Last week I spent 5 days at a workshop for my organization.  It was an intense cultural immersion:  really excellent to be meet the other players in LABE, see who the personalities are, who does what and learn more about the organization as a whole and their approach to problem solving.   Delivering literacy services to the bush is more complex than one might imagine.  If you’ve been following the blog, you already know about some of the adventures and misadventures involved in going to the field. Other PCVs can add tomes, I’m sure.  But other issues have to do with the internal machinations of an organization spread out over the whole of northern Uganda and connected by road systems that make Skinner’s maze look like child’s play and road conditions that rival a Survivor  episode.  Add to that that they only sometimes have power, sometimes phone service, sometimes fuel and seldom at the same time other regions have these services, well – you are beginning to get some idea here.  These are all understandable.

Then of course there is the matter of infra-structure in a country not schooled in same.   LABE a group of individuals totally committed to their work and to self-analysis and trying to create systems that may be old-hat in the west, but that are new here.  This means examining process:  what’s working and what’s not.  And that, of course, has been largely my business for the last 20 years.  So I guess – for better or for worse – the universe dropped me in the right place.  And yet, doing it here is another “not so straight forward” process.  Everything here is consensus driven and that can be a sloooooow and tedious bit of work.

By far, the most exhausting part of the week was to be immersed in the dynamics of how decisions are made  (or not…) and to understand the deep differences between the Ugandan Process and what a similar meeting would be like in the States.  For someone who has had the total autonomy of  acting as a committee of one for the last two decades, I have not had to work within the context and confines of group decision making.  So this could be frustrating for me even in the U.S., but the degree to which consensus is required here has become an art form and offers a lot of insight into the business life here. I have been doing a lot of tip-toeing.

I have been told by Ugandans that theirs is not a culture that delegates responsibility and it’s been a study in delay to see how systems operate around that.   It is a very polite culture that operates within very tightly wound morass of protocol, policies and rewards/punishments.  This is hard for those of us who have operated in organizations that allow for and expect a huge amount of autonomy and out-of-the-box  problem solving.  Nevertheless, they have been very respectful of my comments and indeed, have embraced every one of my ideas and committed to implementing them.  This is both gratifying and terrifying, because I sure hope they work and will wait to see how implementation results.

Some of this rare opportunity to observe has been brought about by the Director’s request that Betty and I take notes on the meetings and give a summary of the previous days activities each morning.  At the end we are to produce a detailed and report, which is turning out to be “not for the weak-of-heart.”  There are pages upon pages upon pages of flip chart notes on exercises that essentially have dissected operations in countless different ways, producing the same results each time.  The verdict is out on how this approach worked, but it has produced a lot of action items and gained consensus – meaning nothing is going to happen without it.  So, I will need to take a deep breath and buckle in, because I’m not on the bus alone and there are 18 other people who get a vote.

This has also been a study in ceremony,  acknowledgements and protocol.  The act of acknowledgement “We thank the honorable chairman ….  we appreciate very much the contributions of ….  however…” is endearing to some degree,  but compared to the faster pace of American life, where such things are assumed or represented in body language or by-passed, it is interminable.  Still, if such cultural protocols are not observed, it’s a faux pas that sticks in the minds of all present and I will have to stop myself to remember these new rules and build in time to demonstrate these courtesies. Because protocol is more important than the information imparted.

If you don’t follow protocol, no one is going to listen to you anyway.  I am a reasonably polite person, diplomatic, observant….  But remember that some behaviors have been informed by the British and others via a tribal system of communal agreement.  Both of these contributions of history are confounding to Americans whose DNA derives from a bunch of strong willed, rowdy malcontents with a deep suspicion of – if not disrespect of – authority, all-the-while demanding  autonomy and the right to “talk back.”  So to be plunged into a system  of formality, while at the same time being at-one with a lack of privacy and personal space in other areas is somewhat of a conundrum.

This demand for formality has also been made evident to me in my language lessons I’ve been having where I’ve been learning scenarios and protocols for meetings.  There is “ceremony” here for introducing leaders, specifically addressing agendas, referencing everything down to the date and where the meeting is held – both pretty obvious.  Re-stating them would seem to be redundant in the States, but omissions here would be considered a flagrant act of disrespect here.

Not to belabor the point, but Day 1 started two hours late and morphed into a very democratic process of voting on when the meeting would start on subsequent days, when we would have morning break tea, lunch, evening break tea, end the meeting – then have dinner.  In the states, it would be:  listen-up! Here’s the agenda, be there, be on time and organize your life around these factors.  Anyone two hours later would be boiled or not admitted and who cares if you like the schedule anyway.  Just adapt.  Rude in this society, but routine in ours.  Therefore  day one was instructional in ways I had not anticipated.

In a paradigm where no one person is responsible for a decision, no one can be the bad guy, lose face or be considered pushy.  I’m sure this is not consciously thought out, but it is an interesting dynamic…  and it is not just my interpretation, but explained to me by a Ugandan friend whom I trust.  I recognize the indicators of this from some other scenarios in American culture – indeed some relationships…  I’ve been guilty of that – and as they say, it takes one to know one.  So I recognize it when I’m repeatedly hit over the head with it.  If no one makes a hard decision, no one can “be blamed.”  This is a scenario in the conflict resolution workshops I’ve taught and the fall-out is that important decisions are delayed or not made.  But it’s an altogether different issue when this is a deeply embedded cultural standard and operates in every context.   Hard to change and challenging to work around.

This is also a very literal culture.  Process cannot be truncated, there are no leaps ahead.  There is a stated policy for everything, because god forbid one might be fired for non-performance (an unstated policy).  I think this might be distinctly western, coming from an educational system that trains us from the cradle in processes that develop the skills of abstract thinking, pattern recognition, organization of concepts and logic.  The emerging educational system here does not, so these abilities are not hard-wired in by the time you start working.

Well – enough.  I will do my best to play by these rules, but I don’t know if I can behave myself for two years (21 months and counting). Time will tell.  I hope Ugandan’s will have mercy on this independent, mouthy Munu.