That's a Wrap

This fantastic time at WAR has come to an end. I had my "training" session with the Coordinator and Finance Officer today to go over the financial policy. There were some additional changes I had to make, but the policy is ready for the Board to approve.

Towards the end of the training session, I was getting a little antsy as Cliff was suppose to be arriving in Maun. As soon as the session is over, I bolted down the street to the airport to pick him up. It was so good to see him after being apart for 3 weeks!

We had a potluk lunch at WAR with all the staff. I made spicy Chinese noodles which they enjoyed. They gave me a very nice hand woven purse, a bracelet and earings with Botswana flag colors, and some keychains with my name stamped on them. It was a very nice gesture. I gave everyone their gifts. I just sat and enjoyed the joyful chatters in Setswana, trying to savour the last couple of hours I have with these wonderful people.

Cliff and I will be hanging out tomorrow, and going to the Delta on Sunday. I will make a few more postings later next week with the pictures from the Delta.

Stay tuned!

The potluk lunch:

Annhara, the lawyer:

Pajti, the head councellor's daughter:

Babsy, the safe house staff:

Alice, the finance officer:

Neo, one of the counsellors:

Almost there

This posting is more of a logistical update.

It is my second last day at WAR today.  The plan is to have a meeting with the Coordinator and the Finance Officer to go over the finance policy.  The meeting will serve as the training session for management to understand the policy.  The policy I drafted has some things that WAR already does, and some new items that will help them segregate some financial duties and allocate responsibilities to the right task owner.

I will also be spending some time with the Finance Officer today about the errors I found in the donor report so far.  This is a big job that may take another volunteer to finish reconciling.

Tomorrow (Friday), I will come to work and wrap things up.  Cliff will be flying in at lunch time (yay!!).  I’ll pick him up at the airport and bring him to WAR.  It just happened that the last Friday of every month is a potluk lunch to celebrate birthdays and departures, so Cliff will join us for the potluk and meet everyone here.  That would take up most of the afternoon.

After that, here’s a brief outline of our travel plans:

June 27: Official start of our vacation.  Relax, show Cliff around Maun.

June 28-July 1: Okavango Delta boat trip.

July 2: I fly to Gaborone to meet the WUSC coordinator for my final debriefing.

July 3: Cliff flies from Maun, Botswana to Windhoek, Namibia.  I fly from Gaborone, Botswana to Windhoek to meet up with Cliff.  Pick up our rental truck.

July 4-13: Road trip in Namibia, visiting Sossuvlei, Seriem canyon, skeleton coast, Damaraland desert, and Etosha National Park.

July 13: Return rental car.  Fly from Windhoek, Namibia to Johannesburg, South Africa.  Stay in Jo’burg for the day.

July 14: From Jo’burg, Cliff flies home to Vancouver (via Amsterdam), and I fly to Taiwan (via Hong Kong).

July 15-17: I visit family in Taiwan.

July 18: I fly home to Vancouver.

For this 7-week trip, I have started in Vancouver, flew east to London, then south to Africa, then I will fly northeast to Taiwan, then east to Vancouver.  That makes a complete circle around the world!

I will make a few more postings in the next week or so.  But if I don’t respond to your e-mail or blog comments timely, it could be because there’s no internet connection where we are (eg. Okavango Delta).  

Financial Policy Revision

This is the last week of my assignment with WAR. The speed at which things move along here is...not very fast. After waiting a whole week, I finally got some feedback on my first draft of the financial policy today.

For the rest of the week, I'll be working on a few things:
1. Work on the financial policy revision according to the feedback
2. Write a report to WUSC outlining the work I have done here
3. Continue to help with donor report reconciliation if time permits

In a way, I am looking forward to wrapping up this project. My terribly short attention span is demanding to be entertained. On the other hand, I feel that there is so much I can do here that I really want to stay longer.

The Art of Socializing

Working at WAR has been one of the most fun jobs I’ve had.  Learning about the work culture here is learning the art of socializing.  This posting is to show you a typical day I would have in the office.

Alex, my driver, picks me up from Jump Street at 7:40 am and drops me off at WAR around 7:55 am.  I ask Alex all sorts of questions such as Maun real estate or cattle investment.

The work day starts at 8 am with a staff meeting, mixing in singing songs, reading from the Bible, and announcements of various office matters.  This staff meeting can take anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes, and it takes place in the front reception area.

After the staff meeting, I go to my office and plug in my laptop.  Within two minutes, Lesiela will come in apologizing for interrupting me so she can sweep my office floor.  Five minutes later, she will bring me cup of hot tea.  She will always ask me if I want sugar, and smile and shake her head in disbelief that I don’t take sugar in my tea.

From my office, I can hear the chatters in the reception area.  The receptionist lady has a desk in the reception area.  There’s a 3-seat couch in the same area, and someone is always on the couch.  A few people seem to have no office space of their own, and they wander from office to office, or sit on the couch.  The chattering almost never stops in that area.

I get about 30 minutes to work.  Then the visitors come.  If a counselor does not have any clients to assist that week, she will not have any work to do.  One of the counselors will come and insist to teach me Setswana, or talk about how they want to go work in North America, or about their business plans, or ask to use my laptop to check their e-mails.  Then another person will come in, join in the conversation, or start a new topic about what type of Botswana food they think I should try.

At 9 am, the receptionist lady would ask me if I wanted any “fat cake”.  Fat cake is a large flour dumpling deep fried in oil.  It’s much like a homemade donut without the hole.  Fat cake is eaten as a snack during the day with tea.  One fat cake is 1 Pula (about 15 cents C$).  I’ve gotten into the habit of eating fat cakes with everyone else.  Oh it’s so bad for me!

The stream of visitors continues, and I may get about 2 to 3 hours worth of work in the morning.  Lunch hour starts at 1 pm, and is regarded as a sacred hour of personal time.  You cannot expect anyone to do anything between 1 and 2 pm. 

Sometimes I bring my own lunch, and sometimes I go out for lunch at a nearby local restaurant.  If I sit in my office with my laptop and sandwich, it’s like an open invitation for visitors.  They would buy their take-out food, and sit in my office to eat with me.  They find my spicy roasted almonds fascinating.  They ask me all sorts of questions about my trail mixes.  

Work time official begins again at 2 pm.  If a board member comes by, she would pop in and tell me what I should work on.  Otherwise, I have about 1 hour of quiet time to work while people digested their lunch.  By 3 pm, the lead counselor’s 9-year-old daughter is off school and comes to the office.  She likes to sit in my office to draw, read, look at my pictures on my laptop, or fold paper origami.

Inevitably I will get another visitor around the same time.  It could be all personal chit-chat, or a lot of discussions about what I should do while I’m with WAR that leads into personal chit-chat.  They would ask me about Vancouver, and I would ask them all sorts of questions about how cattle posts worked or what the donkeys are used for or marriage customs.

Then someone would oblige me to take pictures of her with my camera.  The ladies love having their pictures taken.  I would download their pictures and put them on their personal USB sticks for them.  They would giggle over their pictures for quite a while, and discuss what they will wear tomorrow for a different set of pictures.

Sometimes another WUSC Canadian volunteer traveling through Botswana may come by to check out the office, and we would exchange experience of different NPO’s.  Sometimes the local WUSC officer would bring by new Canadian volunteers on route to another town.

In the Botswana culture, relationship building is highly valued, sometimes more so than the work product itself.  So I have come to accept that.  I really had to put aside my habit of recording my time in 6-minute intervals.

Then at 4:20 pm, the receptionist lady would pop her head in to tell me the office will be closed soon.  I have to be all packed up and ready to go at 4:25 pm, otherwise more people will pop their heads in and remind me to pack up.  By 4:30 pm, the office empties promptly.

From there, Alex either picks me up at WAR, or I would walk over to the New Mall for groceries and then phone Alex to pick me up from there.  I’ve also started walking home (1 1/2 hour) a few times a week to get some exercise in.

I love the socializing aspect of the culture here.  It has allowed me to learn so much more about Botswana than I ever could from a travel book.

 

Financial Policy

I'm making a quick posting before going off-line for the weekend.  

So far this week, I've had a number of meetings with various stakeholders of WAR's financial and accounting system, and I have done a first draft of the financial policy for the organization.  When the finance officer comes back next week, I'll be able to seek her input and work on finalizing the policy.

The next step for me is to ensure a proper training program is developed and delivered so that the employees would adapt to the policy.  The written policy is a reflection of many things that they are already doing, but with some modification so that there is better accountability.

I will be posting more pictures and interesting things about Botswana on the weekend.  There's an educational park in town I'll be checking out, and hopefully have some pictures of animals for you to see soon.

By the way, I really appreciate the comments and e-mails.  Please keep them coming!  I love hearing about your thoughts on this blog.

Storm in Maun

It normally does not rain in the winter in Botswana. 

But a storm just arrived, and brought bucket loads of rain.  A dam building project in Southern Botswana just got washed out with all the equipment either washed away or under water.  Giant puddles formed everywhere, and the dirt track leading to Jump Street is covered in water.  I don’t see evidence of a drainage system in the roads.

The effect of heavy downpour is interesting.  People are late for work; water supply is erratic; power supply gets cut out; even the internet connection is intermittent.

After having no electricity for two days at Jump Street, I am very grateful to use my hair dryer today when the power came back.  Cooking by candlelight was only so romantic the first few times.  I’m so spoiled by modern conveniences!

The girls in the office jokingly blamed me for bringing the rain from Vancouver.  I argued that Vancouver was hot and sunny when I left, but they will hear none of it.  Many claimed that they have never seen weather like this in their lifetime.

These are some of the most interesting storm clouds I've ever seen:

 

 

Now, a bit more about work.

I finally met the finance officer at WAR today.  She had been away at various meetings since I got here and just returned to the office today.  We met briefly and she gave me some ideas of what I can help with.

My mandate here is quite broad and there is room to tweak things along the way. Given the laundry list of things suggested to me, I definitely have to focus on the areas I can be effective in, and leave a list of outstanding items or recommendations for the next person to handle.

I feel that it would be a good use of my time to help them put together a financial policy, set up the safehouse sub ledger, and maybe start with bringing the donor reports up to date if time allows.  There is just not enough time to make everybody happy.

I’ve always had this mental picture of what it means to volunteer in Africa.  I should be rolling up my sleeves to get down and dirty to build a school or orphanage.  But a big focus of the Leave for Change program is on capacity building.  I’m not supposed to come here, do something, and leave.  I have to train the employees here on how to continue on the tool or system I have set up for them, so that they become self-sufficient.  It requires a shift in my mindset, and I do believe capacity building is more important in the long run.

Being on this assignment will go down as one of the most interesting things I have done with my life.  It’s an intense learning experience of a completely different culture and work environment.   I could not be more excited about this opportunity.

Another volunteer and myself:

One of the counselors and myself:

First day at WAR

Promptly at 8 am, the staff meeting began with the receptionist lady leading a song in Setswana and a prayer.  Mpho went on to make a number of announcements, and read a scripture from Psalm 119.  I had expected this format of staff meeting from what Adriaan had told me about WAR.  It was certainly an interesting start to the day.

Mpho took me to her office and we tried for an hour to put together a work plan for me.  She had so many interruptions during the hour that we barely got anything accomplished.  Just based on that hour, I can tell that matters big and small all ran through her, and she is expected by the staff to solve all problems.  Mpho has this calm air about her.  Regardless of how many interruptions come up, and how her schedules get changed on a dime, she dealt with each person with a tremendous amount of patience.

Mpho gave me a stack of miscellaneous financial reports to look through, along with the prior year financial statements.  I was given an office to work in.  The office is a basic room with a desk and a chair, but it had one thing that made me giddy—a high-speed internet connection cable!  I sat down to read the reports, while plugging in my laptop to let all my out-going e-mails upload.  It was so satisfying to watch the progress bar move as the e-mails are uploaded.  Ah, such joys in life!

The president of the WAR board of directors came by, and had a list of concerns for me to address.  As typical of a NPO with budget constraints, there’s a certain tension between the board and the management.  The president’s concerns were valid, and I felt like I can help put things on the right track during my assignment.  At lunch time, Kabo, a peace corps volunteer with WAR took me to a local restaurant for lunch.  He is half way through his 2-year assignment in Botswana.  He conveyed his concerns about the financial well being of the organization.  I added his concerns to my list.  In the afternoon, the fundraising coordinator came by, and shared with me her concerns about budgets and expenditures.  At the end of the day, I had a list I can really sink my teeth into, and I was very excited.  I wrote up a proposed work plan and sent it to Mpho for her approval.

Around 4 pm, the sun went away, the winds picked up, and the sky turned a stormy grey.  Lightning and thunder followed.  I rushed outside with my camera trying to capture the lighting, but was always too slow pressing the shutter.  I ended up taking pictures of the staff and goofing off in the front yard for the last few minutes of the day.

Another volunteer in Gaborone told me one of the things she loved the most about being in Botswana is that it is so easy to build a network, and I’m already seeing evidence of this.  Every person I spoke with offered me their phone number, and introduced me to another person whom they think can help me with my job.  People are very helpful and are quick to offer assistance.  The inter-cultural training we received from WUSC also stressed the importance of building relationships, and it is one of the most important things for the Botswana culture.   I am loving this!

Stormy sky:

Some of the staff at WAR: