Hearts and Minds

This is the struggle – between hearts and minds, between words and actions.  

Like struggling between giggles and a facepalm when asked if I wanted to ‘cuddle legs’ with my date in the car rather than having him sit in the passenger’s seat (I chose the latter). 

Some of us don’t fight this good fight – some of us have very little to hide.

“Hey, gurrrrl!”

I sighed. 

“Can I get that TP!  Get... some of that TP!  That... TP...!”

I’ve gotten used to Butters’ intermittent forgetfulness of the fact that toilet paper is a necessity, but I don’t think I will ever get used to Butters himself. 

“Holla holla holla holla holla...” he sang out as he strolled away with his prize.

Other in-between spaces are much larger.  Like the one between me and a colleague who keeps announcing (his word, not mine) that his brothers are getting married. 

I have paid for at least 8 babies and 5 marriages in the 19 months I’ve been here, and I’ve been asked to pay for at least 20 more of each – it is difficult to refuse to support your twin brothers and their future wives and children, but I will do it.  Yes, even if you’re the eldest brother.  We all have problems.

Like dealing with an obstreperous Medical Director for the dubious honour of carrying out a development project in his health zone. 

It was the first time I would be organising a training session myself.  I’d helped with minimizing the budget (which had faced a sudden 35% decrease), and had been anointed by my roommates to work out logistics without any contacts, slightly fairer skin than your average Congolese, a high probability of some abject failures, and equal opportunities for learning.  My first task was to inform the Medical Director that we were going to be working in his zone – that is, invite, teach, and cover room and board for a single head nurse from 8 health centres in an effort to equip them identify, treat, or refer patients with psychological trauma.

He refused.

“You think that Africans can just accept any conditions!”

I would be staying in the same ‘conditions’ for the four days of the training.  I am not African.

“But this is your work; you’re paid to do this!”

I’m a volunteer for a 2-year program.

“I would never allow my head nurses to stay in the miserable conditions that your budget guarantees!”

I’d stayed in the same ‘conditions’ in another health zone and had been very comfortable (other than the gauntlet of teenage boys who lined the corridors every time I went to the bathroom).

“As doctors, we’d gone to another training session in Rwanda – at a Catholic guest house - and it was horrible!  The bed was so low!”

I’d stayed with priests before, and the grounds and services offered were miles and away above what (largely unpaid) head nurses and their families survived on a daily basis.

“You’re only offering $5 for transport!  That’s a salary of $1 a day!”

No, it wasn’t.  A salary is provided by the government or the public in exchange for a service.  A transport fee is the amount international donors provide (over and above room and board) in order to reach and train local professionals to better serve their rural communities.

This continued for two hours – an impossible conversation between a bureaucratic oaf who wanted to receive foreigners’ money and was willing to pull the race card to ensure it, and a shy, cheap immigrant volunteer of few (spoken) words and very little persuasive ability, much less a desire to negotiate with terrorists.

After a terse phone conversation, my Coordinator (whom I’d been afraid would offer a bribe just to carry out this activity) accepted the Director’s refusal and allowed us to return to the city.  During the 1-hr trip over dusty rocks, I had a conversation with our driver, who accepted my novel definition of the word ‘corruption’ and took to it whole-heartedly.  A pastor’s son himself, he confessed that corruption began in the church, where money from the poor and desperate would disappear into the pastor’s gleaming SUV. 

“Our leaders are all traumatised,” he informed me.  “You should start treating them.”

Actually, I thought we should start with children learning the appropriate definition of the word ‘corruption.’  “Everyone accepts that corruption is terrible for the country.  Everyone knows.  But we each have a responsibility to carry out what we know in our minds.  Would you accept corruption?”

I’ll leave his answer to your imagination. 

When we returned to our head office, he began preaching to another colleague, who’d paid the Medical Director of another health zone in order to start this project. 

“It’s corruption!” he said firmly. 

This conversation continued the next day between these two colleagues and an agent of the Division of Provincial Health – even though the second colleague wasn’t fully on board.  I knew that, in his heart, he believed that the donors should provide a line in the budget for ‘motivation,’ but at least he’d started to speak about work ethic.  I stayed out of the conversation because of my unrealistic ideals that people can work out of integrity and passion.  Eventually tiring of this inner battle, my second colleague invited me to give answers that he wasn’t sure of himself. 

“How can you expect a Medical Director to facilitate your project without some... motivation?”

I explained that, as a Medical Director, his job should be to facilitate and liaise between projects and funding to ensure the training and innovation of the personnel in his zone.  So that they would know, for example, how to address the rural belief that epilepsy is spread through farts during seizures.  If the sharing of this knowledge were ‘motivated’ by money instead of a good work ethic, the work would stop with the end of the project.  And projects would soon come to an end as well.  Money would eventually come to an end.  Instead of complaining that the budget had been gradually decreasing since the 90s, it might be time to find new ways to empower personnel, to lobby the government to do its job, to ensure necessary resources and training for educated individuals to bring services to those in poverty.  Perhaps it was time to support a different health zone – one with a Medical Director more committed to quality of service rather than quantity of budget.  At the very least, it could be time to explain to donors that their budgets are not enough to solve the problem of Africa.

But offering a bribe does nothing. 

“But it’s motiva--”

No.  It’s not.  It’s stagnation and long-term failure. 

So the seminar for that zone was cancelled, but another would continue as planned.  Our invitations read 8am, we arrived at 9am on the first day, and 4 out of 10 participants had arrived when we decided to begin the seminar at 10:30am.  It was 11:30am by the time we decided that we would take a break at 12pm, who would be the secretary, who would make sure we were respecting our timeline...  Our refreshments arrived at 12:30pm, and I look forward to the discussion on the transport fee. 

In the meantime, I was just asked to do something to wake the group up – a joke, a story... something, in short, at which I fail miserably.  Someone asked me to tell the story of how I came here from Europe.

The closest I’ve been to Europe is a 6hr layover in Frankfurt.

One kind gentleman said I had to stand at his left, and that we were going to walk around the room waving both our hands while the whole room clapped for us.

I think I might be married. 

It’s a constant struggle.