B-day in Nigeria...

Another year passes and you think… what the heck is going on… I am getting older, what have I done with the last year, what have I done with my life? Have I done enough? Today I celebrated my Birthday here in Nigeria. It was wonderful to be surrounded by friends. Jess worked hard to make sure that it was a special day I am very grateful for her kindness and thoughtfulness. At dinner we had a Happy Birthday song, cake and she showed a slide show that she made of pictures from my last three years. In the very moments that I was contemplating my use of time, it really was incredible to see pictures of all the places that I have been and the different things that I have been involved with. I can’t believe how exciting it has all been. Between the different relationships, different businesses, different countries, different books and different humanitarian initiatives it has truly been incredible and I am extremely grateful for the healthy mind and body as well as the circumstances that I have been granted that have made it possible for me to be involved with the things that I have.

So what’s going on here in Nigeria?... I wish that you could tell me. Regarding our project we are still working hard to be able to have the necessary meeting that we need in order to get our MOU signed. With all the conflict in the country, the Governor has been extremely occupied with unforeseen activities and everything else has fallen victim to second priority-vile. So in many cases we are waiting… but never waiting idle. We fill our days writing more reports, brainstorming detailed conceptualizations of company requirements, project implementations and timeframes. We are making more and more contacts everyday and meeting more and more of the state stakeholders who need to be briefed on our proposals. As far as approval to move forward, that is 100% confirmed by the governor, in many private meetings, the problem is that he created a committee to officially analyze and approve the project, many of which we have had many private meetings with who are extremely enthusiastic about, others have their reservations, but the problem is that we have not been able to get everyone together. But we are working the system and ultimately it will all pay off. It is funny, about two weeks into our experience here; we were waiting in the Governor’s house, hoping to get a second of his time to talk about a very urgent matter. I was definitely getting impatient (nothing here happens by appointment… If you want to see the Governor, even if you are his guest brought out here for the US, then you wait in his parlor for hours and hours until he comes in, and/ or walks by and you get 15 seconds of face time…) and a man I barely knew at the time came up to me and said, if you want to get anything done around here you have to follow this one piece of advice: every day… EVERYDAY… take a big dose of patience in the morning and then one in the afternoon and then one at night. I laughed and knew exactly what he was referring to. It calmed my nerves to know that others knew EXACTLY how I was feeling… and I took it to heart. Rather than approaching it with Western mentality, feeling that it was unprofessional to not set up appointments and that my time was more important than to be forced to wait for hours… I began to simply accept and enjoy the wait. My understanding of the system has developed such that the other day, when we were sitting in the governor’s parlor, I looked across the room and noticed a young man, who I had met briefly several times was looking very restless and somewhat frustrated… I put my hand on his shoulder and gave him the same advice. He smiled and I have noticed him much more relaxed sense.

That really brings me to another interesting point altogether. Although everything about this experience has been incredible, from planning a statewide human infrastructure project, from being in Nigeria, to all the field work and little adventures in between… one of the other things that has been incredible has been the things that I have learned about how the political system around here works… who makes the decisions, who are the key players and how to connect to them, how to act, what to say, how things actually get done and in general, how to work the system. I am not sure that there are very many young San Diego guys who can confidently say that they know how to work the African politics game, and it is very exciting to feel more and more confident in this area. Not only do I know who to get things done, but I know what is appropriate when you are working out with a governor in the gym, why you must pee before you get into the car, because the government convoy NEVER stops, how to fasten the cool buckles on helicopter seat belts and the facial expressions that get the point across to people who have a different set of cultural programming. Pretty cool stuff.

Not only have I learned a ton about the aforementioned stuff, but also I have learned a ton about myself and I feel like I have really picked up some additional skills as well. One of the biggest advancements that I feel like I have made is with understanding the various components of leadership. As you may know, I founded and am the president of SCHAP, a San Diego based, international non-profit. Over those years I have been accused of many less than perfect leadership behaviors that have offended others or decreased my impact as a leader. When I came out here, the agreement was that I was going to partner with a Nigerian, who is a friend of the governor, who I met in San Diego. At first the agreement was 50-50… in every way. We were going to work side by side to head this social enterprise that we were founding. As the weeks went on, we had several arguments that began to emerge more and more frequently. Prince, the name of my partner, is substantially older than me and he assumed that although we had discussed 50-50, I would assume the role of the Jr. partner as a result of the age and nativity. I was having nothing of that and was prepared to be second to no one. One day this really hit a head and we had a couple blowout arguments. We were both furious and very happy to discover how to pursue things on our own. In a final blow out, Prince informed me that the relationship was over and that we must part ways. There were tremendous implications and we would be doing a major disservice to Bayelsa, by allowing our pride to thwart the progress of our project. I left the house furious and not about to give in… I felt that I would rather die than is a vice president to someone else. Luckily I had the sense to convince Michael to walk with me think that maybe he would be able to talk me out of what I was about to do. Sure enough his Chi-gonness in conjunction with some I-Ching radicands he was able to calm my nerve. I went back into the house, apologized for everything that had offended him and committed to work in a subordinate role. It was perhaps the hardest thing that I have ever done in my entire life. I had to hold up the project and my pride and luckily I had enough sense to choose the better path. Honestly, I have no shame saying this, that that was one of the most mature and humble and wise decisions that I have ever made. As we worked out the details, I was able to steer away from vice president and we settled on Chief Executive Officer for him and Chief Operating Officer for me. We are both equal owners in the Company and we are the only to officers in the company. It was a narly, but a cool experience. Since then it has proven to be a relationship that works and in fact very productive and functional. He does his stuff and I create the systems within our project initiatives that allow our objectives to be realized, I also manage the use of time of our employees to make sure that we are getting the job done.

In conclusion, things are working out very well. I am very anxious to be coming home soon and pray with all my heart and soul that we will have the MOU signed and in hand before I come back to the states so that any ambiguity regarding 2010 can be eliminated once and for all, and we can begin to really build our capacity and start making things happen already. Hope everything is going super well wherever you are, doing whatever you are doing. Stay tunes, next episode I will give you all the details about what is going on on the National Political Stage… pretty interesting stuff…