Screwing up: some fine examples

My boss and other colleagues came back last Thursday from their regional seminar in Brazzaville. All frustrated with what passes for ‘policy making’ in Headquarters, but looks suspiciously like arrogance, ignoring advice from those in the field and imposing priorities and programs on partner countries we’re supposed to conduct a dialogue with and whose national priorities we are supposed to take into account (the answer to the latter is probably: “Oh, we do, but first we tell them what their priorities should be!”).

My boss returned quite depressed, as he and our aid program had taken a beating, yet again. I felt sorry for him, as he is undeniably very committed to his job. Nevertheless he is not completely free from blame: full of far-reaching new and often fairly wild ideas, he keeps coming up with them at the last moment, driving people in HQ mad (not to mention me and my colleagues here). He has a long field experience, he has a good intellect, he’s usually fun to work with (although I’ve come to see his limitations, which is only normal when you work together intensively), but his sense of internal diplomacy and ‘salesmanship’ is not great, and it’s harming us. A consensus seems to be arising among the heads of section that, whatever his human qualities, we’re not always happy with his go-it-alone approach, which often leaves us, his counselors, out of the decision making process.

On the other hand, he is what he is, and can be a quite inspiring boss at times – even if it’s wearing off a bit, given that his credibility in Brussels seems to be close to nil now. This would be a bad time to turn on each other, though. But when I see the amount of time we’ve spent on preparing ideas for this seminar, reprogramming etc, just to see it ignored or wiped off the table by HQ on very dubious arguments, or no arguments whatsoever, I feel strengthened in my newfound conviction to cut back on overtime.

My friend Hans B. was right some years ago when he told me, when we discussed the importance of family life, that “it won’t be your colleagues standing around your grave”. Simple, but how true.

This being said, I also have a firm intention to supervise projects managed in my section more closely than before. There are a lot of them, so it’s not easy, and to be honest I am not one of those natural born project managers either, to my regret. Especially mastering all the fine details (especially contracting and financial) takes quite an effort. To prove the point: my section screwed up last month when a contract with a local non-governmental organization (NGO) to accompany micro projects in the field hadn’t been signed on time, which has caused them to incur costs we may not be able to reimburse to them (we’ll try and see how we can work around that, bending the rules here and there). I am still trying to find out where things went wrong (I suspect a secretary put the contract in the in tray of a project manager who was absent for five weeks), but it doesn’t really matter: it’s my section, hence I’ll assume responsibility. The painful thing is that the project itself is managed impeccably well by that friend I spoke about some time ago, George D., the perfect project manager, who was a bit cool about it, and rightly so. A lesson learnt the hard way.

We had him, his wife and three other couples over for a dinner party last Friday. It’s nice to do dinner parties as we have staff to help us with it. On the other hand, I actually think we are no longer just employers: a part of our employing people is becoming plain charity. We have two nannies/housemaids (Amour and Odile), where one would suffice; however, Odile worked for a Dutch family who left last year, and were (rightly) worried about her future, so she came to work with us. Then there is old Alphonse, our taciturn but reliable cook and the ‘papa’ of the rest of our personnel. He won’t be able to work forever (he has a bad leg and a limp ever since his traffic accident a couple of years ago; we’re paying a physiotherapist for him to relieve the pain), so we offered him to bring one of his ten or so children as a ‘trainee’ so we could recommend him or her to other expatriates. He brought Ines, his 20-year old daughter (like Amour with a child she had at the age of fourteen, possibly thirteen).

With all these people around, I am not so sure we run a more efficient household: three ladies out there to help us and yet A. and I were still running about, opening winebottles, telling them what to serve to whom, etc. But it doesn’t really matter; we’re all getting along fine, the children are quite attached to them (and in fact so are A. and I), and we’re supporting them and their families.

I haven’t mentioned Désiré yet, who started out as our gardener, claiming he could also do pool maintenance. We paid for him to get a driver’s license so he could help us out with shopping etcetera. At the moment he’s failing us on two of his three supposed duties. It turns out that his competence on pool maintenance is patchy at best, often leaving us with a bowl of grey soup in our garden. And whereas he was doing alright as a driver at first, he soon became overconfident and started speeding when we were not with him. A friend told me so recently, and I put Désiré right rather harshly. Last week then he finally had the long feared accident, although nobody got hurt, thank God: he crashed into a parked car while driving in reverse. I was deeply annoyed, not least because of the damage (almost 500 euros), but also since it was such a stupid incident.(*) What annoyed me even more was that he subjected himself and us to harassment from the local police, who took his driver’s license, and made him pay a fine, so that A. and I felt obliged to intervene on his behalf. They charged A. 30 euros (a small fortune here) for doing their job, i.e. writing a report on the accident; they also tried, to no avail though, to make us pay about 25 euros for their déplacement to the crime scene, about 400 meters down the road…. I had, as often in these situations, trouble to remain calm, although I managed. Right now we’re trying to get our African insurance company (picture that!) to cough up the money for the repairs to the other car. In the meantime Désiré is only allowed to touch his spade, broom and lawn mower…

Yesterday morning T. fell suddenly ill with high fever and a bad headache: malaria. She is taking Malarone as a profylactic, which proves that the stuff does not make you immune for the illness. It does make a big difference though: at 'only' 39,9° her fever was not as high as the first time when she had malaria, and she recovered remarkably quickly after we started treating her with Coartem. Already this morning she was happy as a lark again, lively, no fever, great appetite. Ouf!

My sister turned thirty-nine last week (we differ only 10 months in age, which has always been a source of hilarity as to my parents productivity at the time). My friend Peter P. turned forty. Five more weeks to go for me. I’ll be happy to get it over and done with and to have again a decade ahead of me before the next milestone, 50, comes up. Completely irrational of course, but I don’t think I am the only one who’s not particularly keen on celebrating his fortieth anniversary.

(*) To be honest again though, two weeks earlier A. had done exactly the same in front of our house, crashing our car in reverse into a huge 4Wdrive I had brought from work (‘I hadn’t seen it’), leaving us with a bill of 350 euros for repairs...