Those of you who know me, know that I'm a planner...and those of you who knows Nigeria, would know that planners and Nigeria probably won't mix well together. Well, last week was the true test of my mental capacity. I experienced the kind of feeling you'd imagine a sane person would experience when she's mistakenly put into a mental institute...or how Alice felt when she was trapped in the Wonderland...nothing made sense, and things just spiral down so quickly that you began to question your own worldview up till that point! For the first time in my professional career, I felt completely lacking control for the simplest task in the world, and felt the need to pray and leave the success of my project/business in the hands of God (or whatever higher power there is). Somehow, He pulled through for me. I love 9ja as a country, but this time, I couldn't wait to go back to Kenya, where things may be pole pole, but at least made a bit more sense.
The trip began with a trampede at the immigration control at Lagos. Multiple planes landed and hordes or people were quickly cramming into a very small space while people are passing through the passport control people VERY slowly. The space filled up very quickly, and soon people were pushing each other down the stairs. At this point, it's probably a good idea to turn off the escalator, but of course it took a bloody accident for that to happen. I only heard a loud thump and a silent gasp by the group, and saw a pool of blood afterwards...didn't really want to imagine or inquire what happened to the woman who fell down the flights of escalator stairs.
I was sent to monitor our very first sets of capacity building training in Nigeria...a set of training that d.light has been discussing with our Nigerian partner since May. (i.e: plenty of time to plan). The agreement was that we will send money ahead of time to fund the training, and our local partner will take care of the logistics (i.e. print training materials, invite distributors, book tickets/hotel reservations...etc.). Our first training was in Enugu, Eastern part of Nigeria...we had a morning flight scheduled to leave Lagos at 7:10a, arriving in Enugu 9a, and training will begin at 10a with 60 people, some of whom traveled 5 hours to get there. I showed up at the airport, only to realize that all the training materials have just been completed the night before, and are coming with us as excess luggage (vs. sent ahead of time). All the paperwork + the normal Lagos chaos caused delay and a sense of panic inside me...I had enough mental power at that time and did a pretty good job suppressing my worries, and thankfully, we got on the plane at 7:10a exactly. Cutting it close, but manageable... Whew...Enugu training went on, minor glitches here and there, all was well!
Next stop, Kano. The night before we were supposed to go to Kano, I found out that not only do we not have our plane ticket to Kano purchased, don't know if there are tickets available to Kano, but our local partner also did not have enough cash on him to pay for our tickets if such ticket becomes available to us! His master plan was...we fly half way to Abuja (closer to Kano, but NOT Kano), try to get into town (hours away from the airport) to find his bank and take money, come back to the airport to see if there is plane ticket available..and doing all these within a few hours because it was Friday, and bank close early. Mind you, on top of the normal weekend traffic, we are in peak travel season as everyone is going home for Christmas. In addition, Kano airport has a very basic runway (think Casablanca), and often has cancellations or delays if the weather is bad (which is often). My jaws dropped as I discovered this news, and had nothing but questions in my head on how could this possibly be happening! What will we do if we cannot get to Kano? I'm spending $700/day to pay for this trainer to come train, and now he can't even train!? What are the people going to do traveling all the distance there only to find out there's no trainer? What the @#$%^&!!!? Trying painstakingly to keep my cool, I asked, so what's our back up plan...the response I got was, "we'll see when we get there"...WE WILL SEE WHEN WE GET THERE? This is what happens when we always plan 1 hour before the disaster is about to happen! How about for once we plan ahead so we won't NEED to see when we get there and know exactly what will be there? Why don't we have money? What happened to the money I sent? (at this point, I was politely reminded that I "ask too many questions"...and should just wait, and believe that things will look up...)
Thing did look up, by God's grace (yes, even I believe in God at this point, there's no other explanation), we got the last 4 tickets for the last flight from Abuja to Kano at 9 pm (who knows at what premium price), but this airline is notorious for canceling flights, and I've heard horror stories about that particular flight into Kano. At this point, I have no idea what I can possibly do within my limited ability as a hopeless mortal, so I am just praying that it will fly, I didn't care how long it will delay, as long as it get us there so we can train the next morning. Thankfully, J.C. pulled through for us one more time, and we got to Kano...late, but we got there.
Next morning, people began showing up for the training, but we had no clear idea who all these people were, how many are coming, and how many are late. People were tardy for 2 hours on average, and we made the best out of what we got. At this point, even my amazingly even-tempered Kenyan colleague was getting upset (while I'm already reached the edge of hysteria and appalled at how horribly managed everything was). The lack of accountability, initiative, and just this general need to be "the boss", is getting in the way of progress and results. One hilarious example I could give is that as part of the training, we give out a certificate of participation at the end (side note: certificates are huge hits in Africa). We wrote in the names of the participants to this pre-printed template, and laminates it before giving out. We sent this fully grown man to do the lamination. He came back with the certificates laminated, but there's a huge part of the laminate just hanging out and the thing is looking awful...I asked, can the shop not trim these edges so it looks more finished? He answered "no"...I asked, can we trim it ourselves? He asked "how?"...I asked, is there a scissor? He said, "no"... I asked, in this entire hotel with all the conference halls, there is not one single scissor we can borrow for 5 minutes? He said "no"... I said, please ask again...5 minutes later, the man has not returned, I walked downstairs, ran into the guy wandering around the hotel, then grabbed him to go to the business center, I asked the business center guy, is there something I can use to trim this laminated certificates? The shopkeeper said..."like a scissor?"...I said, with a huge relief that I've finally talked with a sane person, "YES, like a scissor..." while having an image in my head of myself banging my head against the wall...
On a daily basis, I feel like one of those parents who asks her son to clean his room, no response, ask again, no response, and by the 10th time, the son says, "fine, I've done it", only to find out that he just shoves all the dirty laundry into the closet and considered the task done. I suppose there's always the challenge of how you might show someone a better way when (a) his exposure doesn't allow him the bandwidth to open up to alternative options, and (b) his ego is in the way of seeking help for better solutions? How do you show someone what he's missing when he's been perfectly happy with how things are now? Same type of struggle happens in the world of new product commercialization. How do you explain the benefit of the Internet to someone who lives in the age of telegraph? There's a Chinese metaphor of the sentiment of an iron-smith lamenting the iron does not turn into steel after so much hardwork...I haven't lost hope yet, but I really hope that all these work and time spent will not result in nothing...
The trip began with a trampede at the immigration control at Lagos. Multiple planes landed and hordes or people were quickly cramming into a very small space while people are passing through the passport control people VERY slowly. The space filled up very quickly, and soon people were pushing each other down the stairs. At this point, it's probably a good idea to turn off the escalator, but of course it took a bloody accident for that to happen. I only heard a loud thump and a silent gasp by the group, and saw a pool of blood afterwards...didn't really want to imagine or inquire what happened to the woman who fell down the flights of escalator stairs.
I was sent to monitor our very first sets of capacity building training in Nigeria...a set of training that d.light has been discussing with our Nigerian partner since May. (i.e: plenty of time to plan). The agreement was that we will send money ahead of time to fund the training, and our local partner will take care of the logistics (i.e. print training materials, invite distributors, book tickets/hotel reservations...etc.). Our first training was in Enugu, Eastern part of Nigeria...we had a morning flight scheduled to leave Lagos at 7:10a, arriving in Enugu 9a, and training will begin at 10a with 60 people, some of whom traveled 5 hours to get there. I showed up at the airport, only to realize that all the training materials have just been completed the night before, and are coming with us as excess luggage (vs. sent ahead of time). All the paperwork + the normal Lagos chaos caused delay and a sense of panic inside me...I had enough mental power at that time and did a pretty good job suppressing my worries, and thankfully, we got on the plane at 7:10a exactly. Cutting it close, but manageable... Whew...Enugu training went on, minor glitches here and there, all was well!
Next stop, Kano. The night before we were supposed to go to Kano, I found out that not only do we not have our plane ticket to Kano purchased, don't know if there are tickets available to Kano, but our local partner also did not have enough cash on him to pay for our tickets if such ticket becomes available to us! His master plan was...we fly half way to Abuja (closer to Kano, but NOT Kano), try to get into town (hours away from the airport) to find his bank and take money, come back to the airport to see if there is plane ticket available..and doing all these within a few hours because it was Friday, and bank close early. Mind you, on top of the normal weekend traffic, we are in peak travel season as everyone is going home for Christmas. In addition, Kano airport has a very basic runway (think Casablanca), and often has cancellations or delays if the weather is bad (which is often). My jaws dropped as I discovered this news, and had nothing but questions in my head on how could this possibly be happening! What will we do if we cannot get to Kano? I'm spending $700/day to pay for this trainer to come train, and now he can't even train!? What are the people going to do traveling all the distance there only to find out there's no trainer? What the @#$%^&!!!? Trying painstakingly to keep my cool, I asked, so what's our back up plan...the response I got was, "we'll see when we get there"...WE WILL SEE WHEN WE GET THERE? This is what happens when we always plan 1 hour before the disaster is about to happen! How about for once we plan ahead so we won't NEED to see when we get there and know exactly what will be there? Why don't we have money? What happened to the money I sent? (at this point, I was politely reminded that I "ask too many questions"...and should just wait, and believe that things will look up...)
Thing did look up, by God's grace (yes, even I believe in God at this point, there's no other explanation), we got the last 4 tickets for the last flight from Abuja to Kano at 9 pm (who knows at what premium price), but this airline is notorious for canceling flights, and I've heard horror stories about that particular flight into Kano. At this point, I have no idea what I can possibly do within my limited ability as a hopeless mortal, so I am just praying that it will fly, I didn't care how long it will delay, as long as it get us there so we can train the next morning. Thankfully, J.C. pulled through for us one more time, and we got to Kano...late, but we got there.
Next morning, people began showing up for the training, but we had no clear idea who all these people were, how many are coming, and how many are late. People were tardy for 2 hours on average, and we made the best out of what we got. At this point, even my amazingly even-tempered Kenyan colleague was getting upset (while I'm already reached the edge of hysteria and appalled at how horribly managed everything was). The lack of accountability, initiative, and just this general need to be "the boss", is getting in the way of progress and results. One hilarious example I could give is that as part of the training, we give out a certificate of participation at the end (side note: certificates are huge hits in Africa). We wrote in the names of the participants to this pre-printed template, and laminates it before giving out. We sent this fully grown man to do the lamination. He came back with the certificates laminated, but there's a huge part of the laminate just hanging out and the thing is looking awful...I asked, can the shop not trim these edges so it looks more finished? He answered "no"...I asked, can we trim it ourselves? He asked "how?"...I asked, is there a scissor? He said, "no"... I asked, in this entire hotel with all the conference halls, there is not one single scissor we can borrow for 5 minutes? He said "no"... I said, please ask again...5 minutes later, the man has not returned, I walked downstairs, ran into the guy wandering around the hotel, then grabbed him to go to the business center, I asked the business center guy, is there something I can use to trim this laminated certificates? The shopkeeper said..."like a scissor?"...I said, with a huge relief that I've finally talked with a sane person, "YES, like a scissor..." while having an image in my head of myself banging my head against the wall...
On a daily basis, I feel like one of those parents who asks her son to clean his room, no response, ask again, no response, and by the 10th time, the son says, "fine, I've done it", only to find out that he just shoves all the dirty laundry into the closet and considered the task done. I suppose there's always the challenge of how you might show someone a better way when (a) his exposure doesn't allow him the bandwidth to open up to alternative options, and (b) his ego is in the way of seeking help for better solutions? How do you show someone what he's missing when he's been perfectly happy with how things are now? Same type of struggle happens in the world of new product commercialization. How do you explain the benefit of the Internet to someone who lives in the age of telegraph? There's a Chinese metaphor of the sentiment of an iron-smith lamenting the iron does not turn into steel after so much hardwork...I haven't lost hope yet, but I really hope that all these work and time spent will not result in nothing...
laughing hysterically...wow what an experience. Hang in there. Emeka
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