The Sudan - 16

How long does it take for the strange to become familiar? I reckon about a week. Ive been racking my brains tonight for things to write about in this blog... i dont think ive seen or done anything unusual today. Of course this is nonsense because its only NOT unusual because ive become familiar with my surroundings and the topics of conversation and im starting to become oblivious to little details like the uniformed security man at the Bank of Sudan whose 3" embroidered security badge is held to his uniform by a single safety pin. And I dont find it odd now that we are talking with great interest on the fine details of the benefits of having more than one wife.
Oh i was a little excited to see one of our delegates in the most amazing pair of shoes. So intrigued I was, I had to stop him on the stairs to ask him about them. He was wearing a drab coloured lightweight safari suit which made his shoes look even more glamorous. At first I thought he was just into the kitsch scene, but on enquiry it turns out that they really were REAL tiger-skin shoes! they were brilliant - I could see why there would be a trade in this endangered animal skin - i'd love a pair. I asked him if it was legal to buy tiger products - he reckoned that you could hunt tiger if you had a license. That cant be true can it? Well his mate in the snake-skin shoes thought it was.

We've talked about a wide range of issues that effect the African rural poor. Topics that are so far removed from any topic of conversation i would have back home; not only because Im not poor, but because the forces of change on this country are so different to the forces of change in Europe. Climate change of course is high on the agenda here, but so also is war and divided states. We talk about energy, education, employment, agriculture, water, hygiene, medicine etc - all usually in the negative. But not once has anyone uttered the word HIV. HIV is a massive problem in Africa (and particularly southern africa) but for many reasons its a topic that appears to be taboo. HIV leads to trends in child rape (in the belief that sleeping with a virgin will cure it); displaced women (who are rejected by thier communities in the belief that it is the woman who has been sleeping around, never the husband); jail and torture (as HIV is believed to be an indicator of either a promiscuous woman, or a gay man - both punishable offences); communities of elderly people and young people - but no-one in between - theyre dead, and so the whole social fabric of such communities are crumbling (and in a world where the only capital you have is social capital, you cant afford for your community to crumble). In some areas, the massive campaigns to use condoms were rejected in the belief that this was a white mans attempt to stop black people producing more babies! HIV is a force of change that is going to have to be reckoned with, and yet no-one will talk about it. For one, talking about sex has religious complications, and for another it is still strongly associated with homosexuality and this also has religious complications.
If we cant talk about it, then maybe there is no hope

I facilitated various workshop elements today, but i also did a workshop section on Creativity and problem solving preferences. My planned 2.5 hours became crunched to 1.5 hours as the story telling activities over ran. We decided to press on regardless with the time that i had remaining. Now this never bothers me. I can wing this subject pretty well now and skip slides and activities to the important bits (actually my client remarked afterwards, that so impressed was he that he could see from now on that he could reduce my future contracts to deliver my work in half the time!)
It was clear that the people enjoyed the workshop despite my rush (i was concerned about talking too fast for people to understand - though remember, fast for me here would be relaxed in any other place) and I think the key learnings were transfered. However i wasnt absolutely happy with my delivery of the Foursight psychometric that i used. I think the participants were more than happy and understanding of the concept and the outcomes of their profiles, but i had to make a couple of necessary shortcuts. We used the paper based questionnaire as not everyone has access to the internet for the online version. Immediately i concerned that some people appeared to have a skew on their responses - had they not understood my instructions? did they still think they were being tested and needed to appear to be 'good' at problem solving? I had to let the people continue with the analysis of their profile, it would have been too complicated to explain why not. Or maybe their profiles were genuinely like this - This is certainly a culture that is different to my own - in fact it is often necessary to really labour the concept of 'deferment of judgement' in northern European organisations, but here it was accepted as if i was asking them to continue breathing - this is a society that is apparently very tolerant of different view points (though i find this difficult to reconcile with some of the political unrest)
Scoring of the Foursight questionnaire is usually a relatively simple process, but i was suprised at how complicated this was for a few people today. And drawing a neat graph between the points didnt appear to be as easy as i would imagine it to be. I had to make a quick decision - should i continue to instruct them to work out the necessary standard deviations so that they could identify their peak preferences? I made the right decision. Every one understood the concept, appeared happy with the curves of their profiles and lots of laughing and deep discussions followed as sharing thier new insights with each other they went off into the early evening 38 degrees.

And now im knackered