Tuesday 26 April

Yesterday

I spent yesterday helping myself to free wifi at Java, and receiving phone calls from loved ones.  

Filing and recycling

Today, I’’m back at work and it turns out to be by far my most challenging day.  I am supposed to complete the group exercise on the monthly workplan. However, Julie has asked me to prioritise preparation work for a meeting with a new funder who is visiting us tomorrow.  She’s late in so I help Eyrun with work on filing.  

Now, in case I haven’t said so already, our filing system is another story altogether – I cannot begin to describe it – it is almost non-existent.  There are files, and folders, but the contents hardly belong together nor do they reflect the description / name often scribbled on the front of the corresponding folder.   Documents taken out of files do not ‘naturally’ find their way back into to the relevant files, in fact, a lot of the time they seem to go AWOL.  I see how much time staff spend looking for key documents or papers filed away ‘somewhere’, ‘here’ or ‘there’.  I am told that for each of the local staff working with this organisation, this is the first office job they have ever had, therefore it seems to me that while a revived filing system is needed, training will also be even more important.  There has been some significant help with filing in the recent past from previous international volunteers and this is evident in the presence of new folders and laminated documents, but some of these folders, previously well-labelled, now have their original descriptions scribbled out, overwritten, and other documents included in them.  

The challenge of creating a filing system that works in this organisation is not only to do with training staff, but it is also to do with the fact that the organisation is currently running on zero financial resources, and on the goodwill of individuals.  There are no hanging folders, or labels, or rolling trolleys etc.  There’s a glass cabinet with three shelves, one of which is a little wonky, but usable, a few shelves and one filing cabinet made up of four drawers – the bottom and fourth drawer is jammed.  The easy option in the short term would be to put money personally into buying some of these resources.  But here’s my dilemma – what happens in the future when the organisation is at a similar stage with no financial income and a filing system (or something else) that needs addressing?  Do they sit and wait for a donor or do they get on with things and do as much as is possible including being creative and reusing old materials?  Bearing in mind earlier discussions with Julie about a culture of ‘dependency’, I choose the latter option of reusing old materials.  While I hope that staff will see how much more they can actually do in-house without waiting for financial resources, it is also an experiment for me to see how much can be done on this piece of work before financial assistance is really needed.

It is times like these that I cherish my experience of working with small charities in the UK where resources are stretched as much as possible therefore also making creativity key.   So, with my experience and knowledge, and with Eyrun as my able assistant and taking the lead on this project, we have developed a simple plan - the key objectives are to have a simple filing system that can be understood by all, a filemap that will be made available electronically and in hardcopy (as there is only one computer hardly used by the local staff), and a training manual or guide developed for training staff and also to be used to keep on top of their filing system.  

The resources?  We are reusing and recycling old files, weeding through all folders and re-organising documents thereby freeing up more old files to be re-used, covering up scribbles with flipcharts that have been cut out in long strips to give the files some sort of uniformity.  In as much as I hate filing myself, and old colleagues will testify to this, I strongly believe that part of an organisation’s growth and efficiency lies in its own administration and internal affairs – and one of the key components is its filing system.  Eyrun and I have worked out a plan that should take her through to the end of May when her time in Nairobi comes to an end.

Another daunting day

But I digress ... this is my third week and I’m finding it daunting – again!  Julie expects me to manage the team, and it’s by far not the easiest task for a good number of reasons – there are currently no incentives for the staff as the organisation has no income.  Each week, at least two members of staff do not show up to work for at least two days (in total) for personal or financial reasons.  They are not in the habit of calling in to apologise – Julie often chases up.  For all of us, it’s a difficult situation to be in, and for me it’s difficult to manage too.  I find out later that one of the local staff occasionally gets one-off daily jobs working in an industry.  This is useful news and I begin to think up a strategy for supporting staff while retaining their services for the organisation when it is with or without financial resources.  

But for now, I find the lack of more than one PC in the office very frustrating – I must learn how to work and delegate without the use of PCs etc – this is one of my real challenges in development work.  

Working with the boss ...

Later in the day Julie and I finally work out what is needed for the new funder’s visit tomorrow.   We talk through a number of things, some of which I ready up, and others I make a to-do list to work on later.  One of the things that need updating is the organisational chart.  On this discussion, I face my next challenge.  I develop a chart based on what is; Julie’s idea of an organisational chart is more visionary.  For a potential funder, I’m not sure that this is what they are after as my understanding is that they want to find out about us and how we work and of course what our vision is.  Plus, funders always want evidence and one must be prepared to back up information given.  I explain this to Julie but she’s adamant.  I find this frustrating but she’s the boss and I have to respect her wishes even if I don’t agree with her.   Finally, when I’m home later I decide to draw up two charts, one reflecting what is, and the other reflecting Julie’s vision.  

The next day following further discussions on our different outlook on this rather small, but important issue, a quick phone call to the funder informs her next move and a compromise which we’re both happy with.  She agrees with the chart as is, but also wants her own vision to be visible, so if asked, we will present both, and they can both be backed up!  I am happy with this, and in addition I have also learnt (or taught myself) how to develop an organisational chart in MS Office (PP) 2007.  

Part of this journey of volunteering is about learning new things or retraining myself on the use of old tools such as group consensus methods for facilitation purposes which I used for the group exercise on the monthly plan a week ago.  My next big challenge on new things to learn will be the gantt chart (!).

...and even more challenges...

My day is not yet over, not before I get rather irritated with one of the staff.  I have been helping the key person responsible for the HIV programme to develop a process and new forms to be used.  When I’m done I offer to pay for a few prints and copies to be made.  To cut a long story short, he comes back short of Ksh2 in change for me.  Apparently, the shop had no change and suggested that it is credited towards our next purchase from them – they have not bothered to provide a note to this effect.   I cannot quantify Ksh2 in pounds - £0.014, but in Kenya you can get one photocopy for this amount.  Still, I’m not happy about this for a number of reasons.  It’s the principle behind it and I ask him if he’d willingly have left his Ksh2 with the shop if that had been his money, or if he would have insisted for his change? His answer is the latter of course.  I think I have made my point to him.  But it takes me back to my earlier point on the perception of those of us who live in the West, or live in Africa, but ‘seem’ to have money.   I don’t think it matters what colour I am (ie Muzungu or not), or where I live (ie in the UK).  For people like him who live in the slum and can barely make £1 a day, their perception is that ‘we have money’ because we can afford a lot more than they can.  Fair enough, but does that give them the right to totally disregard our feelings about our own finances and how we want it to be used?

...and more on dependency

Later in the news, there’s more on this dependency attitude.  The government has promised to provide mosquito nets at no costs to some communities, but is slow in fulfilling this promise.  As a result, those within these communities are shown ‘waiting’ for the government to deliver.  In the meantime, they refuse to buy the nets which I understand from my host mother, are generally available at a subsidised price. Who should be blamed should they or their children fall ill / die of malaria – the government or themselves?