Working on a Saturday

I wound up working yesterday, a Saturday.  Working late and putting in hours on the weekend is a fairly common occurrence lately.  My contract has been extended for another three months, until early October, largely because we’re extremely short handed between now and September.  Not only are we losing two foreign service officers leaving on rotation, with replacement not scheduled to start arriving until August, but our team leader has been out on emergency family leave for the past month and a half.  We expect her to return before Kristin leaves in a few weeks, but there’s no guarantee of that.  Given that Kristin will be out for a period between now and then, and the fact that she is consumed with preparing to leave, I’ll be taking over as acting team leader starting June 1.

That will cut into my time even further beyond the reason I’m already at a loss for time - GEMS.  Governance and Economic Management Support.  It’s the flagship project ($45 million/5 years) for the Democracy and Governance Office.  When the Contracting Officer’s Representative (Tammy) left, folks were trying to figure out how the office would cover the position and realized that the logical next person (Kristin) was leaving in a couple of months, and that the next logical person (Kaya) was just about to leave on family medical leave for who knows how long, so stupid me said, “Sure, I’ll do it.”  I guess I volunteered in part because it came with an extension.  Since then the Talking Heads’ line, “MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!!” keeps running through my brain . . . but that probably says more about me (and my overall mental state, and my musical preferences) than it does about the job.  No, not really, GEMS really is that time consuming - folks still give me this strange look when they ask, “How’s GEMS going?”  as if it were a beast about to devour me.

So in addition to meetings about rule of law and downright enjoyable meetings about land issues, I now get to immerse myself in meetings and guidance on activities related to Public Financial Management (read: bolstering financial management, human resource, public procurement and asset management in government) and Public Sector Modernization (read: civil service reform) managing a project that is 7 times larger than the land project I manage.  But enough about GMES - the point is that I’m finally on my feet after a week of feeling totally disoriented under water (and suffering from mental whiplash bouncing between rule of law - land- PFM), a week of feeling like I’m still underwater but know which way is up, a week of knowing I’ve found the surface but keep getting water in my mouth, to actually feeling like I’m starting to swim (little do I know there’s a current that is pulling me in some unknown direction, so who knows if I’m really making any progress . . .).   That’s just a long way of saying that time is scarce in my life, I come home mentally exhausted every night (so I don’t work when I get home!) and usually have to put in some time on the weekends to keep up.  Everyone seems happy so far so either I’m figuring it out, I’ve got everyone fooled, or they’re just lying to me.  I don’t want to know the truth!

So this past week and next week the project I was hired to manage, the Land Conflict Resolution Project, LCRP, has brought in a mediation expert, Dr. Chris Moore, who is a key advisor to the Liberia Land Commission and who we’ve brought in-country several times to help us and the Land Commission develop a mediation training program and to work on dispute resolution policy.  As part of LCRP, we’ve helped the Land Commission establish Land Coordination Centers in 5 counties with the goal of helping to spread information about land tenure and property rights and access to alternative land dispute resolution services in those areas.  The Coordinators for all 5 Land Coordination Centers were in Monrovia this week for two different trainings with Chris, one on how to prepare for and give workshops and the other on how to facilitate meetings.

Given my insane schedule, I couldn’t attend during the week, but fortunately, the meeting facilitation workshop was yesterday - so I decided I’d fulfill my COR duty to monitor project activities to ensure that US taxpayer dollars were being well spent (they are).

LCC Training

In addition to the 5 coordinators, the technical staff person supporting the Land Commission’s Land Dispute Resolution Task Force was there, as was the recently hired LCRP ADR (alternative dispute resolution) specialist.  And me.

Chris is a great guy, with a very interesting mediation practice.  He lives in Colorado and he and his life-partner, Susan, have build a company that has a great reputation.  Chris gave examples of handling mediation and meeting facilitation issues in contexts ranging from:  divorced parents fighting over their child’s education; county planning in Colorado; public hearings for the US Department of Energy and the public (residents, fishermen, etc) over off-shore windmills near Cape Cod; land conflict resolution in East Timor, the Phillippines and Ghana; to facilitating discussions between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan over how to deal with water shortage issues.  He’s a rather impressive, and humble, person.

Like all good workshops there were exercises to help the coordinators develop practical skills.

LCC Exercise

It was interesting to see how sharp and engaged the LCC Coordinators were.  Liberia suffers from a huge capacity deficit.  As the Minister of Justice told me in my first month here, most Liberians are suffering from 20 years of education and/or professional development loss.  Certainly, anyone who stayed in Liberia during the 80’s, 90’s and the early 00’s has.  It’s impressive to engage with people who are willing to work hard to overcome that loss.  Not all Liberians are willing to do that - many want their government job and just want to keep the paycheck and maintain dysfunctional governance systems.  Not these folks.

The participants thought about the course content and asked challenging questions, often based on the practical, real experiences they face in their communities.

LCC Discussion

I had planned to only stay for half the day (it was, after all, my day off), but the program was so engaging I stayed the whole time.  That gave me an opportunity to pick Chris’ brain during lunch and on the ride back to my apartment concerning issues I’m addressing as part of my responsibilities for developing the USAID mission’s overall land intervention strategy for the next 5 years (another reason they said ok to extend until October).

One thing I can say is that I’m certainly not going to be too skeptical about future requests to bring Chris to Liberia for future LCC staff training, mediation training or support to the Land Commission.  His expertise and work with these key leaders is US taxpayer dollars well spent.

Late in the afternoon the team engaged in an exercise where I was the odd-person out (understandably given that I was there to observe) with folks engaging in two-person teams.   That was very fortunate because the third rain storm of the day blew through and it gave me the opportunity to check it out - it’s hard to get a good shot of what the rain is really like from my apartment, and you really don’t want to be outside in one of these.  So I got a photo.

More importantly, I remembered that the camera has that funny red button that means “video.”  While it may take a bit of time to download (it does in Liberia) click the hyperlink to enjoy our rain:

Yes, the rainy season has started.  And yes, it is that noisy when it rains!