Sunday 5th August 2007
on J and M in Assosa (Ethiopia), 04/Aug/2007 13:01, 34 days ago
5th August 07This week I have felt like the Housekeeper of a badly run boys boarding school, not that I have any idea how they might feel. Let me explain.This week has seen the start of the MI own courses, first one on‘Report Writing’. 17 keen trainees eventually turned up at the MI on Monday am and the course duly started. I had inspected the bedrooms, the showers and handbasins and the toilets (pit latrines outside) and suggested/ advised/instructed that they should be cleaned.It all seemed to go well until Wednesday when the trainees complained that the accommodation needed cleaned. I again inspected the facilities to find that none of my instructions had been carried out and that the trainees had a valid point. I complained to the person responsible but decided this was not going to get the necessary results. We arranged a meeting with the MI Manager, the Administrative Head, the manager responsible for the cleaners, 3 experts plus us. Jeremy introduced it most diplomatically by saying we wanted to learn from this first course and that the Bureau Head who is responsible for the MI had said this was an important time for the MI and standards must be high. The meeting started off with everything being translated into English but as things got more heated the translation stopped and we had to rely on body language. It was obvious that the administrative head and the other manager were being called to account for the poor cleaning and told that the cleaning needed to improve. The MI Manager was extremely angry. The next morning the Administrative Head had a meeting with the cleaners who presumably were told to raise their standards. I have to say that our cleaners could teach the NHS cleaners a thing or two. They wave a brush over the floor for a few minutes in the morning and then sit about for the rest of the day. The sad thing is that they do not seem to be given any guidelines from management. Like the NHS were one remembers the dirt under the bed rather than the excellent job the surgeon has done, our trainees will remember the dirty showers of the MI rather than the excellent training. This would be very disheartening for our experts who are actually delivering the training on‘Project Planning’ over the next 2 weeks. They have worked extremely hard and produced a very professional manual of 80 pages. In addition they have produced power point presentations and are nervously awaiting the beginning of the course. This is the first time the MI has organised and given any training and we are pleased that we have 30 trainees booked onto this course. We are even making a profit on both these courses. I must say it has probably been our most stressful week since we arrived here. I did not think that inspecting accommodation etc really came into my job description butas Training Expert I suppose that covers everything. I spent Friday afternoon again inspecting the accommodation and facilities with the Administrative Head and was pleasantly surprised. The cleaners had really worked hard and seemed to take pride in the fact that the showers etc were so clean.Fortunately the Manager of the MI is being extremely supportive and has told the administrative section to improve standards. He shares our ambition to make the MI a reasonable asset to the region.So next week will be a real test for our experts as they begin their training.In addition VSO have decided to mark the anniversary of their 10 years in Ethiopia next week. To help celebrate this, Mark Goldring Chief Executive for VSO Global, is to visit Ethiopia. He will spend the first few days of the week in Addis (staying at the British Embassy) and then as a complete contrast, weather permitting, arrive in Assosa on Thursday pm. He is to visit the Regional Education Bureau and us at the MI. There will be a Reception with media attendance on Friday morning and then a dinner at the‘poshest’ hotel in town, Bamboo Paradise, with the President and volunteers, on the Friday evening.This with the training and a number of personal happenings will make sure we have a lot on our mind this forthcoming week.