” in Washington, DC, an important outpost in the HRI universe and a center of excellence for “global technical assistance and advocacy”. Dennis landed this HRI job after a successful career working as an “advisor” for USAID, a time in which he developed significant knowledge of internal dynamics in USAID, as well as a global informal network of contacts in the US government, all crucially relevant to anyone who wants to make it above a certain level in this business.

It’s called “expertise” and it is at the heart of HRIs meritocratic DNA.

Dennis just got off the phone “with Geneva”, as represented this time by a fellow member and co-chair of the Global Malaria Task Force (GMTF), a forum of experts from the US and several Northern European countries, very active force in the development of cutting edge malaria strategies and of course, very influential in donor circles. The GMTF has been pioneered by HRI and a few like-minded affiliates and donors and it has grown into a force to be reckoned with, addressing crucial issues that range from “lack of leadership” and “absorptive capacity”, to global procurement of treated nets, distribution of ACTs and of course identification and assessment of implementation partners “in the field”.

The call “with Geneva” was disappointing, as two main fractions in the GMTF seem to fail finding an agreement on a crucial point in the current work plan: should the upcoming task force meeting be held in Maputo or Mombasa? There are of course solid arguments for both ("The Maputo Consensus" sounds just as good as "the Mombasa Consensus") and a compromise needs to be found. With the recent re-opening of the Polana, Dennis feels that the arguments are slightly stronger for Maputo, but he is loath to be perceived as pushing on this sensitive issue too hard, as that will diminish his ability to weigh in on other, admittedly more trivial, matters during the meeting itself. Years of experience have taught him that sometimes the sum of many small victories can balance one big loss and he is therefore ready to compromise if it is suggested that they meet in Mombasa.

Indeed, fighting malaria at this level is all about psychology. And of course, the ability to navigate the politics of all the partners involved and leverage strong informal networks to mitigate worthy goals: bashing HRI competitors  pointing out HRI’s comparative advantages and ensuring “strategic partnerships” with donors.

Dennis is able to communicate in French as well (after a stint with the USAID mission in Gabon back in the late 90s, where he also met his wife at a peace corps volunteer function), but his language of choice is obviously “Metaphor”, the lingo for any expert with a full plate and a tough job:

Thanks Dennis, for keeping our backs out there and doing your part in the global fight against Malaria.

Workshop Season

I don’t know what season you’ve got going in your part of the world at the moment, but if you are in our business sector you are probably well aware that we are in the middle of Workshop Season – a cyclical occurrence completely unaffected by the complexity of hemispheres, climate zones or climate change.

Once Summer gently turns to “Fall” in the Northern Hemisphere (a mythical place where seasons are made), armies of Emmas and their vast entourage of consultants, experts, assessors and interns descend on every “field” location there is, animated by traditional post-labour-day energy, conditioned in inhabitants of that mythical land by hundreds of years of well organized, protestant ethics.

As a cutting-edge humanitarian organization fully committed to saving lives everywhere the donor penny is available, HRI is of course highly tuned to this natural rhythm and is innovating as usual in forever finding new ways to organize workshops and meetings, the meat and potatoes of any respectable life-saving enterprise.

There is no escaping the natural rhythm of things, and life-saving workshops are keeping us all busy this time of year, from the tastefully decorated Tejarat Hotel in Heart, for example, where conference facilities have been booked ahead all the way to end November, to the slightly splashier junkets and summits where organic-free-trade-mohair-tailor-made suits rub hand-made stitches with organic-free-trade-virgin-wool-tailor-made suits and where the grinning musician of yesteryear shares pats on backs with yesteryear’s grinning politician over designer finger-food and superior beverages, united by the strong bond of blah-derhood.

Besides the human need to overcompensate for the well deserved inactivity during “home leave” (“I was burnt out and tried to disconnect, me, didn’t read my emails, etc”) with a burst of demonstrative energy and desire to show action, the Workshop Season is also factor of another cyclical reality – the Reporting Period.

Somewhere, in a mythical country South of Canada, financial years are “tuned in” with this natural rhythm of holiday/ work which means that current Reporting Periods are ending – a matter that absolutely must be marked by “a series of workshops”, also because remaining money must be spent out of this year’s budget (returning money to donors is poor form) – while new ones are beginning – a matter that mast be marked by a series of workshops, to “show activity” but also to create the illusion of “coordination”, a detail that will prove handy in so many future life-saving reports, not to mention applications for funding.

This shift in Reporting Periods is also particularly good to the reasonably paid Report-Writing Consultant (RWC), a species endemic in any airport lounges near you, this time of year.

Also time of year, in hundreds of “field locations” hundreds of project managers realize that hundreds of project periods are coming close to an end and thousands of “line items” remain unspent. Hundreds of workshops are immediately organized to come up with “accelerated plans” and set up “ambitious targets” for those partners that, as always, suffer from “absorptive capacity”.

Meanwhile, as a clear sign of development there for all to see, sumptuous conference locations are been built everywhere from Hargeisa to Port Moresby, catering to the lucrative workshop and weddings markets, ("plastic chair condoms" and bottled water stock anyone?) leaving just one question open: How come they don't have a MDG for that?

Before I finish and return to my ongoing life-saving workshop, I really cannot let this one go. The other day, HRI has organized a life-saving workshop about “communication” – a matter at the heart of any HRI project (premise: “we do all this good work and no-one gives us credit, we must become better at communication”). As always, this ground-breaking workshop has provided a unique opportunities for people across agencies to pocket allowances while winging, and one of the most important “findings” of the workshop was:

“Newspapers don’t care about our successes, they only want to publish negative, sensationalist stories, to sell papers”

While I was taking this cruel fact in, I allowed my thoughts to wander only for a moment, along with my fingers on the standard-issue Ipad, and came across this fascinating post, written by former HRI employee and skepticism enthusiast, Prof. William Easterly. In it, the good professor (who to his credit does not receive sitting allowance and favours winging for free) reports on a finding he had (professors don’t need workshops to obtain findings, they just pull them out of their superior thinking processes), which more or less was:

“Newspapers don’t care about skeptical questioning that implies more work, they only want to publish inspirational stories with a happy ending, to sell papers”.

And then I realized – what we all need is a global workshop with members of the academia and the press (and maybe business, why not, and "decision-makers" as well) to sort out this apparent “overlap”, once and for all.

Absorptive Capacity

Virtues of Micro-Management: Dr K’s Reverse Pyramid of Aid Project Management

Don’t know about you, but I love micro-management, me. It is one of those things, halfway between art and science that, if applied correctly, can yield amazing results in line with the objectives of our work and become the source of endless personal and professional satisfaction to the humble aid worker.

Done properly, it requires the correct bureaucrat to implementer ratio (B:I), best achieved by a reverse pyramid approach to “coordination”, in which the upper part (the reversed base) all the way down to the bottom-tip are packed to the rafters with countless coordination and advisory mechanisms, staffed by reasonably paid HRI consultants, advisors, government representatives and, of course, Emma, all united by a blatant lack of understanding of matters of implementation and an affinity for knee-jerk overblown reactions to any “feedback from the field”, in particularly if the feedback has to do with life-and-death matters such as the “inappropriate use of communication channels” and the use of the wrong word in the acknowledgement section of reports.

We call this "Dr. K's Reverse Pyramid of Aid Project Management (tm)/ RPAPM":

Besides the fact that it allows for a fairly consistent and predictable “burn” on the budget and an equitable allocation of resources among “partners”, the reverse pyramid approach creates an ideal environment for implementing aid projects for reasons that include but are not limited to:

1. It allows plenty opportunity for unsolicited advice in the planning phase. Additionally, given the impossible-to-define dynamic between various coordination mechanisms, it is relatively easy to pretend one was not aware of a discussion happened in one committee, for example, and demand changes well beyond the time when implementing such changes would be possible or reasoonable, with the added benefit of plenty opportunity for subsequent passive-aggression;
2. It allows the same people to “wear different hats” as members of different committees and, as a consequence, disagree with their different-hat-wearing-persona ("this matter must be brought in front of us as members of the other committee; Oh, the other committee only meets two months from now, on Tuesday morning").
3. It allows for repeated invitations for “implementers” to attend meetings that never achieve a quorum and then get forever rescheduled; if they once don't show up, the quorum is met and crucial implementation decisions are taken;
4. It allows for free interpretation of “conclusions” reached by various committees that no-one knew were meeting, in order to play highly satisfying power games with competitors other partners and stakeholders;
5. It allows all of us an opportunity to share our wisdom and advice in areas we nothing about, providing, as it were, an opportunity for “fresh perspectives” and “thinking outside the box”; We like to call that innovation;
6. It allows creative decisions of the lowest-common-denominator variety - the only golden standard in our sector;
7. It allows for an ideal and equitable flow of credit and blame: blame is always flowing down the reverse pyramid, towards the tip (in particular for decisions taken by committees in which implementers were not present), and credit for success is always flowing up towards the base:

 (The correct flow of blame and credit in Aid)

UPDATE: seeing that it is in fashion to update and review iconic pyramids i thought i should use the opportunity that I had to correct some typos made by Nathan the intern in the illustrations above to also make some content changes to dr.K's RPAPM. I have noticed that in my academic fervor yesterday I seem to  have forgotten about the 6 or so "Poor and Vulnerable" people, who of course have a well-deserved place on the reverse pyramid (tm):

       

In which We Learn About the Healing Effects of the Arts

As we go about our cynicysm-inducing business in this brutal post-conflict world, there are moments when even the most hardened of us must ask:

But what about the arts? What of the culture?

Funny you are mentioning it. As it happens, HRI actually is very much "into" arts and culture, as long as it serves our interest. For example, many of our innovative "awareness raising" campaigns all over the world involve some sort of "edutainment" based on the time-honored belief that the muses must be slaves to the political agenda, useful tools in getting the message across to people who - between you and me - do not have the sophistication to understand art anyway. Besides, these sort of activities keep youth in the communities away from trouble, provide an opportunity for Peace Corps volunteers with self-perceived artistic inclination to have a go at "directing" and all for a good cause: a 300 words "innovative" textbox in a report plus pictures, apt to put a tear on Emma's keyboard, when she receives the pdf.

What keeps me going though is the satisfaction one gets from imposing one's own artistic mediocrity on others.

We also encourage children off the dump or off the street to paint and, like, be creative? And, as long as their painting talks about peace or lionizes HRI, they often get exposed at the local expat-cafe-that-sells-latte-and-mojito where they even get auctioned. Sometimes, in places such as Mozambique or Cambodia, where the superficially-perceived recent history to number of hipsters ratio is pretty good we thrive in creating sculptures out of weapons under the strict guidance of a HRI endorsed artist/ guru who then sometimes gets "profiles" in glossy magazines where he can speak with humility about "these people's ability to get over their miserable past". Every now and then, we take a liking to one local artist and we do send her to this or the other workshop in New York or Bruxelles, where people get to patronize her and feel good about it at the same time.

Sure one could whine endlessly about this whole thing being a bit dogmatic, what with only encouraging artistic expression of the sort that is endorsed by donors' agenda, but hey, these people are so poor they wouldn't have time to develop their own art anyway. Besides, isn't a painting of a sunset with coconut-palms and fishermen returning in harbor something exotic? Wouldn't you want it in on your wall, next to that lizard made out of recycled rice-bags looking at the Congolese tapestry, an arrangement that is after all a more acceptable modern alternative to the "been there done that" T-shirt?

And how about those beautiful paintings honouring a complex and dignified culture from centuries ago: temples, gods, ancestors? In my tastefully decorated office, i actually have some paintings that combine more of these themes in one: an idyllic, simple peasant landscape (buffaloes and rice-farmers against the rising sun) juxtaposed over a sky where benevolent divinities help erasing the memories of cruelty that country has experienced recently. And how about that charming primitively carved crocodile from Timor, that gets to be the anthropological prop for any small talk in my office: "In Tetum", i say knowingly, "Grandfather and crocodile are homonyms, ain't that cute?".

Presently, one of HRI's for-profit affiliates has perfected a toolkit for the "development of a cultural policy", put together on account of extensive "best practices" acquired in many countries where we work. Often we even place a "Technical Advisor" at the Ministry of Culture (Or "Culture & Youth" or "Culture & Tourism"), who is usually someone with vague artistic ambitions that have never materialized and who has therefore pursued a "Masters in Art History" at a good school and, as a Technical Advisor can become a convenient agent in pursuing both her idealized perception of "exotic" art as well as the more eccentric tastes of the minister, or principal secretary (or their daughter, always a gifted local artist).

Subject like everyone else to Parkinson's Law, the technical advisor will further ensure that a committee will be swiftly formed (sometimes inter-ministerial), as part of HRI's "system strenthening" agenda, that gets to decide whether or not any artistic enterprise is culturally appropriate with direct consequences in that artist's baility to get supported in any way. This committee will be referred to as a "clearing house", a concept much to Emma's liking and consequently warmly embraced by HRI. We sometimnes even expand their portfolio, requiring them to approve any message developed by "the government" (where "the government" is an euphemism for any NGO that works "on behalf" of the government, as we all do). Given that the technical advisor is a HRI person, we happen to have an edge over any other competitor partner, giving us what can be safely described as "domination" of the message agenda - we make good use of that by churning out messages that Emma loves but no-one else understands.

Then, in the sort of restaurants that create a superficial projection of whatever it is perceived as "national symbol" by some British entrepreneur, aptly named and where only expats ever set foot, the technical advisor from the ministry of culture gets to bond with Emma and a junior HRI Program Officer (it's not customary in our world to allow a senior officer to deal with a cultural project; actually, it must be a young female) over "traditional" dishes (not very spicy of course) and the obligatory shared anecdote over the locals' lack of cultural sensitivity, justifiable of course by the brutal recent past.

But how about that French heritage, eh? Well, thank god for that!

Emma from the Funding Agency of a Country South of Canada

Emma has been with the donor agency of a country south of Canada for a bit over one year now, and although she really hates her life here in Moroni, she is determined to see her contract through, as she sees this dump as a career maker. She can put up with hardship also because she has gained her experience and field credentials with a stint in the Peace Corps, a formative period in her life that she makes daily reference too, often when providing unsolicited advice to "implementing partners" about areas she doesn’t understand.

Her name is actually Emily, but she prefers to be called Emma as she thinks that sounds more mature. She has been known to give very negative “technical reviews” to organizations whose “chief of party” referred to her as Emily once. Her surname is vaguely French and that contributes to her being even more of a social bore as she always makes reference to her “European heritage”, at dinner parties implying that cooking soufflés is somehow imbedded in her DNA and no soufflés cooked by anybody else is ever good enough. She doesn’t speak any French, although “she used to be fluent when she was in the Peace Corps” – Emma has the distinction of completely having forgotten a language in two years “because of lack of practice”, being busy with her job and all, in spite of the three months spent in Paris “for language training” before taking up her job with the donor agency, in what is after all a francophone country. The two years between her peace corps stint and this job were spent in “grad school”, the destination of choice for any unemployable, skill-les overachiever who never had a proper job although they are well in their thirties.

On account of the combination of her masters’ degree from a very good school and her overwhelming practical experience in the peace corps, she fancies herself as both a strong technical expert and someone who knows the ins and outs of “community-based” implementation. She has also attended a training on communication once, which makes her a communications expert, having a specific expertise in the benign impact of logos on larger communication strategies. Given that in her world Moroni is not exactly a desirable destination she gets the big fish in the small pond benefit, which effectively puts more responsibilities in her hand that she can handle.

She never left the city (except on a PR visit when she escorted the ambassador to see a HRI "Launch") and spends all her time with the Embassy staff at the compound. She drives around in a white Rav4 (the car of choice for any discerning expat) and has no friends in town. Like many of us she has impeded her ability to operate machinery several times at the usual Thursday night parties-that-only-expats-attend, which made her even more bitter and secluded. She does not attend the parties anymore and when asked why she blames it on “too much work” and on the fact that, given her position, she needs to be always careful to separate her private life from her work.

In grad school she once sat through a case-study on HRI, which makes her a knowledgeable friend. That and the fact that during her peace corps days she was used as a community contact by a HRI affiliate partial to selling American college kids as community credentials to donors. She also really appreciates having a genuine friend in Nathan the intern whom she managed to bond with over similar peace corps experiences – she particularly likes calling him up and treating him like the minion he is. She genuinely appreciates the “comprehensive” approach HRI has to our work, and the consistency with which we give credit to her agency for their generous support. She understands that our NICRA rates and overheads can be a bit too high and that, in a difficult environment, one has to rely on outside consultants all too often, and she definitely understands "capacity challenges" we are encountering working in such a difficult environment and our reluctance to measure impact, neatly formulated as “not wasting money on research”, which is somebody else’s business. She keeps saying she is “an implementer at heart” and she is very pleased to hear me say that she would do a great job working for HRI.

Emma thinks in 300 words snippets. She can never mention Uganda without making reference to a “that successful campaign” and she could never mention Sierra Leone without mentioning the “amputee soccer club”. She has a good feel for fashionable ("trending?") topics and reacts positively when stimulated with empty talk of “innovation” and “using modern technology, such as cell phones”. This is why, in her head she equates HRI with innovation which goes to show that she really is the right person on the right job.

Her massive professional insecurity is actually a significant advantage as she takes easy offence from competitors other partners who, foolishly, are a bit more outspoken in their technical and programmatic disagreements with her, sometimes even implying that their job is to achieve some sort of “impact” that no-one ever asked from them. In their ignorance, these amateurs don’t realize that this business is about pleasing donors (in this case Emma), and that a neatly printed calendar with the right logos, plus an old fashioned t-shirts and caps project along with sustained sessions of lifesaving workshops and trainings go a long way to achieving that. You throw a “sms campaign” into the mix and Emma loves you like the fat kid loves cake. The "impact" thingy should be the concern of underfunded “subs”, and that’s the way things work. Protesting against that may be “innovative” but will lead to a decrease of funding and control, all smoothly transferred to HRI where they belong.

So here’s to Emma, you rock!

What Malaria?

Earlier today, as i was walking out of my favourite establishment in Moroni, toothpick in mouth and stomach full of lobster, I beheld a man with a laptop in the lobby, staring at an MS Outlook screen with no unread messages and regularly hitting F9 ("retrieve mail") with the face of someone used to work on life/death projects. I gathered by the sureness of his demeanor that this is a man who knows about lonely lunches in the best places a hardship location has to offer and sure enough, the collar of his polo shirt was showing the familiar purple lanyard of the initiated ("Just Saving Lives") so i approached him: "You work for an HRI affiliate don't you?" "I do indeed" he answered, "I work in malaria", "Have we met before?", "No we haven't but i heard much about you".

Turns out he was hired by one of our affiliates not yet established here to write an assessment about malaria programs in the Comoros - the affiliate is considering opening operations in Moroni, funded by a global mechanism they have set-up with the Aid agency of a large country south of Canada, known in the business for its flexible and very competent operatives and for its very streamlined processes. Of course every NGO (and quite a a few for-profit HRI affiliates) in Comoros work in malaria, most of them successfully "burning" through significant funds, and it is just sound logic to squeeze another player in: there's innovation in numbers my friends, and we do like to keep each other on our tasseled-shoed toes.

My ego tells me I should have been informed about this, but my reason argues that in the heat of things coordination sometimes may suffer and that's fair enough, also because i haven't really read my emails in six weeks (I have asked Nathan the intern to scan them every other day or so and call me if there is anything urgent, where "urgent" is another word for "donors wanting to give us money").

In true HRI fashion, this particular TLA (Three Letter Affiliate) is been funded for work that has been done by a competitor another organization, established here over the last 10 or so years, that i have recently enjoyed watching falling out of grace with the very competent representative of the respective donor, over the crucial matter of the size of the logos printed on their mosquito nets. As a consequence, the TLA was predictably  asked in to "help with coordination", inviting also another HRI affiliate from the private sector to help out with developing the coordination systems needed to ensure a "consistent use of Logos that will guarantee sufficient visibility" for the funding agency, and hence another striking victory in the fight against malaria.
  
Never the one to argue with sound, straight-forward strategies, I took a liking in this consultant and decided to invite him over for dinner, to alleviate his loneliness and provide an opportunity for further internal coordination. I am also considering offering him one of my 12 in-suite guestrooms for the rest of his time here - no-one understands better than me how important it can be when traveling to enjoy the unaltered comfort of a home.

We can then bond over this shared intimacy and spice our malaria small talk with anecdotes about how only in the field people are so generous as to offer you a place at their table and a fully serviced room. Then, next time i'm in Geneva he can pretend he would love to have me stay, would his only guestroom not be full with his collection of african art ("i really need to find some time to nest"). That will suit me just fine actually, as to be honest, when in Geneva i  am rather partial to staying at the dignified and conveniently located Mandarin Oriental du Rhone, and would never trade that for a mattress in some consultant's livingroom complete with creep access to the shared micro-sized family bathroom, always a very dingy affair, wall-to-wall carpeted and never with a shower curtain.

As you can probably imagine, malaria is big business in the Comoros and the well-afflicted people of these islands have more options than most to enjoy being the subjects of a diverse package of life-saving interventions. Not only do they have access to the whole traditional HRI-centered, cutting edge package (that would work better than it does, would the Comorians be just a bit more cooperative) but they have been also privileged enough to stir the interest of a Chinese research/ development outfit that has "sole sourced" WHOs support for an innovative project: given the remoteness of the island of Moheli, the whole population was put on compulsory arthemisinin prophylaxis and prevented from interaction with non-islanders for, like, three years. No-one knows exactly what the research showed (aside from the "success" declared by the implementers) but it was a too-rare example of old school public health of the isolate-put-on-drugs-and-see-what-happens variety.

Seeing an opportunity for innovation, the donor agency of the country south of Canada is trying to pull out a simple strategy: if it works get all credit, if it doesn't, blame the Chinese.

Motivated by such noble objectives, we are entering familiar HRI territory and in close cooperation with the TLA we are really looking forward to coordinating the efforts on the island using a mix of time-proven strategies for success while also diminishing our competitors's share of the donor market creating closer cooperation opportunities with partners in the sector.

Will keep you updated.

Inside Innovation - Bring it On!

As expected, I landed in Moroni this morning to a dignified welcome organized by my loyal team who one by one expressed their gratitude for my safe return in verse (being an ex French colony, Comorians have learned to appreciate poetry along with quality bread), as part of a spontaneous ceremony organized  at the VIP lounge, complete with A0 photographs of yours truly and banners reading “HRI – 100% commitment to saving lives, one workshop at a time”.

The way from the airport to my humble residence was lined out with children experiencing genuine joy, neatly organized along the roads in their little uniforms, waving in the general direction of my convoy what looked like green branches taken off the few trees that still survive on the island. Although my landcruiser was going rather fast (HRI flag to HF aerial) and the windows were tightly shut - better to prevent the savage heat creeping inside my airconditioned space, my driver politely assures me they were singing, in one voice, a song about HRI and our donors, apparently learned spontaneously in school.

It is always reassuring to see that one’s work makes a difference in the life of a child (not sure about you, but this stuff keeps me going) and I do take pride in being a man of the people. I waved a dignified salute through the steaming windows, before returning to my data-enabled thuraya to update my facebook account (“status: back in moroni - hot”).

I found my residence in good shape and I asked my “help” to prepare me a double espresso, but without burning it like last time – I take pride in doing my share of capacity building even outside the office – and sipping it slowly I sat back in my study, thinking about how I really would like to pay the “help” a bit higher than 50$/ month, but as a member of the expat community I could not possibly do that as that would unbalance the market with unimaginable consequences. That’s me right there – a man of the people and a long-term thinker of the big picture.

Speaking about thinking – I have been thinking about “innovation” a lot lately, as I noticed the word is all the rage these days. The challenge in our sector is how to “integrate innovation” in our language without changing much about the way things work. First step is to create the inter-agency “innovation committee” and invite members of partner organizations to participate, ticking both “inclusiveness” and “innovation” off the list of words no donor can resist. Making this a senior level committee will insure the right combination of in-disposition to change and generous sitting allowances – ideal when concerned with “burn rates” and the importance of attendance lists to show to donors as a sign of success.

Passing innovation is a world dominated by career professionals with many years in the business and certain ways of doing things is a pretty tall order but then donor’s don’t really want to see much rocking of the boat happening either – that would force them to change their ways, which always makes them uncomfortable – they want to see the word used a lot, and they want to hear the occasional 300-words story about it, that can be put in a neat textbox in a report.  

And this is why they love HRI – we give them what they want, using bullet-proof, time-proven methods. 

As we speak, Nathan the intern is putting the finishing touches on HRIs latest publication – a newsletter dedicated to innovation in our sector called “Inside HRI Innovation” - printed on glossy, high density paper and (money well spent) also distributed in PDF format (as another nod to innovation, we are going digital). The best part about this publication is that it is not a formal donor commitment but rather an innovative, pro-active activity, bearing proof of our dedication to embracing modern means of communication that no-one ever reads, aimed at impressing donors. In another cutting-edge step, we are using SMS to inform our readers about the publication of this newsletter, which is another way of saying that Nathan will text the donors off his pre-paid phone.

It does take a lot of creativity to sell innovation while resisting change, but we are known in the business for getting the job done and do like a challenge. Bring it on!