Christopher's story

I cannot believe I have been here for a week already. Although, paradoxically, I feel like I have been here forever and my life in Sydney is a distant memory from another world. On a rare free moment to mull, I think about the days of commuting on a train, work in an office cubicle, watching Q&A at home, eating dinner with Patrick. It’s just an observation that how one perceives time is an unusual & personal concept and how quickly as humans we familiarise ourselves to new environments.

I spend a lot of my day talking and interviewing people about their jobs and subsequently, their private lives as well. I really am a nosy and naturally inquisitive person. To my great delight, the staff at the Ministry are generously open and willing to disclose and share insightful information about their lives. Calabar really does not receive a lot of international tourists, therefore, they are quite intrigued by this Vietnamese-Australian and I suspect, they too, enjoy the interaction. At least, I hope so!

It is unequivocally the most rewarding thing I have done on this trip – learning from the employees. However, it is the saddest thing that breaks my heart listening to their stories and struggles. There have been quite a few (unprofessional) embarrassing instances of teariness and I’ve had to pretend to look away. There’s this trick where if you lick the roof of your mouth, it will stop you from crying. I cannot attest to its effectiveness though. On reflection, I really defy anyone to listen to these stories and not be moved by the hardship. I don't think it's myself that needs to harden up but I think it's the world that needs to listen and soften up... :-)

I thought I would share an example of one such story of a public servant in Nigeria. When I first met Christopher, I was immediately drawn to him because he is one of those people that when they smile, their whole face lights up and their eyes crinkle in warmth and compassion. He was very excited to meet us and he said to me “Haven’t I already met you? Didn’t you conduct the workshop for us in March?” Turns out he had confused me with another Asian IBMer who was here earlier in the year. He had the good nature to smile when I jokingly replied with “All Asians look the same to you, don’t they?” (I know, racial jokes are an acquired taste).

Christopher works as statistician collating all agricultural data from the various departments. He always has a friendly smile and genuinely looks happy to see us every time we cross paths even though he has a demanding workload and is extremely busy. Christopher has three young school-aged children and he and his wife also work selling books to support the family. It is not unusual for public servants to have a 2^nd or 3^rd job on the side as their salaries are not sufficient. For example, Charles our driver also lectures at a uni on economics twice a week after work.

It takes Christopher about an hour to get into work each day as public transportation is unreliable. Once in the office, we only have on average power about 2 hours day. The lack of power is very disempowering to staff – the state complains they are lazy and do not work, but how does one work without power?

After 20+ years with the Ministry, Christopher sadly tells me, in his customary soft-spoken manner, he has nothing to show for it – “no car, no house, no savings”. The cost of living has risen sharply but wages have not increased with the trend. Half his salary goes into rent each month, a large portion goes to schooling and the rest is for necessities such as food. Christopher is not self-pitying, he speaks honestly and passionately about life and explains the choices he has made like marrying later in life, using all his money to support his childrens’ education, not buying a generator as they are costly and dangerous. He is also aware that he is fortunate relative to a lot of the State living in poverty. I am humbled and moved by his intelligent articulate vision for the country and his aspirations for his children. It saddens me deeply that such a lovely, compassionate, hardworking, kind-hearted, appreciative man struggles to make ends meet. (I also told Christopher that I consider him a feminist when he shared his views on equality with me!)

A lot of the staff tell similar stories. They know that life should be better - that conditions and living standards can be improved - it’s just a question of when. I am appalled and angered by the evident growing disparity between the affluent and the poor.

On a slight tangent, the use of generators in Nigeria is very alarming and not a sustainable solution. There have been many reports of people dying from generator-related deaths usually from carbon monoxide poisoning or fires. Christopher told me an profoundly moving story of a family of 3 in Calabar who died. There are also the obvious environmental effects from the fumes. There is a power crisis in this country that needs to be addressed.

What on earth is happening in Oz??

I’m stunned at the ease at which our popular Prime Minister has been ousted by his own party. In what democracy do we not allow an elected PM to serve a full term? I am also profoundly disturbed that Gillard made a deal with the devil. Make no mistake, I have nothing against Julia Gillard, in fact, she is intelligent and competent. And of course, I am a strong advocate for the historic day in which Australians can and will elect a female PM. However, this is unquestionably neither the means nor manner in which to accomplish that aspiration.

Poor Kevin Rudd. I always genuinely felt he had a good head and a good heart. Whatever his perceived faults or failure, this was completely unnecessary and a travesty.Can someone back home give KRudd a hug for me?

I’m going to remain optimistic and hope Gillard can lead Labor to victory. It remains to be seen how different her policies will be from Rudd? I think she’s watering down the resources tax (but can’t be sure as I’m getting all my news from CNN and Facebook. Sidenote - Stan Grant is the correspondent for CNN. For some reason, I’m really struggling to get on to SMH, ABC or any other news sites! Arggh!). Interesting times ahead.

Thank God it’s Abbott leading the Libs and not Turnbull. Mind you, the fact that we are one step closer to the reality of an Abbott dystopia fills me with trepidation.

In other local Nigerian news, I am having an incredible time working and living here. I am falling in love with Calabar with each passing day. I am trying hard not to contemplate that this will come to an end and enjoying every amazing moment I have here.

I am inspired by the wonderful staff of the Ministry who provide encouragement and information generously and willingly. They make me laugh every day, I think I make them laugh albeit with my naive questions. Despite the challenges, they are engaged and knowledgeable even though they lack the very basic of tools and technology to carry out their duties. It will be so difficult to leave them at the end of this, we have built heart-warming relationships discussing our different lives. They have made us feel so welcomed and their natural curiosity about Australia and us, as people, is very endearing. Everyone is horrified when I tell them we eat kangaroo meat!

The IT infrastructure is not as dire as originally assumed. The ICT team showed us the switches, patch panels and ports to illustrate that the Government is investing in networking all the MDAs (Ministries, Departments and Agencies). However, yesterday we had a massive storm which took out our switch. Obgi is asking for it to be fixed as soon as possible in order for us to test the speed of internet connectivity.

I hope the Governor will invite me back one day to roll out a project where we equipped all employees with laptops and conduct training and career development. One can have lofty dreams… :-)

Tonight we are going to a Lebanese restaurant of all places! My after work highlight this week definitely was watching the Nigeria vs Korea game in an open bar under a lightning-lit night eating fresh grilled pepper fish. The locals didn’t even mind that I cheered for Korea. They were fairly disgusted with the amatuerish missed goal opportunities. I asked them to cheer for Korea now! Yay!

Photos capturing everyday life

Due to bandwidth, I am struggling to upload photos to this blog. However, I am uploading photos here on facebook in case you have stumbled upon this blog.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=442589&id=542150360&l=2ad4512255

Our team is also uploading photos here -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/50835033@N06/

And they are officially blogging here -> https://www-146.ibm.com/corporateservicecorps/node/5622

Business happens with or without electricity

I’m not sure if anyone noticed in that last post that my mental state was deteriorating as I was writing... On Sunday night, I was feeling the adverse affects of reaction to local food and dehydration. If anyone is travelling to Africa, I highly recommend bringing those electrolyte solutions – they really do you a world of good. I wonder what it was since I usually have an iron stomach.

Anyway, I digress, this post is dedicated to working in Calabar. For the next 4 weeks, the Assistant Director of the Planning, Research and Stats Unit of the Agriculture Ministry will also double-hat as our driver transporting us from our hotel to our office. Three cheers for Mr Charles Ofulue who seems to know everyone around town!

Instead of writing a tedious description of my first few days, I will make some observations to provide everyone a general idea of working state of affairs here:

• The Ministry has a very strong vertical hierarchy
• Staff have a strong respect for seniority and titles, for example, we must address everyone by their full titles such as Chief, Doctor, Madam
• Meetings never happen on time eg. on our first day, our 11am meeting with the Commissioner, Permanent Secretary and various department heads to discuss scope did not happen until 3pm that day :)
• Our “office” is the ministerial meeting room. It is actually very lovely and large but we have no internet and no flushing toilet. I am a gun at using a bucket now!
• IT infrastructure is virtually non-existent. For the estimated 800 staff, there are only about 12 PCs which are used as word processors ie. handwritten notes are typed into Word then printed. There are 2 printers but 1 is not working. The IT department has a desktop that is not plugged in nor used. Computers that do work have viruses on them!
• Electricity drops out often and we have a generator next to us to keep our fan going as the humidity is unbearable at times
• Nobody seems to go out for lunch… the humidity is suppressing my appetite!
• The most used phrase for greeting is “You welcome” which is used for a standard hello or welcome here. No book that I read on Nigeria mentioned that!
• Office hours are around 9-4pm. As there are no lights and electricity, nobody stays back at the office

I have been amazed by how quickly we have all adapted and acclimatised to different circumstances. To demonstrate this - as we are going through data collection, we realise that there are no facilities for printing or photocopying. The solution? Take photographs of the documents. Working here has definitely shown me that there are practical creative solutions to any problem!

I’m very excited about our work as I can see great opportunity to improve processes. We will spend the next few days requirements gathering, interviewing staff and understanding the AS-IS state. Then the fun bit will begin where we start solutioning and offering a roadmap. It probably makes no sense to anyone reading this what we’re trying to achieve but I will try…..

Essentially, the Ministry is currently making agricultural decisions based on reports produced by the PRS unit. Departments feed all their data in various formats to the PRS who keep all the data in hard copy eg. farm yield. In an ideal world, the roadmap will lead to a consistent centralised database where data collected are in standard templates across all the departments whether they be fisheries, vet services, livestock, pineapple, cocoa, cashew etc. The current situation is that data is all in hardcopy and in various formats. I won’t even mention that data integrity is a real issue, for example, a poultry farm of 300 chickens had recorded single digit eggs produced in one day!

The work is very interesting and the staff are very intrigued by the IBM “consultants”. :) We have lots of curious faces popping in and out all day. The Director of PRS wants me to get married in Nigeria and stay here! haha

The other teams’ Ministries have their own set of problems as well and it is interesting at the end of the work day to compare stories and ideas. It has only been a few days but we have really bonded as a team with good-natured bantering and support. It’s such a unique experience to share with such lovely people.

I have to run now to get ready for dinner and to watch the Nigeria vs Korea game with the locals! Poor Heeseok, he has been getting a lot of trash-talk.

My next post will be about the political situation in Nigeria as I understand it. If anyone has anything they want me to focus on, please let me know. More than happy to obliged.

Much love to all back home xx

Calabar - "Come & Live and Be At Rest"

I am really going to struggle with this blog. There is so much to write about and I don’t have vocabulary to articulate it all. However, I will make a valiant effort to describe our first weekend in Calabar. :p

Ganesh (US), Albert (Phillipines), Heesoek (Sth Korea), KJ (India), Tetsuya and the 3 Australians (Ian, Fiona and myself) all arrived in Dubai for our connecting flight to Lagos. It was a fun moment as we acquainted ourselves face-to-face after all those late night conferences and sametimes.

On arrival in Lagos, we were met with chaos, queues and Mr Wales. There was no real system to any of the queues or baggage collection. We nervously waited for all our luggage at the carousel and I am happy to report, everything went very smoothly. We even had a round of applause for Fiona’s red bag of shoes.

Mr Charles drove us and all our luggage to the domestic terminal where he had to pay hefty fees for all the excess baggage. This was my first experience of “African time.” Our flight to Calabar was delayed for an hour and there was no announcement. Sit and wait, live in the moment.

My first impressions of Calabar are from the air and what a sight of captivating beauty – lush green rainforests with the Cross River weaving through it. It was initially established as a port for the slave trade during the 17th century and following that, the major port for Palm oil trading. The weather is hot, humid with a chance of light drizzle every day.

We were met at the airport by the very lovely Sara and Jane who took us to what will be home for the next month – Axari Hotel. The rest of the team had arrived earlier in the day from Abuja, Bernd (Germany), Boris (Hungary), Ashley (US) and Lekshmy (US). Again, a lot of curiosity and fun getting to know everyone over dinner. We were pretty tired after 30+ hours of travelling but the body is a most resilient engine running on adrenaline and excitement.

I should state that our hotel is fairly kick-arse. Our team half-jokingly talked about not blogging about our conditions in order to let imaginations run wild and drum up some sympathy. However, we are staying in an affluent part of town and are spoilt. We have a large bed, cable tv (keeping current with CNN), aircon (although mine has decided to stop working today), wireless internet (albeit very slow when 12 people try to connect simultaneously), hot water and so far, fingers crossed, electricity. The electricity has only gone out twice but the generator kicks in about 2 secs later. We also have a pool and gym though none of the 4 treadmills are working.

Day 1 in Calabar started with Health and Security Briefings by Dr Joseph Ana and the Head of Special Services. Anyone concerned for my safety has nothing to fear – we are being very well looked after here. In fact, we must inform our local host, Ann, of all our movements so necessarily security is in place. Also, Cross River State is the safest state in Nigeria which will play a large part in the development of tourism. The only issue with tourism is that its been slow as the infrastructure cannot support it - the roads are rough and poor, electricity cuts out often and there is very little public transportation. Its hard for domestic tourists to visit when they can go to Ghana for the same price and have electricity.

In terms of health care, our main issue will be malaria here. I will remember to take my weekly pills as mosquitoes absolutely love me. Even with my crazy 80% DEET repellent, I have attracted quite a few bites. As a side note about healthcare in the state and Nigeria as a whole – the main issue is healthcare is unaffordable for the majority of Nigerians. This is currently being addressed by the state through initiatives such as Project Hope - a free health care system for pregnant women and children under five. In fact, IBM was awarded a commercial contract this year to continue with work from Nigeria Team 2’s recommendation to Ministry of Social Welfare and Community Development. Georgia Watson from IBM Melbourne will be working on this next month (or whenever visa is sorted). Congratulations Georgia!

We also went through per diem/cell phone distribution and had a discussion around doing business in Nigeria. Topics of discussion included how to organise successful meetings, the importance of respect and titles, avoid using the left hand for pointing, shaking etc. I will be tested when we start work on Monday and I hope I remember everything!

We took a walk around our surroundings after lunch at the hotel running into some pretty damn cute local children who greet us with shy but cheerful waves. It was also where we suffered our first (and I hope only) casualty! Tetsuya was crossing the main road and took a tumble injuring himself fairly badly on the elbow and knee. He was cleaned up, an xray was taken on Sunday and no dislocation, thank god.

For dinner that night our generous host, Ann Oden, prepared a Nigerian feast under a marquee at her house for the IBM team to meet their clients. It was a fun-filled night to talk personal, business, political matters and of course, football (soccer). There was also some dancing. It was really interesting and insightful to hear the strategic vision of the different Commissioners of the Ministries.

The food was fantastic and I will dedicate a whole post to the local cuisine later down the track but as a teaser, I am absolutely loving the spicy pepper fish and moi moi.

On Sunday, day 2, we started the day with registration at the Calabar Women and Children Hospital (yes, they also help men in case you were wondering) and then going to the supermarket to stock up on supplies. Supplies for me roughly translates to chocolate and biscuits  . My colleagues picked up a variety of things including sandals, coffee, electrolyte drinks. We had lunch at Crunchies (a fast food joint) – I had a chicken pie and fries.

After lunch, we took a tour of Calabar. There is no real downtown or city centre. There are just landmarks scattered throughout the city.

Hopping into our mini-bus, a local guide called Charles took us to Drill Ranch. Drills are one of Africa’s most endangered primates. The drills were recovered as orphans after their nursing mothers were illegally shot for bushmeat. It was fascinating to hear from the very inspiring and passionate ,Liza Gadsby, one of the two US biologists who set up the ranch 22 years ago, on the challenges of running the place. The ranch runs on about meagre $US150k a year with a staff of 40 and 10% of the world’s drill population! Funding is a real issue. It was a delight to see the drills, chimpanzees, crocodiles and dogs playing together. The ranch has morphed into a vet clinic as well. For more information and how to donate to this worthy cause, please visit www.pandrillus.org.

Next stop was a very short visit to the Calabar Museum situated on the hill overlooking the waterfront, in the Old Government House, the former residence of the colonial governor. The building was designed and built in Glasgow and shipped over in pieces. The museum concentrates on the history of Calabar, the region and slavery. We took photos of a British telephone box, canons and a very old motorcycle!

Our final stop, the Slave History Museum. The museum tells the sobering story of the estimated 15 millions slaves sold from Africa to the New World. It’s really a heartbreaking and important story.

I have much more to write but tonight is an early one as I have been only getting 5 hours of sleep a night. It’s actually really comfy in the room but my internal body clock springs me into action at 6am every morning despite being up to 1am the previous night! Also, the heat and humidity makes me quite lethargic by the end of day. The other thing I am keeping an eye on is hydration. We had about 12 Litres of water delivered to our rooms so I need to make sure I keep on drinking.

I hope I’ve been able to describe a little of what I’m experiencing here to share with all.

Tomorrow, we will all be picked up by our drivers in the morning to take us to our offices for the next 4 weeks! I’m nervous, excited and will write in due course about my experiences with doing business in Calabar!

The countdown begins to my road less travelled....

In less than one week's time, I will have arrived in Calabar, Nigeria after 38 hours of travelling from Sydney, Australia. Landed in a city, country and continent that I have never set foot upon before. Words cannot describe the spine-tingling fog of excitement and anticipation that I am gliding through. This grin cannot be wiped off my face. (Yes, I think perfect strangers walking past me in the last week have been slightly alarmed at my spontaneous deranged smile).

How is it that I have come to start this countdown and what on earth is it that I am doing in Nigeria?

I am actually going to Nigeria for work as part of IBM's Corporate Services Corp. The program is best described by the company itself:

"The Corporate Service Corps (CSC) exposes high performance IBM employees to the 21st century context for doing business --- emerging markets, global teaming, diverse cultures, working outside the traditional office, and increased societal expectations for more responsible and sustainable business practices. CSC participants perform community-driven economic development projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, working at the intersection of business, technology and society."

There are 12 of us in this team - ranging from countries such as Hungary, Germany, USA, Canada, India, South Korea, the Phillipines. We have been divided into smaller teams of two to work on individual assignments. Our main client is the Cross River State Governor and the projects we will be working on are for the Foresty Commission, the University of Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the ICT Department and the Ministry of Agriculture. We have one month to make an impact and produce our final deliverables to our clients. In essence, it is a high level consulting assignment but I won't make many assumptions until I am there listening and learning.

In future posts, I will elaborate bit more about my team and my specific project. We have spent the last 3 months doing the prep work around our statements of work, cultural intelligence and consulting through collaboration tools such as Lotus Connections. It has been incredibly fun, though whilst I am a strong advocate for social media, I think nothing beats meeting someone face-to-face for the first time and putting those photos and voices to a face.

I think I can say, without hyperbole, this truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, both professionally and personally. I will make relationships with colleagues from around the world and learn how to make some kind of sustainable impact with limited resources in challenging environments. Most of all, I am really thrilled to have the chance to learn about Nigerian culture, customs, food and getting to know the people. Not in a weird anthropologist way, but in a yay I get to meet new people and try new cuisine way. :) I also hope to be challenged as a human being - it's not the lack of electricity, the cold showers, the lack of motivation that trouble me - it's the fact that 75% of the state lives in poverty and opportunities are limited. What can we do, what can I do as an individual, to help alleviate poverty.

For IBM, the benefits are also abundant - 1. good philanthropist PR image 2. developing staff which boosts morale and retention and 3. which in my personal humble opinion is the most significant long term advantage - build networks, connections and an understanding of clients in these developing markets which will serve well when commercial tenders take place later down the track.

So before I board that flight on Thursday night, I still have mountains of work ahead of me. I haven't even started packing!! And I haven't even mentioned my 2 week holiday in Namibia post-Calabar.... Or the fact that I'm going to Africa during the World Cup!!!! :-)