Trust and Transparency II

EDIT, Aug 1: This post is the second in a two-part series. Because of the delicate nature of trust and transparency, I recommend that you read the first part before the second one. If you insist on beginning with this post, please read it while keeping in mind that 1) Corruption is endemic in government, industry and non-governmental work in Sierra Leone, 2) All organizations have a choice with corruption: tolerate and ignore it, or actively discourage it through policies and systems, root it out, and enforce consequences. 3) NOW has chosen the second pathway, despite the fact it makes day-to-day business much more difficult.

In my mind, it is much better to acknowledge corruption exists and occurs and then outline real strategies for its reduction and consequences for its occurrence than to erect fake policies to appease donors and then ignore it. However, donor attitudes towards corruption shape the organizational responses as well. Think of it analogous to a personal problem in a close friend, say alcoholism. The first step to recovery for the friend is acknowledging the problem. If, however, you respond by getting very angry, then your friend may decide that in the future it is best to simply hide the problem from you. It is much better to support your friend in coming up with and implementing plans for improvement. Similarly, it is much better to encourage organizations like NOW, which have an active and powerful drive to eliminate corruption, than to encourage large (unnamed) organizations, who often completely ignore the corruption present at lower levels, and perhaps higher levels as well. With that in mind, please enjoy the following stories. END EDIT.

“Can I see, V.?”
“Yes.” V. moved aside from the microscope, and I peered through the lenses. I could see purple-stained white blood cells, but no malaria parasite. The parasite was smaller, maybe one one-hundredth the size of the white blood cells. “No malaria.”
“Oh.”
I’d been hoping it was malaria, a little bit. While we were waiting for the slide to dry I had looked through the patient files, and this particular one was a four year old boy. He had a fever, and he had been vomiting, both textbook signs of malaria.
“But the WBC count is elevated, maybe.” An elevated number of white blood cells is an indicator of infection.
“Is there a way of letting Yusuf know that?”
V. laughed with a tight-lipped smile, and said nothing. I tried again.
“How do you let Yusuf know when you see something like that, something that isn’t a direct result of one of your tests?”
“Well, sometimes, people don’t like to know things they didn’t ask for,” V.’s answer seemed cryptic for a moment, then I caught on. But I pretended that I didn’t know anything.
“What do you mean? You couldn’t tell him, and then maybe he would order a white blood cell count?”
“No, even if it helps the patient, sometimes people don’t want to know tests that haven’t been ordered.” V. put uncharacteristically melodramatic meaning into his words. I left it at that.
Later, I told Katie about the exchange.
“I think Bailor said that sometimes they were undercharging the patients, in the cabal. So then, maybe V.’s view that ‘people don’t want to hear test results they didn’t ask for’ is actually a kind of excuse for the corruption.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Katie wasn’t convinced, “I don’t remember Bailor saying that. I don’t think he did say that they charged less,” I wasn’t sure either, especially not if Katie didn’t remember.
“Or maybe, I mean, it’s not that possible, but what if some of the members of the cabal were using the justification that by undercharging the patients, hiding tests, pocketing the difference, and reporting the results, they were giving more humanitarian medicine at a better price, and maybe that’s how they pressured someone into doing it, or how they rationalized it themselves...”
“It’s not the simplest answer,” Katie elaborated, but in essence she wasn’t convinced. Neither was I. But V. had made me think a bit, about the different layers and perspectives on corruption.

“Amhidu, why do you always go to the garage?” Amhidu had been spending a lot of time at the garage, and missing out on substantial portions of the work on the business plan. It was his own loss, but it was also Sierra Leone and NOW’s loss, because there was much to learn, and he could be learning it beside Katie and me.
“I go, because they will not work if I do not go,”
“You don’t go for any other reason?” I thought Amhidu was going because, on some level, he preferred to hang out with the guys at the garage than work on the business plan with us.
“No,” We were sitting on the bed in Allan’s room at the clinic. Amhidu was lying back, with his hands behind his head.
“Amhidu, I think that sometimes you go because you want to hang out with the guys there.”
“No,” his tone was neutral, but I was being less than diplomatic.
“It’s a shame, though! There’s so much for you to learn from the business plan, and from doing it with Katie and me, and I don’t want you to miss it. It’s also very helpful to have you here when we’re working on it.”
Amhidu was quiet, and breathed in deeply. “Let me say, if I do not go to the garage, Sahr B. and E. will be corrupt.” Sahr B.? The liaison to the amputee community? What?
“What?”
“When we went to Freetown, I left them money to buy eight gallons of fuel per day, for the tractor. They told me they needed eight gallons per day, so I left them money for that.”
“Okay...”
“But when I came back, I went with them to the fueling station. And I asked the man how much fuel they usually get. He says eight gallons. Then I told the man to fill it, to fill the tractor. When it was full, it held 7.2 gallons. So I asked Sahr B., where is your reserve container? And he held up a container that was one liter. So I said no, tell me the truth, you have not been filling eight gallons each time. But Sahr B., he cried that I did not trust him, and that because of that he will no longer do anything I ask him,” Amhidu had sat up during his monologue, but his tone had stayed calm.
“Wait, so Sahr B. won’t do anything you ask now?”
“He said, that since I do not trust him, that I should do all the things I want him to do, because I do not trust him to do them.”
I shook my head. “So Sahr B. won’t work for you. Did you tell Bailor?”
“I did, and I suggested that he tell Sahr B. that I was wrong, and that he is coming on Friday and he will sort everything out then. That way Sahr B. will continue to work, until Friday.” My eyebrows rose in appreciation of the Amhidu’s wily decision. Without Sahr B.’s help, it would have been difficult to do much on the farm for the next three days. With planting season drawing to a close, that time was precious.
“So that’s what Bailor told him?”
“Yeah,”
“What about E.? Where is he?” E. is the farm manager. Sahr B. has no official position with the farm. He has some farming expertise, however, and I had thought that was why he was always around. Perhaps not only that, though.
“He is there, he is there. E., I don’t know,” Amhidu shook his head as well, “he is not in charge. I think, maybe that Sahr B. is making him corrupt, and without Sahr B., he will not be corrupt.” I shook my head again.
“E. seems smart, and he tries hard, for example when we were asking him questions, but I just can’t see him being assertive, and he doesn’t seem to make any decisions,”
Amhidu had a more relevant contribution. “I think, the problem is, in the amputee organization, Sahr B. is E.’s boss. E. is secretary, Sahr B. is chair. So I think E. is still used to taking instructions from Sahr B..”
“Can we just tell Sahr B. to go away, that it’s not his farm?”
“Yes, we will tell him that,”
“Maybe we should find some job to distract him, so he doesn’t get hard feelings,” Amhidu laughed.
“Yeah, maybe,”
Katie came in, and we updated her. She picked up a piece of paper from the corner of the room. “Is this the record?” It was an A4 page, with dates and two columns under each date. In one column was the item, in the other column was the expense. Receipts don’t exist in Sierra Leone. Some of the items on the list stuck out.
“Breakdown, 20 000? What does that mean?” Katie was in disbelief.
“Or how about ‘tractor bolts, 20 000.’ What are the chances that cost exactly the same as the breakdown?” The two items were on different days. We scanned the list some more. “Gear oil, at 35 000 leones per gallon? That’s suspicious. How much gear oil does the tractor need, Amhidu?”
“When we first got the tractor working, the mechanic he said it needed one gallon. But then it leaked, and it was gone, and he said that now we need maybe two gallons.”
“But they fixed the leak?”
“Yeah, now, it is not leaking.”
“There’s six gallons of gear oil here, two on one day, and four on another.” Katie was suspicious. So was I. It seemed like none of these numbers could be trusted. And who could be trusted within NOW? Sahr B. was the amputee liaison. If he couldn’t be trusted, what did that say about the amputee organization? And if so many people were corrupt, how could we run a transparent, honest NGO?
“Amhidu, who do you trust in the organization, in NOW?” Amhidu didn’t seem surprised by the question.
“In Kono, I trust only Yusuf. Only Yusuf,” he added emphasis. “In Masiaka, I trust all of them, Amadu, Sahr James, Andrew, they are all good.”
“And Ali?” Ali was the driver from Masiaka. Amhidu laughed.
“Yes, Ali.” Ali was smiley, spacey, and not a great driver. But he was a simple, nice guy.
It’s a big problem. At the end of the summer, Amhidu has to return to Freetown. He can’t stay on in Kono in his current job of intern manager / honest employee. Many of the problems that NOW faces are financial, but the problem of honest staff members is perhaps harder to solve. Corruption is endemic, accepted, and uncontroversial, to the extent where Sahr B. has no qualms cheating a few thousand leones from the NGO doing the most for the amputee community, and to the extent where the only gossip-worthy part of the whole cabal corruption incident was that M. was actually fired.

One day, Katie and I were walking home, and it started to pour. Instead of just getting soaked like we usually do, we decided to duck into the Kono Bookshop. Our American friend Bremen recommended it to us.
We were immediately confronted with two long tables full of men yelling in Krio. After a moment of standing awkwardly, we sat down on the edge of a bench.
So, it’s not a bookshop. It’s a tea shop. I think these guys gather there every day, to yell in Krio about philosophy, politics, anything. At the back there was a dimly lit bar, but no one was actually drinking any tea. I figured I would wait until someone demanded that I make a purchase.
Katie and I watched the debate for a minute or two. Then I ventured in.
“What are you guys debating?”
The man across from me looked startled for a moment, then he answered. “We are talking about diamonds. About how the companies can take diamonds and give nothing back to the country. What do you think about it? What can we do?”
Whoa, talk about putting me on the spot. “Well, what have you guys already discussed?”
In general the discussion was very chaotic, but all of what follows happened at some point.
“Well, first, the diamonds are all inspected by only three people, a government representative, a chieftain representative, and the company representative. They all go into the vault, the vault where the diamonds are, and then they value them.”
“Nobody else goes in with them?” Katie was incredulous.
“No.” Other men were jumping in.
“And maybe they go with something in their pocket, some 20 000 dollars, and when they see a very good diamond, the company representative gives the chieftain and government representatives some 20 000 dollars each, and then he puts the good diamond in his pocket, and nobody knows,”
There was a chorus of incomprehensible noise, that I took to be agreement. Some people at the end of the table took up the debate again in Krio.
“But how do the diamonds leave the country?” Katie asked.
There was more yelling amongst themselves. One man claimed to understand what Katie was asking.
“No, she want for know, why, in the airport, we just let the diamonds fly away, why we don’t have better security,” I smiled. I imagine that illegal diamonds from the Kono District did not leave by way of Lungi airport. Neighboring Liberia has no natural diamond reserves, yet has been a diamond exporter for years.
Some more loud Krio discussion quieted this man, then the first man answered. “All the diamonds must pass by the government valuator, and he certifies how much they are worth. But he is paid very little, perhaps 2000 dollars a year, and the diamonds are worth very much. So the company must give three percent of the diamond’s value, right?”
“Right,” Katie egged him on.
“So if they have a diamond they know is worth 7 million dollars, they will say, here, let us give you fifty thousand dollars, and then you just say the diamond is worth only 1 million dollars. And he does it, of course,” We later learned that this is the real way that companies scam Sierra Leone, because by going through the government valuator the diamonds retain their legitimacy. That increases their value.
“Well, is there really only one government valuator? What if there were more valuators?” Katie had to shout her question to be heard. The men raised their eyebrows in surprise.
“Hey-hey! Of course, of course!” They were momentarily jubilant. Katie and I looked at each other, puzzled. Had they really not thought of that?

“So now, UNICEF is giving us the Kono District contract instead of the Portloko contract, so all those guys in Masiaka are going to be moving to Kono.”
We were having an impromptu meeting with Bailor before he drove back to Freetown. It was on the porch of Uncle Bens, and we were being both illuminated and serenaded by the efforts of the generator. The topics Katie and I had wanted to talk about were the peer education plan and the more general problem of leadership development within the National Organization for Welbody. Most of all, we wanted to talk about the necessary and desirable characteristics of the unhired and unnamed leader of the peer education project.
I looked at Katie, and she looked at me. Amhidu was across the table, and he looked bored. This was a surprise. I spoke.
“Wait, they’re all coming to Kono?”
“Yeah, in one, maybe two weeks. Sahr James, Andrew, Amadu. The plan is, we will convert Allan’s room into cubicles, to have two offices there, and then maybe we can have one office out where your desk is, that can be another office.”
Katie furrowed her brow, trying to think about how so many offices would fit into such little space. Bailor continued.
“So I’m thinking, that maybe Amadu will take M.’s job, because Amadu, he is very honest. All those guys in Masiaka, they are honest. So if Amadu is in charge of the money, there is no way that C. or V. or anybody can be corrupt.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Katie and I nodded and murmured encouragingly.
“And then, UNICEF has given us money to hire ten new staff, two managers and eight workers for malnutrition field work. So, Sahr James and Andrew, they will be the managers, and then we will use the money that we would have used to pay them to hire two more people, one for the peer education,”
“Fine,” Sierra Leoneans say ‘fine’ to mean ‘okay’ or ‘sounds great.’ I’ve picked up the habit.
“Okay, and for C., I was thinking we will switch her over to the malnutrition project, so she is not handling money, because there, she doesn’t have chance to be corrupt,”
“Right, and she’s a nurse?”
“Yes. And V., well, hiring a new lab tech is not so easy, so he will stay in the lab. But with C. in the field and M. gone, the cabal is broken. And Amadu and Sahr James and Andrew and Yusuf, they are all honest, so maybe V. will go along with it. It’s like this,”
Bailor pulled his ‘Battery’ energy drink closer to him and smiled at us in a conspiratorial way. He straightened his fingers and held his hand above the drink as if his hand were balancing on the can.
“So this side is corrupt, and this side is honest.” He motioned to the two directions his hand could fall, if it were actually balancing. “Bori, he was like here,” he tilted his hand over until it was almost toppling to the corrupt side, “but because of Yusuf, he’s here,” he rotated it back so that it was perched precariously over the honest side. “V. is maybe here,” he held his hand lower on the corrupt side, “but it won’t matter if he’s the only one, when Amadu controls the money. And Yusuf, you know, he’s like here,” Bailor put his hand on the table on the honest side.
“So we’ll get a critical mass of honesty going here in Kono, so that any new employees will just be pulled along,”
Bailor’s eyes were smiling and wide. “Exactly.”

“You know what I did, when we were just building the clinic?” This was later in the meeting, in the aftermath of Bailor unveiling his grand new plan.
“What?”
“The guy, the guy I hired out in Kono, he was corrupt. I would tell him to buy 100 bags of cement, he would buy twenty. I would send him money for six trips of sand, he would get three, maybe two.”
“That sucks,”
“So I phoned Sasseko, and I asked Sasseko how many bags of cement, how many bricks they made. And Sasseko said he didn’t know, maybe thirty. So then I came, and I’m friends with the building supplies store, so I came inside, and I talked to the owner. Then I picked out the hundred bags, and I signed them all with a marker. Then I said to Sasseko, ‘Sasseko, at the end of the month, I want to see all these empty bags, all these signed bags.’ And then the end of the month came, and there were only thirty, and so I had proof, I fired him.”
“That’s wily,” I was impressed.
“And you know, he had bought a generator and a fridge and started up a shop, selling cold drinks,”
“Ooh,” Katie and I winced.

These stories capture some of the ways that Bailor and NOW detect and counteract corruption, as well as just some of the ways in which corruption can occur. There is another dimension to corruption in NGO work in Sierra Leone, one that is (fortunately) not explored here. That is corruption in the awarding of grants. Large agencies such as the government or UNICEF (although I point no fingers here) often have competitive grant processes and it can be difficult to gain the financial support of the agency if you do not provide bribes, appreciations, or kickbacks to the right people. NOW never does this, and so sometimes we run into problems. Katie and I don’t have direct experience with them, however, and they are more delicate, so a discussion of those problems will have to wait.