Job

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Job

I hope that Alexander McCall Smith will forgive my borrowing of his text. This comes from a book which under the cover of a detective story does really explain the rather ambiguous attitude of the “good will helpers”.

Please buy or borrow this book or another one by the author, even if Africa is not foremost in your daily worries, you will not be bored, and rather thatyou will gain some kind of hope.

I quote :

Alexander McCall Smith

Les Larmes de la Girafe

Page 102 de l'Edition Française.

Ils voulaient que nous montrions au monde que les gens pouvaient vivre ensemble dans un lieu comme celui-ci et tout partager.

Mma Ramotswe hocha la tête. Elle savait que certains individus aimaient expérimenter toutes sortes de théories sur les différents modes de vie possibles.

Il existait dans ce pays quelque chose qui les attirait, comme si, sur ce territoire vaste et aride, il y avait assez d'air, pour permettre aux idées neuves de respirer. Ces gens-là s'étaient enthousiasmés à la création du mouvement des Brigades. Ils avaient approuvé l'idée de demander aux jeunes qu'ils passent du temps à travailler pour les autres et aident à bâtir leur pays. Mais qu'y avait-il de si exceptionnel à cela? Les jeunes des pays riches ne travaillaient-ils pas? Peut-être, et c'était pourquoi ces étrangers trouvaient l'idée si attrayante. On ne pouvait rien leur reprocher en général.

Ils étaient gentils et témoignaient beaucoup de respect aux Batswana. Pourtant, recevoir sans cesse des conseils de l'extérieur devenait parfois lassant. On trouvait toujours une organisation étrangère pour venir expliquer aux Africains''. « Voilà ce que vous faites, voilà ce qu'il faudrait faire » Ces suggestions étaient peut-être judicieuses, sans doute avaient-elles fait leurs preuves ailleurs, mais l'Afrique avait besoin de solutions bien à elle.

La ferme représentait un autre exemple de ces projets qui échouaient. On ne pouvait pas faire pousser des légumes dans le Kalahari, un point, c'est tout, il existait beaucoup de possibilités de cultures pour un sol comme celui-ci, mais il s'agissait de cultures qui appartenaient au lieu, des cultures qui n'avaient rien avoir avec les tomates ou la laitue. Tomates et laitue n'appartenaient pas au Botswana ana, du moins pas à cette région-ci du Botswana.

End of quote

Let us come back to my Africa

After seven years in Zambia, my boss at Head Quarters in the FAO Fertilizer Program informed me that the FAO may possibly survive without my assistance, advice and reproaches.

Most likely that was the happiest day in the life of my Head Quarters boss.

My boss, the one that fired me, was a man of huge courage, whose life had been carried out under the sigh of courage, a soldier and an agronomist, a man that war spared when Europe was going through the madness of the Hitler crowds, a man blessed by beautiful daughters, a man with huge political gifts, a man totally devoted to the Organization and its Directors.

For more than ten year, he was my mentor, one day he was the man that held the pen that euthanised me.

To sharpen the knife he had sent one of these famous “evaluation missions” its only job was to dig my grave as if I could not do it myself. Once the mission presented its conclusions to the Ministry, I was a witness to a miracle, my Secretary of State of Agriculture, Mr Mukutu, defended me, something that he did not have to do. Usually so called “experts” are just waste material, one replaces another one. If you ever tell me that you cannot find courage, loyalty in humans working for Organizations, I will have to disagree; I have seen it, from my Zambian bosses and friends.

So I went back in the open market, but as from the day I left the FAO Fertilizer Program, while to on-lookers I may have resembled a normal human being, the truth was that my life ended the day when my boss called me for the last meeting in his Office and from then I was a Zombie.

I managed to convince the Swedes into continuing the activities in Zambia. So, my life in Zambia continued.

The Swedes were very generous, suddenly we had a water tank at our house, we did not have to worry every day about where to find water.

The Swedes were very honest and devoted, with them I could continue my work as an assistant of my Zambian Chief, the Director, Mr. Mumba, and his Assistant Director, Mr Mulele, a man much more much gifted than I was.

My student and Boss, Mr Mumba died in a totally unnecessary road accident. How shall I forgive fate? But who can prevent a truck loaded with cement to park on the side of the road and not put distress signals as they were sold on the market a year ago?

My direct boss, Mr Mulele, continued a very positive career. Had he worked in the European World he would today have been the Director General of something.

After a couple of years, the Swedish Development Agency got tired of paying for this activity. I can understand them, the political mood in those days were that African farmers were to grow profitable crops using non-existent water on non-existent seeds, non-existent money and absolutely no fertilizers.

Being out of work gives you a better understanding of what it is to be an African farmer.

You are alone, you depend on the whims of fate, and the whims of fate are seldom very favourable.

Being out of work you suddenly discover all these Governmental and Private Agencies which are there to tell you how to get a job. Once you have seen them at work you feel much more sympathy for sharks.

Being out of work you discover that one of the jobs open to you is to become a Trainer and teach other jobless citizen all kind of skills which you have to pretend will help them gain a job but are of course totally useless, like learning in two days how to use Excel.

Being out of work, you gain a better understanding for the African farmer. Here you are, somewhere there is someone who wants to give you a job, how are you going to find that someone and how are you going to convince that someone to give that job to you and not to your neighbour?

Most Organizations recruiting have a huge problem, namely, how are they going to find the person they are looking for?

They very much prefer to take from their own reserves, people that have grown in the ranks, people that know all the written rules, and all the unwritten rules people whose weaknesses are known, but sometimes Organizations realize that this in-breeding is, at the end, going to lead to their death through anaemia and that all these people grown inside the Organization are tainted by links and allegiances to one power group or another. So they go out on the Market looking for an outsider.

Shall I tell you a secret?

Mostly Organizations go out in the Market looking for an Outsider that will bring fresh ideas free of “as you say Sir” attitude, but in the end, when the selection process is ending, their nerves give up and they choose an insider. Better the evil you know than the one you have to discover.

Still they have to go through the recruitment process. Or pretend that they go thought he recruitment process.

Shall we be kind to one another and not say a word about the absurdity of the curriculum vitae and letter of motivation procedure?

We arrive at the end of the selection procedure; the Organization has reduced the number of candidates to six. Which one should they select?

Nothing better than the old tried and proved African palaver methods;

The Elder of the Tribe are gathered. They are all supposed to have gone through the applications of the candidates.

Each candidate is then called to present his candidature to the important People of the Tribe.

It is a bit like when you have to go to the shop and buy a new washing machine because the old faithful one you have had for fifteen years suddenly gave up one day when you tried to wash six bed sheets and four curtains in one washing machine cycle.

You look into the Consumers magazines and find out all the characteristics that differentiate one washing machine from another. You look at the evaluation tests and are convinced that the one you want is the Wash-Wash Super Grand Superior House Friend model AAA. Proud of yourself you go to the Super Market and you discover that this model, regretfully Sir, is not stocked and that this model is no longer produced, but that you are lucky they happen to have the Supreme Grand Washy-Washy House Friend model AABB.

The very kind seller, sorry, the Product Adviser, takes you to the Machine and explains all its qualities. You now discover that this model, most probably excellent, happens to be five centimetre too large and will not fit into the place were you used to have your washer.

This is not problem, Sir, the super market is very Happy to tell you that most of their clients are very happy to buy the Splash-Splash Superior Ebony White CCC01 washing machine which is the one that was produced once they stopped making the Washy-Washy Model.

You look at the price tag and discover that it is also 67 dollars more expensive and that it was rated on the Consumers magazine as “doubtful”.

When you point is out to the Product Adviser, he smiles kindly at you and point out that the model tested by the Consumers Magazine was model was the CCC001. A lot of difference, Sir!. Perplexed you start looking in your pockets for that piece of paper where you wrote the reference and point out to the Product Adviser, see CCC01, you see? Which forces the Product adviser to point out that the Consumers magazine says CCCC001, not CCC01; By that time you are totally confused.

But fate is kind to you, it so happens that the Super Market is having a Selling Week on the “Clean Assistant Nice Friend model A1” which happens to be of the right size, just about 23 dollars more than what you expected, but Sir, see that when you the washing cycle is finished, this very reliable model will make “Cluck Cluck cluk during thirty seconds, which will save you a lot of money, for more than this minimal price difference;

So, you went in to buy Wash-Wash Superior Grand Superior and you go out with Clean Assistant Nice Friend;

When you come home, you will be totally unable to remember why you bought this model, that it is indeed five centimetres too large, and usually by the time you come home, you also discover that you could have repaired your old faithful washing machine.

The recruitment procedure is exactly the same.

Each one of the Elders of the Company comes into the selection hearing room with a picture of the candidate he wants to select. It is pure coincidence that the candidate he/she wants to select is in his mind, a picture clone of himself.

If you were able to look into the minds of the Important Persons of the Selection Committee after the hearings, you would see a huge dark cloud of unhappiness. One candidate is talking too much, one is too silent, one is too old, one it too young, one looks like a nasty fellow you would not care to meet a two o'clock in the night in the Paris street, one looks like a, well you know what I mean, I can neither write nor say it because today it would be discrimination and it would show that I am not up to date with the value of the World of today.

If you had been able to lift the top of the head of the Important Members of the Selection Committee before the hearings, you would have found in all of them a huge grey spongy mass of humility with a diamond shining in its Centre, this diamond proclaiming the total conviction of the Committee member that he/she is possibly not the most superior human in the Word, but that He/She has the gift of distinguishing good people from bad people.

Shall I tell another trade secret? People who are in their dark inner self convinced that they can distinguish bad from god make the best marks for confidence trick specialists.

Some confidence trick specialists discover this gift late in their life, for instance in Africa, some farmers discover one day that it takes far less energy and sweat to go from one relief and assistance Agency to another rather than plough the fields (meaning sending wife and children out to plough the fields). Once a farmer discovers that the Assistance Agency are competing with one another for the privilege of assisting him, he will no longer have to work a day in his life, except to keep a few meters of field handy to show visitors, but even that is superfluous, who can distinguish my maize field from your maize field?

Incidentally, should you one day be forced to be an Important Member of a Selection Committee, may I remind you of the wisest of all rules?

Pack your cards in such a way that, if the selected candidate vanishes one day with all the funds of the Organization, you can prove from the minutes of the meeting that you were against his selection. At the same time, pack your cards in such a way that, if the selected candidate proves to be something of a genetic cross between the Genius of the World, the Warmest Hart of the year, the Best and Most Efficient Organizer, the Most Beloved Task Coordinator (never say that someone is a boss of a Director) you can prove that you strongly supported his candidature during the Selection Procedure.

Regretfully, in all sincerity, I must say that of all candidates I have seen in my life, I was clearly superior, the fact that Selection Committees were unable to perceive that evidence makes me doubt very much their wisdom and competence.