Walimu wa walimu wa walimu
I have just completed five weeks of training trainers to train other trainers – if you follow. The trainers of trainers (I have been referring to them as the facilitators) summarized the situation by calling me “Walimu wa walimu wa walimu” – a “teacher of teachers of teachers” (shortened to “www” when we became informal with each other). Since “walimu” (teacher) is an honorific, I was triply honored by the designation.
The experience, for me, ranged from enormously rewarding to hugely frustrating. My greatest reward came from the interns (“teachers”) – this group of 20 young Kenyans and 5 Ethiopians were learning to deliver a program to help youth create sustainable livelihoods. The interns had just completed university and were bright, idealistic (they asked questions like “how do we eradicate poverty from Africa?”), willing and able. They shone and glowed with potential and they were eager to learn and absorb information. I could see them grow in front of my eyes. They also had experienced a lot in their young lives; a young woman told the story of losing her mother when she was 12 and immediately deciding to get herself an education and make something of her life, a young man told the story of walking 6 miles to school on an empty stomach, attending 8 hours of classes, going to a job cutting grass after school for 4 more hours, then walking the 6 miles home again. Somehow these kids had the will and determination to go to university and to create a meaningful and productive life for themselves.
My frustrations were with working with the facilitators. Malkia’s moods switched on and off like a faulty light bulb; one moment her expression open and bright and the next, drawn and glum. Another facilitator I privately thought of as “the professor” because he loved to pontificate at great length. Stanley unlike the others, arrived early and prepared each day and was easy to work with.
Working in different cultures it is difficult to read people, shifting and sorting between what is personality, what is culture and what is context. It is not easy to sort out at first, as you question which behaviors are cultural norms, which attitudes derives from the context of the place or mix of people and what reactions are the idiosyncratic manifestations of an individual person. It made for muddy waters for me to swim through as I coaxed and humored the facilitation team to manage time properly so we could get through the program (flexibility of time definitely being a cultural norm!), turn up prepared to deliver the program, be receptive to feedback around delivery, etc. The other difficult layer to it all was sensitivity to the fact that I was working in a country and culture that had been downtrodden for centuries and any performance feedback I offered would be seen in that light. So the backdrop to our pantomime was always political.
We danced and maneuvered, our team never really becoming one. Occasionally I stepped on landmines of emotional outrage around something I would have thought of as quite matter-of-fact and I found myself constantly apologizing profusely for failing to read hidden signs of danger. My only consolation was that I often found them outraging each other also. Each night after the training itself we would debrief and often a good portion of that time would be devoted to resolving the emotional quagmires of the day.
At one point I thought my patience and restraint had resulted in a team of people who trusted each other and could deal with difficult issues. This was soon revealed as an illusion when Malkia announced on the Thursday of our fourth week together, that she was ready to quit. I was sorely tempted to accept her resignation, if it were not for the effect that would have on the interns who would most certainly be bewildered and confused were she to suddenly disappear. After that incident I wondered if I had, all along, been too polite and too “sensitive”. Perhaps I should have announced early on that the potential of having a future contract was dependant on achievement of certain standards and been less tolerant of emotional hijacking. Or set ground rules that would clearly delineate what was and was not acceptable behavior. Oh, well, live and learn, as they say. When I train the next group of facilitators, I will be more equipped.
