After speaking with a reader or two, I've added some edits to the two entries on transparency and trust. If you have read them already, please glance at the edits - I tried to make it clearer why what NOW is doing is special.
Katie has a number of interesting new posts, including one that puts into words one of core principles we are learning: how to find balance in various situations in Sierra Leone. Please take a look at perambulating.wordpress.com.
We are entering our last few days in Kono - on Thursday we return to Freetown, and then the following Tuesday we fly back to North America.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Data Analysis Update
So, Katie and I have finished entering survey data and are now analyzing it.
Our knowledge of statistics is a bit patchy, especially in the classical statistics domain. On the other hand, I know a fair bit about how to quantify information and manipulate probability distributions. That means that we're using pretty rigorous math to find correlations in our decidedly un-rigorous data.
Amhidu is using some of the survey data for his Fourah Bay College thesis. We sent him some of our preliminary results. For those information theory junkies out there (are there any?) , I sent Amhidu a color plot of the mutual information between the answers to every question, and tried to explain it to him. My explanation wasn't long, though, so it's probably useless to him. Katie, on the other hand, generated a bunch of highly useful bar graphs. Much more practical.
I just posted a two-part entry that deals with transparency, honesty, and their converses. It's a few different stories gathered over the past few weeks. Whenever people are implicated I replaced the names with a single letter. At the start of the first one and the end of the second one there are short framing paragraphs, but otherwise they're mostly narrative. Enjoy!
Cheers, Chris.
Our knowledge of statistics is a bit patchy, especially in the classical statistics domain. On the other hand, I know a fair bit about how to quantify information and manipulate probability distributions. That means that we're using pretty rigorous math to find correlations in our decidedly un-rigorous data.
Amhidu is using some of the survey data for his Fourah Bay College thesis. We sent him some of our preliminary results. For those information theory junkies out there (are there any?) , I sent Amhidu a color plot of the mutual information between the answers to every question, and tried to explain it to him. My explanation wasn't long, though, so it's probably useless to him. Katie, on the other hand, generated a bunch of highly useful bar graphs. Much more practical.
I just posted a two-part entry that deals with transparency, honesty, and their converses. It's a few different stories gathered over the past few weeks. Whenever people are implicated I replaced the names with a single letter. At the start of the first one and the end of the second one there are short framing paragraphs, but otherwise they're mostly narrative. Enjoy!
Cheers, Chris.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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