Oblomov Reincarnated

This week’s Ramble begins with a literary reference. Now, I know you’re all well acquainted with 19th Century Russian literature, so I’ll be brief. Oblomov is the titular character of a novel by Ivan Gonchorov. Without giving too much away, he’s lazy, incompetent and knows it. And, of course, he’s a civil servant.

Last week I introduced our very own Malawian Oblomov, albeit in passing. He’s a colleague, working for another Ministry, and loyalty to the Government prevents me from talking too much about him. I had another meeting with him earlier this week, and once again he displayed a stunning lack of knowledge. It wouldn’t be so shocking if he at least pretended to give a s**t about it… but actually, he’s perfectly happy sitting in on meetings and deflecting any requests that he do any work.

Does every workplace have someone like this wasting space?

* * *

Speaking of wasting space, an update on my car. It’s still in Mozambique, and is now the centre of a minor diplomatic incident. Apparently, the Mozambican police don’t want to release it until the Malawian police give them back a piece of evidence they’re holding to use in a trial in Malawi. So my car is now a pawn in a strategic battle between police forces. The Commissioner for police in Lilongwe put a call in to Interpol to try sort it out.

And you know, it’s just a bloody Toyota Corolla!

* * *

A short survey.

Which cliché do you most ascribe to? ‘Walk before you can run’ or ‘Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars’?

This is a very crude representation of two conflicting opinions over our recent and ongoing attempts to create a Joint Assistance Strategy that gives a sense of purpose to the hundreds of foreign-financed activities in Malawi. Both views have proponents within both the wider Government and the donor community, and to be honest, I can see both sides of the argument. In the past, its true to say that we’ve not had any semblance of donor coordination, so to try and rectify the situation at one go is very ambitious. And with Government still staffed by Oblomovs in many posts, do we have the people to do it?

On the other hand, we now have momentum, and the right people are in key posts, so if we wait a year or two, the circumstances may have changed, and may never be so favourable again. And, every month and year we wait is a year in which someone’s quality of life makes no discernable improvement, or even gets worse. Think of the children! Won’t somebody think of the children?!

All in all, I’d rather be a noble failure than unambitious. It’s the difference between Lomana Lua-Lua and Emile Heskey. Lets see whether Portsmouth or Birmingham stay up.

Down for maintenance; and why Ice Cube had it right…

Apologies for those of you who, like myself, were unable to access the blog for the last couple of days. I know the panic that this must have caused, but please file any claims for emotional damage against blogger.com and not against the Maradona.

* * *

That’s part of the reason why I’m late with the Ramble this week. There are two others. Let’s start with the bad news.

The police finally got their act together and went to Mozambique to get my car back. They had a car to get there, a driver to bring the other car back, fuel; everything they needed. Well, almost everything. The bright sparks somehow forgot to first contact the Mozambicans and let them know that they’d be coming and could they please have the car ready?

You can guess the rest. They arrived in Mozambique, remembered that they had to apply for the release of the car, did so, ran out of money and came back here empty handed. They have to return next week, or whenever the release forms are signed.

Ice Cube said it best. Since this is a family Ramble, I’ll merely link
it, with the warning that those under sixteen should really shy away from it.

* * *

The good news is that the other cause for the tardy post is entirely positive. I’ve spent the week drafting and redrafting a proposal paper for our Joint Assistance Strategy, and this afternoon finally sent it out to a selection of Government officials and donor agency chaps for comments. Once its broadly acceptable, it goes to the Cabinet for approval, which is rather exciting.

On top of that, I also just finished drafting a speech for our Minister of Finance for delivery at a meeting I’m attending on Monday morning. It will be interesting to see how much improvisation he allows himself. It’s not the first speech I’ve written here, having drafted one for the President a few weeks ago, but it’s the first one I’ve drafted and been able to watch the delivery of.

* * *

Lastly, I finally saw a couple of African Paradise Flycatchers in my garden. There were two, a male and a female, absolutely stunning birds.

A week of important meetings awaits, so next week I’ll Ramble at a bit more length.

Tsalani bwino.

“Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!”

This week’s Ramble feels like it hasn’t slept since Monday.

The IMF Mission to Malawi is in country, and so we’ve been busy with the attendant meetings and number crunching that always entails. Additionally, I’m still beavering away on our Joint Assistance Strategy and trying desperately to co-ordinate our work with that which goes into the Budget. I’ve also been performing some basic statistics and analysis of the balance of donor funding to Malawi to give us a start in the coordinating work that the JAS will inevitably entail. All of this has pretty much taken up all of my waking hours, but this week I’ve had two added important engagements: the second legs of the UEFA Champions League.

Malawi, like most of the rest of Africa, is absolutely football mad. Most of my colleagues follow the latest happenings in world football as least as passionately as they do the latest comings and goings in development economics. Since they’ve twigged that I spend pretty much every second of my existence thinking about football on some level, every time someone needs to know who the fat Brazilian who played holding midfield for Deportivo in the late ‘90s was* or who first had the brainwave of playing Gaizka Mendieta in central midfield**, they come to me. As a result, this week I’ve been more in demand for my assessment of Werder Bremen’s attack as my opinion on the number of projects purporting to support good governance in Malawi (for the record, those opinions are: bloody good; and too bloody many).

I spent most of Monday and Tuesday alternating between wild optimism about Milan’s chances and profound depression about the same. Come Wednesday night, would we see the Milan that played Juventus off the park or the one that wilted 3-0 to Palermo?

Anyone who’s been to The Daily Hairdryer (if you haven’t, why not?!) will already know how that went, and what I thought about it, so I’ll limit myself to saying this: YES!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOO-HOO!!!!!!!

And to make a sweet night even sweeter, Liverpool, the team that stole our seventh European Cup, went out without a whimper, taught how to finish by a Barcelona reject and a guy who couldn’t lace Del Piero’s boots.

* * *

I mentioned briefly that I was doing some basic analysis on the balance of donor funded projects in Malawi. This is the first time this has been possible, because no-one has ever had anything close to comprehensive information on this before. Even though the results were only preliminary, they were very, very interesting.

Donors love to talk about capacity. ‘No, we can’t fund that; you don’t have the capacity’. ‘No, you can’t ask for that information; you don’t have the capacity to handle it’. ‘Our primary function is to build capacity here; to help you help yourselves’. So of course, they spend a lot on this sector, right? No chance. It’s one of the most under-funded areas of development. If our capacity constraints are more than just an easy excuse for donor failings, they should be willing to put their money where their mouths are and fund improvements, which I think we definitely need.

You also really see the fashions of the moment. By far the most projects running in the country focus on governance (promoting democracy, supporting elections, anti-corruption drives etc); these are all good things in their own right, but do they help improve the actual real living conditions of the impoverished farmer? I don’t think so. They should be funded, but a balance needs to be struck; not all donors should be active in this sector, and those that are should coordinate what their doing and focus on a few major projects.

By contrast, no-one wants to fund tourism promotion, despite the obvious benefits this brings to our foreign exchange reserves and the fact that it can be used to generate income from the poorest people outside of the towns; no tourist spends long in Lilongwe or Blantyre.

* * *

Went to a workshop on Monday attended by most of the heavy hitters in Malawi. It was facilitated by a consultant from abroad who spent most of the time cracking appalling jokes and trying to gee us up with consultant speak. One PowerPoint slide included the following phrases: ‘the tipping point’ and ‘re-orient to synergise: cluster, locate, sequence’. Shortly after beating the consultant to a bloody pulp with his laptop, a colleague commented that he clearly aspired to be the Jerry Springer of Development.

* Donato was the first brilliant fat Brazilian player I ever saw. The second was Ronaldo. Despite the naysayers, he’ll still wind up lighting up Germany 2006.
** Claudio Ranieri. The guy has a habit of building up teams to the cusp of greatness before getting the boot. The superb Valencia sides under Cuper and Benitez were raised by Ranieri. He built them around a reformed right-back who was the Frank Lampard of the Mestella before Lazio killed his career. He did the same for Chelsea – he signed all of their good players, excepting Essien.

“Our Father, who Art in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development…”

I just got back from a fantastic meeting, which began and ended on a slightly surreal note. We have a new Principal Secretary (I’ve only just found out we actually have a PS and an Secretary to the Treasury – the roles are normally kept separate, and our outgoing acting PS was unusual in that he was also acting ST. Confused?). Another tough lady, though this time not quite so hard-as-nails as the Director of my division. Still, she’s lovely and it’s already apparent that she’s very competent.

Anyway, she chaired this meeting, about plans for a Joint Assistance Strategy, in essence the Debt and Aid Policy I so covet. After thanking us for our presence, she said something that really threw us: ‘Normally, at this stage in our meeting, I pray for strength and wisdom from the Lord; would any of you like to lead us in prayer at this moment?’ Even though I know that most of my colleagues are religious, and indeed, the Director loves to quote from the scriptures, we all reacted in the same way, like first form students who don’t want to be called up to the blackboard. Everyone was furiously studying their shoelaces. Eventually the PS recited a short prayer herself, as the rest of us respectfully bowed our heads and clasped hands.

Many of you know that I’m a committed atheist. This is something I have actually kept hidden. Malawi is a very religious place, and most conversations eventually get to the question ‘mumapemphera kuti?’, meaning ‘where do you pray?’ The question not only assumes that you do pray, but also that prayer is a regular part of your life, as it’s posed in the present habitual tense. No one minds if you’re not a Christian, as most Malawians are, but the assumption that you must believe in something divine is very difficult to disabuse most people of, and can lead to some very long and frustrating conversations. So, like many atheist foreigners here, I normally tell people I pray in a temple in London, for which there is no Malawian equivalent. This is always accepted and the conversation passes without blows being exchanged.

At a meeting, though, in a country which separates Church and State, and is tolerant of religious diversity, I did find it a bit odd though my friends had warned me that this might happen. It wasn’t meant badly or to exclude anyone, but was done in the unspoken assumption that everyone must be a Christian. I really wanted to do a Richard Pryor, and offer to give a reading from ‘the book of Wonder! A boy was born… in HARD TIME MISSISSIPI! Surrounded by! Four walls! thatwerenotpretty! His parents – that’s two people – gave him love and affection. To keep him going, goingintherightdirection!’

* * *

But why was the meeting fantastic? Primarily because we finally explicitly stated our desire to create a Joint Assistance Strategy, got almost all of the key players together and finally got the ball rolling on starting it. We’ve already hit a donor-shaped brick wall, in that they think we can’t do it, but its within our compass to prove them wrong. It might simply be a case of getting someone other than ourselves, like an independent development capacity expert, to say we’ve got the abilities and will to do it. When the donors are on board, and when our concept paper gets cleared by Cabinet, we’ll be able to move at pace. I hope.

BTW – I’m hopefully going to be drafting this concept paper next week. All depends on whether I can finish our manual for operations in time.

* * *

Well, I’ve bought another car. And as luck would have it, on the same f**king day, they’ve found my old one! Unbelievable. It’s in Mozambique. When I get it back, I’m selling it, and should hopefully recoup the cost of the new car. What a pain.

I understand the Germans have a word for ‘the secret feeling of disappointment one experiences when things don’t turn out as badly as you expected’. If that’s true, I need to find out what word that is; it pretty much sums up my feelings right now.

* * *

Finally, may I point out that Joe Cole was simply fantastic for England this week? He’s surely got to be one of the first names on the team sheet now.