I say, more than a year has passed since I got to Tanzania. At this day of this lovely (and by lovely I mean dusty and gross) month of October has found me in Dar es Salaam. I arrived on the 20th in order to begin planning for a staff training event. As Chair of the Peer Support and Diversity Network or PSDN I’m working with other key members in order to boost synergy between staff. Hooo hooo. Lack of communication is the number one issue that PCVs sited as producing friction between volunteers and PC HQ in Dar. Now we have to figure out how to lube it up. That is to say, let’s build communication skills. How is this done? How do you run an effective training campaign that will improve the way that a culturally split staff that is about 1/3 American, 2/3 Tanzanian shoot the bull with each other? It’s basically offensive to a Tanzanian to cut out the every day small talk and only talk business. American Staffers seem to become very sensitive to this need and act accordingly, often losing their A-typical work drive. On the other hand, us volunteers often need answers about submitted paperwork: grant applications, leave requests, etc. on a timely basis. Like yesterday.
Our idea for training will be to do a group challenge activity to warm everyone up to the importance of communication skills. The challenge called Crossing the River where everyone needs to cross a wide imaginary river using only 3 moveable cardboard stepping stones all within a 15-20 minute time limit should suit our needs. Of course we can talk about how communication is paramount to completing the task and then segue into talking about barriers to good communication. Probably 95% of communication between PCVs and staff occurs via text message over our cellular telephones, which sets the stage for terrible misunderstanding and frustration. A number of volunteers claim they are being ignored by the Dar office when in fact the messages they sent never even got delivered by the spotty network. Potential for improvement ipo.
