My days in April and May have been
filled with operational activities based upon methodological analysis
of very complex realities, as they exist in cross cultural
interactions and rural Africa. These months I came into play to provide
for crisis management due to a whole array of challenges following
two unprecedented delays in release of projects funding. These delays
effectively took the wind out of the sails of Macha Works. However,
after two months of purposeful and focused interventions, the
organisation is alive and back in local hands. It has been a rare
privilege to provide guidance in such challenging situations, ably
supported by backstopping through discussions with experts in fields
of accountancy, diplomacy, economy, management, ethnography,
development, engineering, etc.
Of course, not everyone has access to
such high quality soundboards, nor access to experts or an ability to
take an extra-personal perspective. In rural Africa, the affects of
these voids add significantly to the workload and social strains.
Such is exasperated by the pressure cooker situation in which crisis
management takes place, which severely limits one's ability to interact with
most stakeholders, or anybody else in that manner.
Without a doubt, in the specific
context and culture of resource limited environments in rural Africa
- with highly oral and relational communities - the strenuous work of
a crisis manager is little understood. This gives multiple views on
realities in the relational web of local, national and international
relationships. Actually, crisis management involves work that goes
against the grain of the individual whom is confronted with
individual loss and hurt, and as such seemingly feeds a collective
atrophy and self-destructiveness of hurting groups in society. In
rural Africa this all is further amplified due to a limited knowledge
base in management techniques and organisational concepts, and by
gossip run wild.
The relational society links challenges
and achievements to people, with little recognition of existence or
benefit of institutional entities. Thus management actions are
primarily related to the manager' person with little regards for the
(legal) entity being managed (for).
With the aim for Macha Works for the
locally embedded empowerment of the local person, and having gone
through a challenging, interesting, but also depleting, chapter of
crisis management, it now feels that I have reached the end of my
season at Macha. The dream has shown capability of being reality, and
the entity has proven structurally sound to respond to the
circumstances and environment in an appropriate manner. It is time
for me to move on. However, with all onlookers I look forward to
sharing opportunities of continuous learning on how local talent
will grow and augment Macha Works' social model of
implementation, and act according to the situation and the culture of
the society they operate in, in rural Macha.
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