Yesterday we hosted a meeting with the big boys. When I say big boys I am talking about program managers of projects that have coverage over a whole district, or budgets over 1 million USD. There are a lot of big boys where we live, because we are in the provincial center, and their offices are here as well. What do the big boys do? You name it: health, schools, roads, water, ag, military or police training, refugee assistance, drought response, and the list goes on.
So the big boys arrive at our office, and in the small talk before we start they are commenting on how cute our mud office is (they work from cement building, big deal). We get into reporting on 2010 activities, and I stress the point that our best results have come from consistent monitoring of our projects to provide follow-up support to BSF recipients. I had mentioned this because our big goal for 2011 is to stimulate the private market for BSFs, and we need to boost the social value for them in order to do that. The social value is currently lousy in areas where other NGOs have done free distributions without any follow-up monitoring or support to BSF recipients. I didn’t fully realize that mentioning this would tread on the toes of some of the big boys. One of them then began a very indirect, round-shaped argument, and after 15 minutes he finally released his bottom line- he was telling us to back off, and belittling the value of the work we had done. That was not a big deal to me, I’m not here to impress the big boys at all. Unfortunately, for my local co-worker Zed, whom I am helping to train to become the project leader, this was very upsetting.
Though my co-worker Zed stayed calm, he did proceed to go into a retaliation argument, customary for this culture. He brought up examples of mistakes the big boy’s org had committed; he told about broken wells that he had personally fixed for villages. I gulped as I guessed what was coming next. For the next 20 minutes my co-worker Zed and one of the big boys abandoned English and argued loud and hard in their language. The rest of the big boys did not seem inclined to intervene, though some looked at me to suggest that I do so, as the meeting chairman. I finally heard a conclusive statement from the arguing big boy, and realized that ultimately he was right on the main matter of contention, and my co-worker needed to back off. I said a quick prayer that my voice and words would be strong enough to break up the fight, because these guys were both at least 15 years my senior, and both twice my weight (I told you, big boys). I finally did what I’ve seen other mediators in this culture do, and started talking above the noise, and continued until the argument faded and I had the floor. Then I concluded the matter: our NGO should not have fixed the broken wells, because the big boy’s NGO had laid out a community-sustainable maintenance plan.
See the story was that the big boy’s org had drilled the wells, installed high quality pumps, and trained a local mechanic to maintain and repair the well pumps. They had also met with the local council of village elders to set terms on community payment for the local mechanic to do his job. The community had agreed to pay the local mechanic with wheat grain, so that he would do his job and keep the well pumps working well. What the village decided to do rather than pay the local mechanic was to approach us, another NGO, and have us fix the wells for free. We did not know about the local mechanic, but we did not ask, and we went ahead and fixed it. Not only that, our repairs had been inadequate, especially on a deep well (over 120 feet). This was clearly a case in which we needed better collaboration between our two organizations. We needed to know what wells had been dug by this org, and what their maintenance terms with the villages were.
Today I spent some time talking with Zed about the importance of admitting our mistakes, and seeking to restore relationships. It was an interesting moment because Zed is nearly twice my age, very competent in many of the tasks of a project manager, but he still needs a lot of support. Him and I are still working out how we share leadership and work together, but I was really pleased to sense that he allowed my counsel on this matter. This is reason enough in my mind for me to be here, because if we can continue to train and set apart leaders in this country, leaders in serving the poorest of their own people, leaders of good character, of open hearts, then we will see good change happen here in years to come.
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