Strengthening the fight against HIV in Southern Africa

by Hamish Wilson/

With dramatic changes taking place in the nature of the HIV epidemic since the introduction of antiretroviral therapy, and consequent shifts in the global response to HIV (together with the onset of donor fatigue), Catholic aid agency CAFOD recognised the need to strengthen its HIV response in the global HIV hub of Southern Africa through a dedicated regional strategy.

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Wasafiri has been instrumental in developing that strategy with CAFOD and its partners. As an initial step in this process, Wasafiri undertook a review in 2013 of CAFOD-funded HIV programmes run by 13 partners in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, formulating recommendations for ways to strengthen CAFOD’s HIV work in the region. Wasafiri also designed and facilitated a partner workshop in Zambia to validate the findings of the review, and was tasked with compiling the outcomes of the workshop and developing the regional strategy.

The strategy produced provides guidance to CAFOD staff and partners in their efforts to address the evolving challenge of HIV in Southern Africa by shaping CAFOD’s organisational and programmatic response to HIV in the region for the next three to five years.

Taking into account the intervening changes in the epidemic and the local contexts of the countries identified, the strategy outlines appropriate adaptations to programming and partner support to ensure the gains already made in Southern Africa in the fight against HIV are maintained and further advanced.

The Significance and Magic of Slowing Down

by Martin Kalungu-Banda/

Introduction

Slowing down is an amazing way of creating conditions in which a system accomplishes what “it” is seeking to achieve in a faster and more effective way. By system I mean ‘self’ as in individual person, or a group of people or an organisation. For some reason, we have tricked ourselves into thinking about ‘speed’ as a virtue. It is like the faster you do things the more you are assumed to be effective. The reality is often very different. Speed creates inattention to what really matters and imprisons people into the proverbial hamster-wheel. In its wheel, the hamster runs very fast and gets the impression that it is going somewhere. In reality, the hamster is simply in the same place.

In this brief article, I share what I have witnessed in the last two months with regard to how ‘slowing down the system’ may lead individuals and groups to deeper understanding and more creative responses.

Different groups and contexts…

In the last week of April 2012, I was in Abu Dhabi where I had the opportunity to co-lead a process involving forty emerging leaders from seven Arab and three European countries. The emerging leaders were seeking solutions to the challenge of youth unemployment. In four days, the leaders (participants) came up with five ICT (information and communication technology) based innovative ideas for prototyping how to reduce youth unemployment. What do I think allowed the emerging leaders coming from different countries and cultural backgrounds to accomplish what they did in four days?

At the beginning of May 2012, I had the privilege of working in Argentina with over 70 incredibly talented emerging leaders from one of the world’s leading banks. In seven days, the bankers sought to understand the needs of local businesses and community based organisations and provided solutions that the stakeholders felt were truly game-changing. In one experience, a local business was passionately looking for ways of scaling-up their work without reneging on their commitment to environmental sustainability and the values that intimately connected them to their stakeholders. What do I think enabled the bankers understand so deeply and incisively the needs of their clients and provided such invaluable solutions?

In the third of week of May, I was in Zambia co-facilitating a course in Organisation Development. The course focused on ‘Intervention Strategies’ and the participants were middle to senior managers from business, public and civil society sectors. In real-time, the participants practised how to intervene in different situations through the intentional use of ‘self’. They used real life situations to practice the principles and values they were learning about. At the end of the four-day course, many participants marvelled at their own capacity to generate positive results and bring about a different (desired) reality. What do I think permitted the course participants to have such a deep experience?

In the first week of June, I was in Brussels co-leading a training programme for consultants and managers seeking to develop their skills in facilitating profound change at personal, group, and organisational levels. At the end of the three-day programme, participants felt that they had gained practical skills of how to enable profound change happen. Many participants shared that they had experienced a personal transformation in the way they thought about and practised ‘systems change’. To what do I attribute this perceived transformation?

Same approach….

My colleagues and I who worked on the above assignments ensured that the design of the processes we used deliberately included the following key ‘ingredients’:

Deepening quality of attention of participants

We (facilitators) created an opportunity for participants to engage in short and yet very deep reflections at several junctures each day. We called this ‘attention practice’. The assumption we worked with was that many people, especially those in leadership positions, do not have adequate opportunities to reflect on their work, their work’s impact, and the possible futures they are contributing towards or simply facing. The three minutes of silence were followed by another three minutes of journaling. In the three minutes of journaling participants wrote in their notebooks or journals or drew mind-maps or any other way of expressing their reflection or insights on paper. Journaling was followed by a sharing of insights in pairs or small groups.  Most participants expressed surprise, wonder and gratitude for value they discovered from intentional silence and journaling.

Attending to ‘Self’ as an Instrument

Through intentional silence and other techniques (that included peer feedback, personal assessment, practising techniques for growing one’s presence); participants experimented with using themselves as ‘instruments for the change they wanted to see’. This meant that participants needed to be aware of the inner intent from which they operated, and chance they had to re-calibrate that intent. They would then make the intent come through the way they communicated and conducted themselves. From time to time, facilitators created conditions and exercises that invited participants to practice how to use ‘self’ in the highest order with intent: being self-aware, being aware of the situation that needed their intervention, taking into account the needs of other stakeholders (human and non-human), choosing the intervention strategy to use at a given moment, and then calling upon the best of themselves to take action.

Backroom work…

I attribute part of the above success to the backroom work that we did as facilitators. In all the cases I have share here, we – the facilitators – faithfully practised mindfulness, gave feedback to one another and made ourselves vulnerable in the moment of the processes in order to model what we were inviting participants to be and do. Daily, we woke up very early in order to meet and practice meditation and journaling together. I also know that at individual level, all facilitators held the deepest positive intentions in service of our participants. Fascinatingly, participants sensed what we were putting in behind the scenes. They remarked, “As facilitators, you glide so perfectly with one another”; “You combine so well, it is like you have worked together for years”; “You are so spot-on with your interventions, you must be very alert”; and “We can feel how much you want us to be successful even when you are not saying anything”.

Holding the best deepest intention for a group one is privileged to support, in my view, is one of the primary roles of a facilitator. Our backroom work was our way of heeding the wise counsel of former chief executive officer of the Hannover Corporation, William O’Brien, who once said, “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener”.

Conclusion

I am of the opinion that it was the carefully orchestrated movement between deep moments of ‘attention practice’ and the willingness to experiment to use ‘self as an instrument’ that, in the main, enabled the nearly 200 leaders I have been privileged to work with in the last two months achieve the level of creativity and the results I have referred to in 2.0 above.

A combination of attention practice and intentional use of ‘highest self’ has the potential to enable people access the sort of intelligence that they do not often tap into. The two practices create conditions in which the human capacity is brought to the fore. When I was on my flight from Belgium, I was reading Joseph Jaworski’s book entitled Source. One of the arguments that Jaworski makes in Chapter 26, based on scientific data, is that our intelligence as humans does not just lie in the our brains, but in our hearts and guts also[1].  Now we know (what many traditional communities intuitively knew long before being contaminated by Western civilisation and logic) that the sort of neurons and neuro-chemicals that we previously only associated with the brain can also be found in our hearts and guts. This re-discovery proves that complex processes of ‘thinking’ and ‘knowing’ do take place in our hearts and guts, just as they do in our brain. Studies are showing signs that the heart sometimes perceives future realities a little earlier than the brain. Exciting prospects of how we might start working with the concept of visionary leadership.

In conclusion, I make the argument that practising and deepening our attention through intentional silence and constantly sharpening the tool of ‘self’ are a cocktail that has phenomenal ability to increase our intelligence and capacity for innovation. We sharpen the tool of ‘self’ by practising personal reflection or mindfulness, seeking feedback from those around us, and being deliberate about choosing the presence we bring to our clients and interventions.

 

[1] Joseph Jaworski, Source. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2012, pages 127.

What enhances innovation? Lessons from my work in Abu Dhabi

by Martin Kalungu-Banda/

Introduction

Youth unemployment is a challenge in many parts of the world. The phenomenon of growing armies of unemployed young people is an alarming reality for governments and all people concerned with the well-being of society. I was in Abu Dhabi from 21st to 27th May 2012 working under the auspices of Common Purpose’s Itijah Venture (which means direction in Arabic). Itijah Venture brought together 40 emerging leaders from seven Arab and three European countries to grapple with the challenge of how to multiply, through information and communication technology (ICT) and social media, youth enterprises as a way of reducing unemployment among young people. Common Purpose invited me to co-design and co-facilitate the Itijah Venture. In this article, I share the key learnings I picked with regard to facilitating an innovation process.

The Results of Itijah

At the end of the week, Itijah Venture participants produced six prototyping ideas that they felt could significantly contribute to the reduction of youth unemployment in Europe and the Middle East. The six ideas were designed to leverage young people’s attraction to and use of ICT and social media. In the next few months following the Abu Dhabi meeting, participants will continue thinking together and developing the ideas into practical and living prototypes as a way of learning how to create large numbers of youth led/managed enterprise and jobs.

Process

The Itijah Venture process began a few months prior to the meeting in Abu Dhabi. The first step was taken when the Itijah Venture Advisory Board set the challenge as stated above. In many instances, training programmes simply take people away from their normal life activities and, for a few days, make them learn about tools, techniques and practices of leadership. This is not enough for imparting practical skills. Common Purpose, over the years, has learnt that the best way to run leadership development programmes is by locating the training within a particular challenge that is crucial to the client organisation or a group of people. In this way, the return on investment in training has greater chances of being realised and measured than when training and problem solving are done separately.  

The second step was the identification of emerging leaders to participate in the programme and sending them to gather data about the challenge. As soon as the candidates were selected, they were asked to go to “places of most potential for learning about the challenge”. Candidates went out to interview individuals or groups and observing situations where they could quickly learn about the challenge: what it is, how it manifests itself, what attempts have been done to resolve it; lessons picked from these attempts; and what stakeholders in the challenge fee can be done to resolve it. This is also known as sensing journey or learning through the eyes of stakeholders.

Upon arrival in Abu Dhabi, participants were introduced to and made a committed to certain ways of working that maximised collaboration and collective thinking. After the effective working atmosphere was established, participants went through a process of sharing the lessons they had picked during their sensing journeys. During the following two days, participants continued their sensing journeys by listening to subject matter specialists, entrepreneurs, and visiting places where they could learn through observation. Towards the end of the third day, participants started making sense of the information or data they had picked since they were accepted on the programme. On the final day, participants working creatively in small groups built sculptures that represented the ideas for prototyping. Participants played consultants to one another by challenging each other’s ideas, testing whether the ideas game changing.

Key Lessons

The following are the key lessons I picked from Itijah innovation process:

  1. Working in the moment: on the second day, one of the participants asked, “how come we are talking about youth unemployment and we do not have young people who are facing or will soon be facing unemployment?” My co-facilitator, Karen, and I knew instantly that we needed to find young people. Fortunately, one of the participants was from within Abu Dhabi. After a few phone calls we had three amazing young people who joined us. Their perspectives and ideas transformed the way we were looking at the challenge. One female youth said to the group, “Stop thinking like adults. See the world through our eyes, then you will stumble on ideas that may be helpful to us.” I learnt that when you are innovating, you need to work in the moment – make decisions as the situation unfolds. Innovation does not work when you are bent on ‘implementing’ the programme as you designed it.
  2. Value of Diversity and multi-stakeholders: Although the group of participants was reasonably diverse in terms of regions, gender, cultures, and age (to some extent), we did not pay attention to the importance of involving the most important key stakeholders – the unemployed youth themselves. I learnt that you need multi-stakeholder representatives to create conditions for coming up with new ideas that have a chance of working.
  3. Sensing and new knowledge: In their feedback at the end of the process, a number of participants admitted that they did not believe they could come up with ‘clever’ ideas on a subject matter they had no expertise in. They were pleasantly surprised that in the end they came up with ideas that ‘outside experts’ who came to listen to sculpted concepts thought could significantly contribute to enterprise development and job creation. I learnt that when you genuinely open your mind and go out and listen to and observe (sensing) the practical experts, every group can come up with innovative ideas.
  4. Staying with the problem long enough: from the first day in Abu Dhabi, a number of participants wanted to dive into brainstorming the possible solutions. My co-facilitator and I kept on encouraging them to focus on trying to understand or experience the challenge. This needed managing because some of the participants proudly described themselves as “action oriented”. They were worried that we would leave Abu Dhabi without coming up with any meaningful solutions. We invited them to stay with the challenge a little longer. At the end of the week, the “action oriented participants” were surprised at how easy creative ideas came towards the end of the process. I learnt that creative solutions tend to come with ease when you stay with the problem long enough. Jumping to solutions does not help.

Conclusion

Collective intelligence is possible and repeatable when a good (proven) process is followed, a diverse group is convened and key stakeholders are involved. 

 

How to revive the true spirit of Public Service

by Martin Kalungu-Banda/

Introduction

Zambia has won the Africa Cup! What can my country’s latest achievement in football teach us about how to rekindle the spirit of Public Service? Does it take more than politicians to inspire a country? What are some of the missing elements in our effort to attain our desired standard of living for everyone? Are we paying the right level of attention to all those areas that are necessary for driving national development? These are some of the question I have been reflecting on as I write the subsequent paragraphs.

Many people would agree that national development needs committed political leaders and a robust or thriving private sector. Political leaders are largely responsible for initiating the laws and policies that govern the use of national resources (human and otherwise). The business sector is best suited to generating much of the wealth we need to attain the quality of life we feel everyone deserves. We can also easily see the contributions of civil society in making politicians and businesses accountable. The power of civil society showed itself in a very significant and extraordinary way when a number of governments collapsed in 2011 in what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. The Occupy Movement has also demonstrated civil society’s determination to influence a re-think of the role of the private sector in society. The entertainment and sports industry give us a glimpse of what we can do if we drop all our pettiness and focus on what unites us. Our performance in the just ended Africa Cup which has seen us emerge African Champions, for instance, shows that we can break new grounds if we push our boundaries just a little further.

I am of the opinion that we do not often sufficiently see and acknowledge the significant role that a truly committed and skilled Public Service plays in national development. By Public Service I am referring to the Civil Service (managerial/administrative of government) and all parastatal bodies or any other institutions that are set up by government to serve the citizens of a country.

Is the Spirit of Public Service dead?

Working in many African countries partly gives me the impression that the spirit of service in the public sector is dying. You begin to see this from airports of certain countries. You meet immigration officers and airport staff that show on their faces that they are at pains attending to you. They would rather be elsewhere.

You get similar experience as you go to the Ministry of Lands to follow up on your application for a piece of land you would want to acquire. The public servant sitting on the other side of the table looks very disinterested in attending to you. His attention is split between attending to you and listening to the small radio on his table. The story is the same when you rush to a clinic or hospital because you have suspected malaria. The officers attending to you are unable to hide their displeasure in the work they do. Things get a lot nastier when you go to the police station to report an incident. You are ridiculed for having your items stolen and then given a lecture on what you should do next not attract thieves.

In the end, you feel like you must inform the more senior public servant who might see things from a policy perspective. If you are lucky to be given an appointment with the ‘big boss’, you meet someone who is immaculately dressed, carrying more than one mobile phones and constantly answering both the mobile and land phones. In the end the big boss casually says, “I will ask someone to look into your issue”.

How can the true spirit of Public Service be revived?

Part of what it would take to revive the spirit of Public Service in developing countries is to make working in the public sector a prestigious experience. This has been the case before in Zambia and many other countries. To some extent, developed countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States have managed to make their Public Services environments where people who feel the need to contribute to their countries in a particular way seek to work – at least for a period of time in their careers. The Public Servants I have had the opportunity to work with in Rwanda display, with grace, great enthusiasm and exceptional professionalism.

What is it that makes the Public Service a prestigious environment to work in?

  • Perceived to be uniquely professional: When the Public Service is perceived by the general public to carry out its functions in a uniquely professional way, it gives a good feel to those who work in it. This perception becomes an attraction to young and accomplished talent. It must be easy for us to imagine how many young children in Zambia will in the next few years dream to play professional football after seeing the magic our National Team displayed in the last few weeks in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Many workers enjoy being seen as a special group of professionals – people who know how to perform their functions with great and exceptional distinction. The label “professional” in the Public Service comes from years of specialised training in and experience of how to make the bureaucracy (used in the positive sense of an instrument for making government achieve it reason for existence and objectives) function as effectively as possible.
  • Public Servants viewed as individuals with a special vocation: Working in the Public Service is and must be made to look as a special vocation. The Public Service is a special vocation in that it ought to attract people who have a special inclination to using their giftedness to serving the interests of their country. Public Servants are expected to be individuals who can be trusted with the privilege of wielding state powers, not for self-interest, but in service of the public-interest. In comparison to people who serve in other sectors, Public Servants carry a lot of powers to suspend, stop, and encourage the activities (and even existence) of other sectors.  It is expected that the men and women who work in the Public Service will not use these special powers in any manner other than promoting the public-interest.  
  • Recruited from among the best: When the Public Service is perceived as a special vocation in service of the country, it acquires the capacity to recruit its staff from among the best in the country. Sufficient numbers of young men and young women who are top of their classes in colleges and universities compete for their entry into the Public Service. Accomplished professionals in others sectors find it prestigious to be invited to offer their services – on a temporary or permanent basis – in the Public Service.
  • Quality working environment: Those dedicated to the service of their country must work in fitting conditions. They must have the physical environment that permits them to think hard about the needs and challenges of the country. It means their offices must not be over-crowded and full of dilapidated furniture. The equipment and technology must be top of the range to enable efficiency to be an obvious part of the culture of the Public Service.
  • Reasonably remunerated: Although Public Servants have a special vocation to serve their country, they need to be reasonably remunerated. This does not mean they should have conditions of service that are equal to those who work in the profit oriented private sector (although where conditions permit people must be remunerated as well as possible). There should be creativity in how to create attractive conditions of service for public servants. A healthy pension scheme, good working environment, quality facilities, the prestige that comes with the sector, and opportunities for professional development, among other sources of motivation and inspiration help to build the notion of worthwhile remuneration or reward.
  • Acknowledgement and encouragement from leaders: Public servants are often ridiculed and used as a scapegoat by leaders in situations of failure or underperformance. While this will definitely occur from time to time, public servants must be acknowledged and encouraged openly and publicly by political and other leaders for good they do. Acknowledgement and encouragement in word and deed invites the best in public servants. Leaders have an obligation to build a healthy and genuine positive perception of the Public Service.

Conclusion

Zambia, as a nation, has evidently found a way to inspire our national football team to great success. How can we transfer our learning to the way we run our public institutions? I suggest that we find ways to make the Public Service attractive to the best men and women with a calling to serve their country in this special way. Having had the opportunity to serve my country as a civil servant at Parliament, a lecturer at the University of Zambia and an adviser to the President, I have witnessed the significance of the work that public servants do. I have a lot of respect for those who consciously choose to serve their country by working for government or its sub-systems.

The honour of waking up every day and thinking about how best to use the instruments of the state to promote the interests of the country and fellow citizens gives immeasurable reward even before the pay roll is run. It is an incredible responsibility to know that what I do on a daily basis as a public servant affects whether the farmer gets his her fertiliser or not; that my work is directly related to the health of children, women and the rest of society; that how I spend my day in the office can determine the education level of a child; that how I perform in my job has an impact on the quality of infrastructure my country has; and that my work contributes to whether some families sleep hungry or have enough to eat. Being a faithful, efficient and effective Public Servant is one of the noblest of vocations one can be called to in life.

Moments of Change for 2012?

by Hamish Wilson/

As we head into 2012, Wasafiri is asking where tipping points might lie for tackling poverty and related crises.

The future is uncertain. Of that much we’re sure. We live on a small planet with 7 billion people competing for rapidly diminishing resources, clamouring for greater political participation and a higher standard of living. New technology is stirring revolution and geopolitical power is shifting dramatically – all amidst a changing climate and an unprecedented economic crisis.

Such an outlook suggests that crises from conflict to climate change will be unpredictable in where and how they strike, but that we can expect the world’s poor to bear the greatest burden.

Yet amidst this volatility, we believe that new opportunities for tackling such problems will emerge in 2012. And it is often out of the most chaotic and dynamic moments that energy for thinking and acting in new ways begins to emerge. Wasafiri operates at the heart of such moments, working with the people and organisations tackling poverty and related crises. From our privileged vantage point therefore, we take the plunge to consider where opportunities for change may emerge in the year ahead:

Myanmar – capitalising on recent developments to strengthen democratic reform and respect for human rights
Horn of Africa – defining a long-term approach to improving resilience and development in the aftermath of 2011’s worst humanitarian crisis
South Sudan – tackling tribal and political conflict and strengthening government reform in the world’s newest country to lay the foundation for long-term state building
Somalia – tackling the blight of piracy, fundamentalism and poor governance in the world’s most dysfunctional state
Climate change – prototyping new approaches to reducing vulnerability and mitigating the impact of climate change at a country level
African agriculture – accelerating development by growing private sector investment in support of national plans and priorities
Libya – establishing leadership and government capacity for rebuilding the nation
Rwanda – supporting Rwanda’s hunger for development and regional status by strengthening the institutions of government
Afghanistan – supporting the transition from foreign military occupation to Afghan owned social and economic development
Humanitarian leadership – tackling pervasive weaknesses in leadership and coordination, on the back of a resurgence of high-level support for improving the humanitarian system

We also think it worthwhile keeping a keen eye on;

Arab Spring in Africa? – the upheavals of the Middle East and North Africa may well spawn similar discontent further south, where dictators in countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola cling to power as protest movements become more determined
Yemen – a disastrous convergence of poverty, extremism, ethnicity and corrupt government is forcing a growing political will for change
Non-traditional actors – developing nations and the West will grapple with how best to work with the likes of China, India and Brazil to strengthen aid and trade while avoiding the pitfalls
Humanitarian crises – predictably, from hurricanes in the Pacific to famine in the Sahel (especially Niger), new humanitarian crises will curse the developing world, but at ever-increasing cost
Ownership of development – opportunities will lie in building the capacity of national governments to reclaim their own development agenda, shifting power away from the donors
Impact investment – the private sector will increasingly be challenged – and encouraged – to structure and catalyse investments to drive development
Youth engagement – harnessing the energy of young people will also loom larger on the agenda of poor countries plagued by unemployment and increasing numbers of dissatisfied youth

Above all, and turbulent as the world may prove to be in 2012, we predict all manner of new paths to generating concerted action to tackle poverty and related crises.

Bon courage to all fellow travellers!

South Sudan Blog 7: The Story of South Sudan

by Hamish Wilson/

I spotted David Mayom in the third row of the conference hall. Even from a distance he radiated energy. He was tall and rangy, as are so many from the Dinka tribe, and he wore a languid, easy smile. Later, he was introduced as Commissioner for Awerial County from the state’s southern reaches. The presentation he gave of the challenges facing his people was compelling; his words spoken with a rare conviction and humility.

By chance, we met over coffee, and he shared his story in a soft voice. ‘In 1987, Colonel Garang ordered our people to send their children to school in Ethiopia.’ At the time, Garang was head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, and involved in peace negotiations with the ruling coalition in Khartoum just as clashes with the north were intensifying.

‘We could not refuse, and as a Chief my father wanted to set an example by sending his eldest son. My brother refused and ran away and I haven’t seen him since. I told the army that I would go instead, so that my father would not be punished. I was fifteen years old.’

David’s homeland is nearly a thousand kilometres from Ethiopia, separated by dense bush, vast swamps, and at the time, extremely violent militia groups. I asked him how he travelled.

‘We walked.’ he said simply. ‘There were thousands of us, some as young as 8 or 9. Many got sick, some died. We slept in the bush and ate whatever the villagers would give us. Most of the time though they had nothing, so we lived on handfuls of dried sorghum.’ The hardship he and so many others had endured was difficult to comprehene.

In 1989, Colonel Omar Bashir staged a coup in Khartoum, imposing military rule over Sudan. The informal cease-fire with Garang’s army was broken soon after with brutal attacks on southern strongholds.

A year later, David was sent from Ethiopia to the front line. It was clear that he was too young at the time to fully grasp the horrors he was about to face, nor comprehend the political tumult into which he was being swept. In 1991 the southern army splintered into warring factions, with groups forming and then betraying alliances in a chaotic spiral of violence that tore the region apart.

For the next five years, throughout the height of the war, he lived as a bush fighter in Garang’s army, fighting for, as he told me, ‘the hope of freedom from the north’. His reality however was a maelstrom of civilian massacres, cattle raiding, and village burning that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions.

His war, and nearly his life, was ended by a savage artillery burst that left him badly injured. ‘I was saved by an NGO from Lokichokio (a kenyan border town, serving as base for humanitarian operations at the time), then sent to Uganda.’ There he was taken in by a refugee camp run by the United Nations.

His injury was in all likelihood his salvation, for at the time the war continued to worsen as neighbouring Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda became involved, sending weapons and troops to bolster the south.

David lived in the camp for five years, and slowly his wounds healed. In the meantime, and with the North suffering increasing losses, a succession of peace deals were brokered, first in 1997 with the rebel groups and then the 2000 Libyan-Egyptian Joint Initiative paved the way for further agreements in 2003 and 2004. From these emerged the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which charted the course to independance just three months ago.

In 2002 David returned to Awerial, 15 years after he had left as a young boy. ‘It was so dangerous for us to travel at that time, but I had to go back home. My parents didn’t know if I was alive or dead’. After 8 years volunteering with an international charity, the state governor appointed him commissioner of his county. An extraordinary journey.

‘It has been a terrible struggle.’ He said, and then he looked at me. ‘But you have to understand that my story is not so unusual. So many of us lived like this, for so many years. My story is the story of South Sudan.’

South Sudan Blog 6: Disarmament, the challenge for a generation

by Hamish Wilson/

“Security and development are two sides of the same coin.” Major General Daniel Deng, the tall, distinguished head of the Bureau for Small Arms Control told the gathered audience in his slow, forceful drawl. “But we cannot talk of security without speaking about the availability of weapons in the hands of the people.”

The people crowded into the cramped, humid conference hall had come from every corner of South Sudan’s Lakes State, They represented the state’s elite, its patriarchy, its decision makers and representatives for the hundreds of thousands of people sprawled across the vast region. They were county commissioners, chiefs of police, tribal elders, leaders of youth and women. They had come to discuss security for their people, and one particular topic carried the heavy weight of history – disarmament. Just three weeks earlier, the latest campaign had been launched by government decree.

No-one knows for sure how many weapons are in Lakes State today. But if you consider that each household has at least one or two, as many locals suggest, then it is reasonable to assume that there could be as many as 50,000 small arms – most likely Chinese made copies of the AK47 assault rifle – in the hands of the people.

South Sudan is one of the most heavily armed countries in the world, where guns have been a way of life for generations. This has led to a spiral of violence, for guns in the hands of poor people from tribal warrior traditions of pride, protection and self-determination lead to increasingly deadly clashes. ‘We have always been warriors.’ Santo, the state security adviser told me, ‘But with weapons such as these, we are killing one another more than ever before.’

One of the most pressing questions for a newly independent state, seeking above all a sense of national unity, is – what to do about it?

Disarming civilian populations in the wake of war is a highly risky undertaking. Few nations have ever managed it successfully – Rwanda, Sierra Leone, a handful of others. South Sudan’s own recent efforts however, have been disastrous.

The government’s approach in recent years of instructing its army to forcefully disarm the population was met with such violent resistance that the region nearly collapsed back into civil war. More people were killed in these campaigns over that period, than any other reason. So the people of Lakes have good reason to fear another attempt, and to prepare again to repel the government’s efforts to emasculate them.

Yet despite these fears, this does not seem to be happening. Three weeks into the latest campaign, the mood is almost universally positive. ‘We are a new country and people are sick of fighting. They don’t want to be killed. Even the youth in the cattle camps are giving up their guns.’ the Lakes State Governor Chol Tong told me through a mouth of gleaming gold teeth.

And this time, it seems the state may have learned its lesson. Rather than government troops forcing people to turn their weapons over at gunpoint, it is the traditional elders who have been asking people to come forward. Despite my instinctive cynicism, hundreds of weapons have been returned so far.

The real test will come in a few weeks, when it will be the turn of the troops to follow up with forced searches of those who are suspected to have kept their arms.

It is early days, and many questions remain; What is to be done with the returned weapons? How will the searches be conducted? Will communities bordering states who have not yet disarmed be attacked? It is also clear that no matter how many weapons are returned this time around, it will be a drop in the ocean.

But, if it is a peaceful process, and history tells us that this may be a big ask, then it will have been a positive start to what may take many years to wean people from their weapons. As the Commissioner for Rumbeck Central County, Dut Makoi Kuok put it; “The youth were born into war. We need to know how to take them from a culture of war to a culture of peace. This will take a generation.”

South Sudan Blog 5: The rock crushers of Jebel Mara

by Hamish Wilson/

I set off early, heading for the rocky summit of Jebel Mara.

The rising sun lit the vast granite outcrop overlooking South Sudan’s capital of Juba. The faint trail was engulfed in elephant grass, towering over me as I clawed and sweated my way upward.

I broke free momentarily of the jungle flanking the summit, and found myself face to face with a young South Sudanese man sitting back on his haunches, watching me silently. He was clad only in a pair of filthy shorts, and his muscled torso gleamed with sweat. About him lay a tumble of granite boulders, pitted with the fresh scars of his pickaxe.

We eyed each other for a moment, until his steady gaze broke into a wide grin. ‘I am Moses’ he announced in thick English. I sat next to him, thankful for the respite. The air rang with a rhythmic high-pitched ring of steel against rock, and I realised Moses was not alone.

‘This is how we make money.’ he told me as I peered at his crude tools. Just then the rumble of falling rocks startled me. From the bushes, two men, hard and lean like Moses, strained to roll giant boulders past us, blazing an earthen trail through the grass to the valley floor below.

‘We came to Juba to escape the war. Now we live in the caves.’ He told me simply, pointing to a distant hillside. His face was weathered, his hands gnarled and strong. As he continued I discovered that small bands of men like him lived rough, enduring rain, snakes and mosquitoes, spending their days dragging massive rocks from the face of the Jebel.

I learned that while the men scale the rocky ridges in search of boulders, their women work in the valley below. Their daylight hours are spent breaking the stone down into saleable chunks, painstakingly growing the piles that now line the tracks. It is relentless and backbreaking. Their children scamper amongst the rocks and muddy streams, quick to inspect any passing hawajas (white people) like me.

Moses told me that each pile sells for about one hundred dollars. This seemed to me a reasonable sum, until he mentioned that it takes at least two weeks to gather enough stone into a pile. And it might take up to three months to sell a single pile to any of the local businessmen – who sell the stone onto foreign construction companies at a hefty margin.

It dawned on me that this was truly a sentence of hard labour. There are no welfare programmes in South Sudan. No support for people displaced by fighting. No pension schemes, and very few jobs. If a family’s granite doesn’t sell, their only option is to head back up the hill and keep digging. Snakebite, malaria or injury would leave them with few prospects.

I realised that this is the nature of livelihoods in South Sudan. For some, this is what it now means to ‘earn a living’. Many of these same families survived years of conflict, constantly moving, living in the bush. The men no doubt carried weapons and most likely took some part in the war. And as I descended from the summit of Jebel Mara later that day, I wondered if perhaps some of them would rather still be there now.

Katie’s Journal – An exploration of the arts and HIV in Malawi and South Africa: Blog 4

by Hamish Wilson/

Katie Chalcraft has been awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship and is currently travelling in Malawi and South Africa, exploring the use of arts in programmes working with people living with HIV. This blog is the fourth in a series of journal entries from Katie as she travels.

People Like Us

In 2007 Temwa made a film about HIV in the community. Jumbo, Project Coordinator at Temwa tells me that people love to watch films here. Video shows attract large crowds and people in the community will walk over an hour to get to one of the showings. They have become an effective medium for transmitting health messages. The week before I visited Temwa they were conducting a series of shows across Usisya in partnership with Utu Africa.

The film People Like Us was developed in response to comments from the community that the people in the films saying they were HIV+ could have been actors just saying they were HIV+ for money, they were not ‘people like us’. Temwa set about finding people from within the community living with HIV who were willing to share their testimony on film. They found three people, I interviewed two of them.

Jumbo and I walked in the midday sun along sandy paths and up a rocky mountain path to reach Jane’s house. On her veranda she sat leaning against the wall, her daughter was absentmindedly playing with the marbles from Bau (an African game) young baby on her lap. Jumbo translated for me as I explained to Jane why we had come to talk with her. One of the main motivations behind my research was to find out more about the impact that being part of theatre and visual arts programmes has on people living with HIV. With HIV theatre projects in particular, behaviour change is often evaluated by monitoring knowledge, attitude and behaviour change among the target population. However, I am interested in the psychosocial impact that performing one’s story of living with HIV has on the performer. Whilst I had not anticipated interviewing PLHIV who had been in films, the opportunity arose and I grabbed it. How had being in People Like Us affected Jane’s life, her attitude towards living with HIV, her role in society, her relationships in the community?

Jane glowed with pride when she spoke about her involvement in the film. She explained that the film was an appeal to the general community to know their HIV status. She said that it took a lot of courage to act in the film. In the support groups for PLHIV there were many people but very few were public about their HIV status. She said it took her some time to decide. Some members asked for money to participate in the film but Jane told me she did it for free. “I wanted to show people that it can be done without money. Today people confront me, you did this for nothing, why? I tell them I wanted to give them a message.”

Jane tested +ve in Zambia in 2005 and started on antiretroviral therapy in 2006. She tells me that she had a very good counsellor and all her problems and concerns vanished right there in the testing room. She feels very proud, usually after the film is shown, people come to her home. They see her preparing nsima and digging in her garden and see that she is healthy. She is very proud when people see what she is able to do and how she is able to live, proud of what she has achieved.

I asked if people living with HIV came to her for advice, she said it is very difficult for people to do this because that is automatically disclosing their status and people fear to be laughed at, men say if I say I am HIV+ then I can’t propose love to any woman.

I ask her: what elements do you need to live a full and happy life? She responds: not feeling sick, participating in sports, good food, a leak-proof house, feeling energetic, able to do work, having capital, running a good business, and being able to support family. Jumbo used the training I had provided 2 days previously to run through the batteries methodology with Jane. He used a stick to draw the batteries in the red sand of her yard.

Normally this tool would be used in relation to a programme intervention rather than something as short-lived as involvement in a film. However, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk through how the film had impacted Jane’s quality of life if it had and also an opportunity for Jumbo to put into practice what he had learned.

Jane cited that her emotional happiness had improved due to her involvement in the film – she was happy that people were talking about her status and said that she feels proud when people watch her on the screen and when they come and talk to her about it, it makes her feel better about herself. Following the film she has been approached by a number of organisations to attend trainings – this she tells us has empowered her and also contributed to the increase in her energy levels in the fourth domain of change: Livelihood and Security. Through the trainings she has been exposed to ways to find food and money for her family.

For Anderson, talking in the film about his status was not difficult. His main motivator was his interest in educating people. He started to be open about his HIV status after joining the Zetuwekha support group set up for HIV+ people by Temwa. Following the film he also had many people approaching him, he now calls himself a public figure. He speaks at events about HIV – when people are meeting to play Bau and at funerals. He prides himself on giving correct info about HIV to the people in his community. He says he has seen an increase in the number of people going for testing as a direct result of the film.

I ask where he gets all his HIV info that he is sharing in the community – he tells me he is learning from trainings and a support group. But the support group is not meeting at the moment, they got funding from the National AIDS Commission but, he tells me that the people in the support group who were in charge of the money squandered it, a story that is not unfamiliar in Malawi. I think of the corrupt border guard I encountered who was asking for my jewellery in addition to the extra 5000 Kwacha he was charging me to enter the country. Since 2010, no one meets. He tells me he misses it so much, the group once had over 20  members whenever they met they had an experience, they would learn from each other. He said that after the group met he would always go home happy. I ask him what is the solution? He says Temwa should write letters to the group members and invite members back. For me, his words underline the importance of community in achieving emotional wellbeing.

So what does a good QoL involve for Anderson? Being HIV negative, having a happy family, good food, a happy house, access to medical services, having a fishing net, being able to catch fish, eat fish, sell fish, farm and grow his own food.

Similarly to Jane the reasons for improvement in health were not attributed to the film. However, in relation to emotional happiness he says that now his energy level is at 10 – he has no concerns, no worries and is very proud of what people see in the film People Like Us. As a result of his involvement in the film he took part in positive living training (another Temwa programme) which he tells us taught him a lot, especially about diet and safe sex. Whilst his livelihood was not directly influenced by his involvement in the film he did say that some people do approach him and give him small amounts of money to congratulate him for taking part in the film, which helps.

As mentioned, this was a slightly unorthodox way to test the Batteries Methodology, nevertheless it does seem to demonstrate some genuine positive changes experienced by the two participants interviewed and provided a good talking tool to unpack the reasons behind changes in their energy levels. Consequently I am reviewing the possibilities that this methodology offers, whilst keeping a critical eye on the situation on the ground. So far Malawi, Temwa’s work, their inspirational staff, school children and project beneficiaries  have made me realise the value of community here and the determination of people to fight for a better future for themselves.

*FYI – for more info on the Batteries Methodology please contact Harriet Jones at hjones@cafod.org.uk

NB –full quantitative data regarding the research gathered using the Batteries Methodology will be available in my full research report