Symbiosis
Dar again. Today Jot Dhadialla and I had breakfast at the Palm Beach and then walked over to KPMG so I could introduce him to Michael Ward. Jot and I have been having a long conversation spread out over the past few days in Tabora and then back in Dar about how to ensure that all stakeholders achieve their goals and how to mobilize resources effectively to get the most impact at the community level.
Jot talked about engineering victories – figuring out what each stakeholder wants and then making sure they get it. Just working backwards. And of course it’s useful to remember that everyone does that to some extent. People at the village level figure out what the development organizations want from them – and they deliver too. Especially where visitors are common, people in the village will get extremely adept at trotting out a dog and pony show. Which is not to say that the interventions don’t yield tangible results. They do: children in schools, increased crop yields, significant decrease in malaria and other diseases, access to markets, new skills.
What I love about Jot is that he brings this enormous wealth of knowledge and commitment to his work and such clarity: he seems neither judgemental nor idealistic. He seems to be an interested and empathetic observer who improvises and innovates.
Anyway, the KPMG team – Michael and his colleague Geir – were really impressed with Jot and the conversation left them with plenty to think about – particularly Geir, who, after having seen enormous corruption and waste, is pretty cynical about large-scale development schemes.
Jot left for Addis and Michael and I continued with lunch at City Garden – a large and seemingly popular lunch spot for business people. I haven’t been feeling all that well since Tabora and imagine I might have picked up some bug there. Not debilitating, but my uneasy digestive system dissuaded me from doing my 18-mile run today. I can either get up and do a chunk of it tomorrow morning (very early) or try tackling a long run in Addis where I will be at something like 6000 feet.
