Feeling very small
on Emily Bullock (Nigeria), 01/Aug/2011 09:05, 34 days ago
My boss is a "big man" a Professor no less, and as he is busy meeting "big people" to do big things, like getting Nigeria's Climate Change Adaptation Plan accepted and implemented in the country he is rarely in the office.On Wednesday last week, I checked my email after a very long road trip to Abuja, I was pleased to see an email from him saying could we meet in Abuja to discuss the draft OD Work Plan I had developed for NEST.  At the end of my meeting on Thursday around 4pm, I called him, and he said I could come to Top View Hotel.  I arrived at 5pm, he was still in a meeting but came out to greet me, said I should have a drink and he would come when he could.A while later he came out, introduced me to his brother, ordered us both pepper soup, and disappeared again.  Later he emerged and joined us to eat the soup, very tasty by the way, I had fish pepper soup, chatted to his brother in Igbo and disappeared.  I kept waiting, it wasn't all bad, I did some work, and waited.  By 7pm, I was getting fed up and ordered a cup of tea, thinking after I had finished that I would decided what to do.  At 8pm, the meeting he was in finished but he didn't come, I called him after around 10 minutes, he told me he was coming.  I began to get annoyed, after all this meeting was his idea.  But I also realised that by now he may not be able to or want to meet, if it was me, I would have come out and apologised, and arranged a new meeting time and date, he may be embarrassed to do that and leave me there for ever.  So I gave it another 15 minutes, called again, somebody else answered his call and said he was in a meeting.  I left, and sent him a text message to tell him, I had left.Later he texted me, and apologised saying there were family around.At the time, I managed to accept that this was unintentional, its very cultural and Nigerians probably just think it is normal, now he has just called a staff meeting tomorrow with all staff at the time I am supposed to have a meeting with all staff, I find it very difficult to accept what I know to be true that it is unintentional, and not to accept my emotional response, that feels like a jilted lover waiting for a man that never turns up, or that my work is being undermined. This is the challenge of working cross-culturally!