Trust and transparency I

Bailor and the National Organization for Welbody are committed to building a transparent, honest organization. It is not always easy. EDIT, Aug 1: Some reader reactions have reminded me that I need to provide more background on this issue. Corruption is endemic in Sierra Leone, at both low, medium and high levels. Corruption is endemic in industry and in non governmental organizations (NGO). Few people make a real effort to reduce corruption on the individual level, and while many organizations have anticorruption policies, few such policies are enforced. As an NGO, there are two options regarding corruption: tolerate its existence and ignore it, or actively discourage and punish it. Large unnamed NGO's, the government, and most other organizations choose the former path, but NOW has chosen the second option. It is a difficult choice that makes the day-to-day operations of the clinic more difficult, but in the long run it is both admirable and necessary. Sierra Leone needs model transparent organizations.

Given that corruption is so endemic, I put my faith in the organizations that acknowledge this fact and show a track record of transparency and rooting out corruption. You cannot always stop corruption before it occurs, but you can always mitigate its damage, punish the offenders, and recalibrate the organization to avoid it happening again. END EDIT.

The following are a series of narratives that might give you some insight into the problem – and the solutions that Bailor and NOW put into action.

We piled into the car, coconut-flavored sugar cookies and water bottles in hand. There were four of us in the back, so we had to fit in around each other. In Sierra Leone (and Africa in general, I’ve been told), the general rule is if the person can possibly get in the car, then they’re in the car, even if the trip is ten hours long. Our trip was ten hours long.
“Things were tense this morning at the clinic.” Allan told us. It didn’t seem particularly important, just a general update. Katie and I responded somehow, but it was the conversational equivalent of a shrug.
We bounced our way out of town. Bailor was in the front passenger seat, and Ali in the driver’s seat. I don’t remember how, but somewhere amidst the potholes, exhaust, and Bailor’s cigarette smoke, we asked him why things were tense at the clinic that morning.
“Well, we discovered that some of the staff have been engaging in corruption.”
What? The clinic staff? Katie, Allan, and I were silent. The vehicle rattled through a large bump, and my head awkwardly bounced against the ceiling.
“What...what kind of corruption? If you don’t want to tell us, that’s okay,” I added the last part quickly. But Bailor didn’t mind telling us.
“Well, there is a cabal. Three of the staff conspired.” Three? There were only five. “It was the lab, the pharmacy, and the front desk.” V., C., and M., respectively. C. was smart, V. was quiet and weird, but M. was kind of slow. He must have been pulled in by the other two. “You see, what they were doing, is Yusuf would order tests, would order lab tests. Then they would charge the patient 10, 12 thousand leones, like the tests cost, but only mark down some of the tests on the sheet. But they would do all of the tests, so all of the results would be written on the receipt. So the patient was still getting care, still getting the right care.”
“Oh, I get it.” Allan nodded. I didn’t get it.
“Wait, how did it work?” Allan opened his mouth to explain, but Bailor was all over it.
“No, so, the consulting room [Yusuf] would order all the tests. And when the chart comes back from the lab, all the results for all the tests that were ordered would be recorded on the patient chart. But at the front desk, only two of the tests are recorded. Say I order a malaria test, a stool test, and a widal [typhoid test], maybe M. only records the malaria test as paid for, but the patient pays for all three tests, and then V. fills out the results for all three tests, but then they split the money.
“The way I know, is that one time, I just decided to keep track of all the tests I ordered for a day in the consulting room.” Bailor works in the consulting room when he’s in Kono. Otherwise Yusuf, the head of the clinic when Bailor’s away, decides the diagnoses and treatments. “And when I looked at the charts, some of them were not there. And Yusuf, he told me that he suspected something.
“Bori, he was corrupt at first. He was going to be corrupt, but Yusuf said to him, ‘Bori, don’t be corrupt. We are working for the amputees, for the community, don’t do this.’ And Bori didn’t join the cabal.
“So then, I asked Yusuf to just write on a paper, all the tests he orders, for the whole month. And at the end of the month, we compared it to the charts that M. uses, the ones where M. keeps track of things. And it was clear, that he was corrupt.
“So this morning, we had a meeting, and I confronted him. I asked him if it was true, and he said no. But then I showed him the charts, I showed him all the records. And he just said he was sorry, so he’s guilty, he’s guilty.”
I had a lot of questions. So did Katie and Allan. One of us asked,
“So what will you do?”
“M., he’s fired. I will fire M.. I don’t have proof yet that C. and V. are corrupt, but M., he’s been working for us for almost the whole time, and C., only three months.”
“How long has V. been working for you?”
“Two months, only two months.”
“And how long has the corruption been going on?”
“A month and a half.”
Hmm.
“You know, M., I’m very disappointed, because he’s from the amputee community, he’s from the amputees, he knows why we are doing what we are doing.” M. lives in one of the amputee camps. I think his mother is an amputee. “Because, you see, he’s in charge of the money. If M. is not corrupt, then there is no way V. and C. can be corrupt. But M., he’s not smart, he wouldn’t do this on his own. So they made him corrupt, I’m sad. I thought that by putting someone from the amputee community handling the money...” Bailor trailed off, then continued.
“C., I think she is smuggling drugs out from the clinic. I think that maybe when the prescription says to give five days, she gives three, and she keeps the two. And I think that guy, I don’t know his name, the one who’s always hanging around, I think he is the one who is taking the drugs out of the clinic. He mainly comes on Thursdays, when Yusuf and Bori are gone at the outreach clinic.”
I knew who he was talking about! “Yeah, that’s the guy I was trying to describe to you, Allan, the one who was watching Katie and I on the computers. The one who wasn’t M., or Bori. And it was a Thursday that we saw him, too...”
“There you go.” Bailor smiled thinly and shook his head. “You know, when it started, it was only me and Yusuf, and it was fine. Yusuf, he is so honest, he is only honest, and he is so hard working. When it was just the two of us, everything was fine, we did all the lab tests ourselves, all the charts ourselves.”
But the clinic was growing, NOW was growing, and Bailor couldn’t run the clinic himself.
“You know, though, I have to protect Yusuf. In fact, I decided to suspend him for two weeks. The thing is, he will get in trouble if people find out he is so honest.”
Allan looked at us significantly. “Bailor doesn’t mean, like, people will be unhappy. He means actual physical danger. Yusuf could be beaten up, or worse.”
“Yeah.” Bailor confirmed. What? I hadn’t even imagined. My mind pictured Yusuf’s friendly smile, his teeth sticking in all directions, and I heard his lisped voice. He was walking on the path towards his house, the same way Katie and I walk to get home from the clinic. And then three or four young men stepped through the grass towards him, and he stopped walking. They moved ominously closer, and then a pothole smacked my head against the ceiling and distracted my imagination. I shuddered.
“That’s smart, to protect him like that. Does Yusuf know that’s why you suspended him?”
“No, I haven’t told him. I will maybe tell him when we return, on Monday. But as far as the staff know, I am suspending Yusuf because he didn’t tell me about the corruption sooner.” Bailor was silent for a while, and his cigarette burned down a bit more. The cigarette smoke mingled with the exhaust; the windows were all wide open, and humid, dusty air mixed with the various smokes and blew hard against our skin and hair. It’s better than no wind, but by the end of a day in the car, our faces are completely covered in a thin film of dirt.
The top of my head bounced against the roof again. In some places on the road between Koidu and Makeni, there are more potholes than asphalt. Sometimes there are drainage ditches right through the road, or deep runoff streams, or big rocks, and we often have to come to almost a complete stop to get past some ditch without bottoming out the vehicle.

Later in the day, we took a half-hour detour to see a waterfall. It ended up being a lot more than a half hour, but the waterfall was beautiful, so it was worth it. We had to drive through a pond to get there. After the waterfall, however, we realized we had almost no diesel left. So we stopped at a stand that sold cellphone units and cigarettes to ask where we might find some. Bailor yelled out the window in Krio, and a few young men gathered round. Ali, Amhidu, and Bailor conferred with the young men for a minute, and then Ali hopped out of the car. Bailor got out a few minutes later.
“What’s up, Amhidu?”
“There is no diesel in this town.” Oh. I thought I’d heard that, but I’d hoped it wasn’t true.
“Seriously? That truck that drove past wasn’t running on vegetable oil.”
A massive mining truck had just driven past.
“Well, they work for the dam.”
“Right.” The waterfall was also part of a large hydroelectric dam project. The project had been going on for almost twenty years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the contractors were trying their hardest to get it to draw out for a few more. “Don’t they have diesel at the dam?”
“It’s the company’s diesel.”
“Oh.”
“They think we are security, so they [the people in the town, not the company] will not sell us diesel.”
“Do they steal it from the company?”
“Yes.”
“Did they just tell you this, or did you guess it?”
“I overheard it. They said it in Temne,” Temne was a local language that Bailor, Amhidu and Ali spoke.
“So are Ali and Bailor working on it right now?”
“Yes, they are talking on the phone with the people who sell diesel.”
“Cool.”
A few minutes later, we pulled out, following a motorcycle. We turned into a laneway and then backed in next to a house. A couple of teenage men and an older man emerged. After a brief conference with Bailor, they disappeared and then reappeared with yellow five gallon jerry cans of diesel. They handed me the gas cap through the window, and I held it delicately. Then Ali grabbed a plastic bottle that had been cut up and reborn as a funnel. He held it in place as one of the teenagers poured the diesel into the tank. It wasn’t that easy; he had to rotate the can around the opening of the jerry can as he poured to prevent bubbles from making the flow uneven. Then they opened a second can and started pouring it. Bailor, Amhidu, and Ali were all circling the car with smiling, conspiratorial faces.
“I guess the price is good,” I said to Katie, “because we’re getting five more gallons.” A few minutes ago we only needed five gallons, not ten.
They stopped pouring, and Ali started rearranging things in the trunk. Allan looked concerned. “Are we taking it with us? Tell them to get a plastic, a piece of plastic to seal it.” I nodded.
“I think they’re using a piece of grass. Apparently it’s better. I heard them talk about it out the window.” Allan looked skeptical, to say the least. In a moment, Amhidu, Ali, and Bailor piled back into the car, grinning at their success. It was indeed cheap – half price!
“Amhidu, isn’t that because it’s stolen?” Amhidu’s grin widened.
“Yah...”
Later, when we arrived in Kamakwe, Bailor’s village, Bailor, Amhidu and I were gathered around a plate of rice and sauce. It was dark, but there were a couple of candles flickering.
“Bailor,” I hesitated, “I have a question.”
“Mmhm?” He was eating.
“Why is it not okay for M. to take money from the clinic, but it is okay for us to buy stolen diesel?”
Amhidu almost choked, and Bailor smiled. But he kept looking down at his rice. A part of me really enjoys using my ‘confusing foreigner’ status to say ridiculous things.
“You know, it’s because it was cheap.”
“Because it was cheap?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t push it.