An Adventure Begins
KLM flight to Amsterdam. I am off. Gone. The trek has started. It would seem so grandiose to say I have begun a hero’s journey, but it feels as if I am on a mythical quest. A transformation from one stage of my life to another. And that everything I ever thought, studied, aspired to, questioned, explored is culminating in this moment to lead me very far from home. My garden. My people. My neighborhood.
Monday afternoon, when I was sneaking a mani-pedi as a last bit of pampering and foot saving marathon preventive care, Jeff called me to say he wanted to talk to me before they left. We met yesterday morning at 8 am. I ambled over, face unwashed, with my cup of coffee and a note pad. Jeff said, more or less: “I need to give you some context. No one wants you to go to Tanzania; KPMG doesn’t want you to go – as you know; My team doesn’t want you to go because you’re not a development professional and – you know, they say ‘she can’t even make a hotel reservation by herself”; Millennium Promise doesn’t want you to go because they don’t want to manage another village without adequate resources. And the UN is not happy about this project. Your going means more work for them. They already have a small project going in Micheweni – not that it’s having any great impact, but they don’t want the place to become a Millennium Village.”
I bristled about the hotel room. I would have had no trouble at all getting a hotel room or an apartment, if that’s what was on a clear agenda. But I didn’t have a budget; I had only scant direction, and I wasn’t going to presume. I would have booked myself with points and gone business class, and found a KPMG-preferred hotel and been done with it. That would have been the easy way. But…
Jeff continued, “But I know exactly why you are the person for this job. I have no doubt about that.” He warned that I would hear lots of criticism of him – things people would never dream of saying to his face because he’s a “big shot” as he put it with utter humility. Just matter of fact.
We were sitting at the great round kitchen table and Sonia padded down the stairs, nodding in agreement with everything he was saying. The air conditioning was already turned off and the house was warm, closed – but I was animated by what he was saying. It explained so much – the sense that people weren’t getting back to me, the miscommunication, and the extreme resistance to taking the phrase about KPMG’s being responsible for implementation out of the memorandum of agreement. I just didn’t get it: I had told everyone – Marie and Steve, Jeff, John – that KPMG would not sign a contract that made them legally responsible for development work: It’s not their core competency, they don’t want to be sued if someone dies of malaria in a clinic their donation paid for; they’re accountants – and the most risk averse of all the firms.
Of course I had been particularly hurt by KPMG’s attitude toward me. I worked hard to sell that relationship and they wouldn’t have known about the villages if it hadn’t been for me. But from their perspective, they want to own this project and get their people involved. So they were snippy and patronizing and hostile at times.
Sonia walked me out, explaining how she handles people: “It’s all about stroking their egos,” she said. “I tell them Jeff speaks so incredibly highly of them and his so happy to have them involved, etc.” She said to use my coaching skills, to be humble and deferential.
Of course it all makes sense. Humility, especially. I can be extremely deferential at times. But then, almost like turning a switch, I have that outspoken, sarcastic, dismissive side too. Like a character I learned to play really well back in those Studio 54 “everything-is-a-statement-everyone-is-a-prop” days too. But those days and that persona are just an old costume I sometimes wear.
The car service couldn’t get through my block, so I had to wheel my two suitcases and ridiculously heavy overnight bag down to Columbus. Then realized I still had Sonia and Jeff’s key in my pocket (I had done my laundry at their house earlier. It was so hot and humid I ended up wearing my low-cut Marni black tunic over my jeans. Not exactly development wear. Just couldn’t put more clothes on because I was still sweaty from a 6.25 mile run.
And then the airport. They took my second bag away and made me check it. I thought I could count my small wheelie and my Harman bag (stuffed with computer, purse, all manner of electronics and cosmetics and running shoes). But only one carry-on, they said. Not two. So I checked the wheelie with cameras and nice business clothes – all the things I’d need immediately – and lugged my overstuffed shoulder bag to the gate. I was calling Roberto when suddenly the alarm sounded – some woman had opened an emergency exit. I started yelling at her because I was on the phone, trying to leave a message: “Why did you do that?” I asked her and she shrugged. Of course she didn’t know. A cute, eccentrically dressed guy looked at me and said. “Let’s get her for this.” “We have the way to Amsterdam to make her pay,” I said. I’ll get her off, he said. Six months in jail; that’s it. Seemed fair. Are you a lawyer? I asked. Then I went to buy some chocolate – the only condiment missing from my luggage.
The two men sitting in my row (fully booked flight, middle seats fill) are Dutch, both art professors at an academy. One has short grey hair and is very thin; the other one is taller, broader, with a lot of light brown curly hair and more of a bearish mien. Stubble covered face. I asked if they were father and son. Stupid because I might have looked closer and seen that his hair was tinged with gray. But they laughed about it. Then we were looking out the window and there was Greenland as we ate our early dinner – 6 pm NY time. Greenland is a strange, heavily green, forested mass of land with lakes and rivers – nothing man-made. The lakes made great shapes – testes, a sea horse, dragon, scorpion – glinting fiercely in the sun. Massive. Everything that happens now seems like an omen. Or maybe I’m just seeing things more fully, more vividly.
