Ugali, Spuds and Fiddles - our cultures are borrowed so be prepared to share them

When asked to imagine an Englishman many of us will think of a man dressed in pyjamas drinking a cup of tea. An Irishman would typically play the fiddle after completing a meal of potatoes. In Kenya, a traditional thing to do is eat ugali and chapattis. However, none of these activities would have been possible a few centuries ago. Tea only arrived in England in the 1660’s and pyjamas even later; violins were invented in Mongolia and potatoes came from America; and ugali is made from maize which has been in Africa for no more than 500 years and even less in Kenya, while chapattis (which many Kenyans believe are their own invention) came from India. Lonely Planet makes its money by giving you the tips on how to live like a local while a lot of the time these 'cultures' are simply a result of globalisation.

Food, clothing and musical instruments were only able to move around because people moved around with them. The migrant Walter Raleigh was responsible for bringing the potato to Europe (and incidentally the cassava which eventually ended up in Africa as an ‘indigenous’ crop) and King Charles II claimed responsibility for the tea landing in England. The Arab traders no doubt introduced chapattis to Kenya and I have no clue how the Mongolians managed to get their violins to Ireland but somehow it happened and in the right hands it is a quintessentially Irish instrument.

This was not through pre-historic migration of peoples, but all that happened in the last 500 years, and within the same time frame the movement of people had a large impact on language, culture and even genetic make-up of ethnic groups. When the potato crop failed in Ireland in 1848 (why haven’t more people blamed Walter Raleigh for the Irish famine?) and millions of people fled the country as ‘economic migrants’ they were received with mixed reactions all over the world but eventually managed to integrate with almost no lasting exceptions. 165 years later that migration crisis has been largely forgotten, even by those directly descended from them – a good proportion of the members of racist organisations in England have indisputably Irish names.

The Luo tribe in Kenya have names and a language identical to Nilotic tribes in northern Uganda, and can compare names and words with tribes as far away as Sudan and Ethiopia. They arrived in Kenya in the 1500’s having negotiated the Nile and Lake Victoria and they finally settled on the shores of the lake near land that was already populated by other Bantu tribes, now known as Luhya and Kisii. It is not known how they were received at first but tradition and folklore in the area documents  co-operation between the Nilots and the Bantu, especially in terms of shared skills, resources and wives. The Luo were good fishermen and herdsmen while the Bantus were agriculturalists so there was an obvious trade-off, and though politicians have tried divide and rule tactics no-one has succeeded in turning Luo and Luhya against each other to this day. Meanwhile many of their traditions have merged together as for several hundred years Luo have been farming and the Luhya herding and fishing.

When I walk around rural Luo lands in Kenya I am made to feel quite foreign – not in an aggressive way but very superficially - simply in the sense that I am a topic of interest just because of the colour of my skin. Some people make (very repetitive) jokes as I walk past, others stare at me with wide-eyed fascination and some pester me for money. Under the surface I feel very welcomed though and never feel threatened or that I am a threat. I wonder how easy it would be to integrate a culture as a foreign as mine into a community like that nowadays in the way they integrated over the last 500 years with the Bantu tribes. Certainly, while I am more unusual, it must be a far better experience for me to walk around Western Kenya, than for a western Kenyan to wander around Europe not knowing whether the stares he or she is receiving are welcoming, interested or threatening, because the chances are they could be any of those.  Through this experience I believe it would be much easier for cultural diversity to spread in a place like Western Kenya if the conditions were right, and I don’t foresee the same defensiveness over cultures that we see in other parts of the world. I also think that just as cultural integration between the Nilots and Bantus in the past few centuries was good for both parties, more diversity would benefit everyone (and I’m talking globally now) because we all have positive aspects of our heritage to share with others. Along the way we may lose a few quirks like drinking tea or playing the fiddle, but chances are they were borrowed in the first place.

Experiences in Recruitment for Queen’s Young Leaders Seminar

I have offered to run a session on ‘recruitment’ for the QYL programme but while it is designed for people involved in recruiting to a small organisation, it could also be useful for someone trying to join a similar organisation as an employee. I do not have years of experience in recruitment as I have only been an employer for four years and now I only employ about 28 people but during Xavier Project’s history people have joined our team through very many avenues, from just being my old friend to passing gruelling two hour interviews.

Here are a few things to think about before even starting the process:

1.       The golden rule of recruitment – make sure you like them.

This is by far the most important thing about choosing a new member of your team. It doesn’t matter how experienced or skilled the candidate is, if you think your personalities will clash it will not work.

 2.    Select on potential and not necessarily on experience

This is connected to the last point. If you really like the candidate and they seem to be keen then it is likely that they will be able to learn the necessary technical skills to do the job. What is more, employees will be far more motivated to learn if they are a little bit out of their comfort zone. In my opinion one of the most motivating factors for a lot of people is feeling that they are being trusted with a responsibility that is slightly too big for them, because they want to see and then prove that they are able to deal with it. Most people are also very motivated by learning new things and in the back of their mind they will be hoping to gain skills on each job which will make them more marketable in the future. Engagement in a role, as long as the employee is not seriously incompetent, is far more important than technical skill, because if they are skilled but not engaged they will not use their skills anyway. If they are engaged but not as skilled as they could be they will gain those skills quickly.

3.  ‘Interview’ them to be members of the organisation’s team not for a specific role.

One thing I have learnt to do in the last few years is move people around according to the best fit. In one case this even involved directors of two separate departments literally swapping jobs and leading a totally new team. There are several people in Xavier Project who have tried their hand at various jobs from HR to logistics, admin, operations and finance within the space of a couple of years. You may say this is only relevant to very small organisations, which is true to an extent, but having a full picture of the whole organisation is vital in really understanding the vision and I find that the people who have been pigeonholed less are able to get the bigger picture more easily. They are also the first ones to step in and help out when a key staff member is absent or needs assistance. These are the types of people you really need when you’re starting out so avoid those who will keep referring to their job description or contract and complain when as asked to do something remotely different.

With these thoughts in mind, here are a few tips for when starting the process for looking for someone:

 Be open to various forms of selection process

This is harder for a big organisation that has strict policies on recruitment etc, but when you are still small don’t feel you have to interview every time. This is particularly the case considering the last bullet point – it is not always easy to write a job description for what you are really looking for. For example, I have sometimes just needed an addition to the team who was a solid team player, with no specific background or skills who can work under pressure and deal with some very unusual challenges. How do you write a job description and then interview for that? As a result we have recruited quite a number of ex-volunteers/interns to the team. This has had two main benefits – firstly we know a lot more about the person we are recruiting, and secondly they may have at least some idea about the whacky job you are asking them to do, often for little financial compensation. Most interns and volunteers have no idea initially that you are watching their every move in case they are up for the job and this is another bonus because they are not putting up the facade they could easily pull off in an interview. It is obvious that you can really get to know someone when you are spending hours and hours with them in the work place, and most importantly you get to see how they interact in a team environment – something that is very hard to do in an interview process despite being such a crucial element of the job.

 If you have to interview.... be careful with the JD

If you are going to interview for an important position you need to get as many applicants as possible to give you strength in numbers. We had over 400 applicants for one job and in the end there was only one candidate we were close to hiring (and luckily s/he was outstanding). Had we been more unlucky we would have had to turn everyone down and start again, and if you are not happy this is what you have to do.

• ·         Give yourself time. From posting the job description to having the hired employee in the office will never take less than a month, and often can take two months. You need about two weeks or more for the job to be live on-line, a week for organising the interview, and then the successful applicant will need to give his or her notice.
• ·         Before you send out the job description, make sure you have worked out all the platforms where you can promote it in advance so that it is posted everywhere at around the same time.
• ·         Set up a new email address eg jobs@.... Because otherwise your inbox will be spammed
• ·         Think of ways to filter people out, for example, DO state the salary or at least the salary bracket with 10% variation on each side. This is to avoid someone excellent getting into the interview and then turning down the job because the salary is too low. If you want to renegotiate the salary downwards later because you think you pitched it too high this is not a problem and in my experience the applicants have always accepted.
• ·         Find other tricks to filter, for example, say in the JD that the applicant must explicitly state why they are interested in working with refugees (insert orphans, mobile technology, algebra etc) then when you receive the applications go CONTROL F ‘REFUGEE’ and if they don’t even mention the word don’t read any more. It may sound crazy but in Kenya for a job working with refugees over 80% of the candidates did not mention the word ‘refugee’ in their cover letter (tip for cover letter writing right there).
• ·         The best way to get around this is to set up your own application form, but there are pro’s and con’s to this. It is a lot of work and some websites and agencies might not post them so you will get fewer applications and could maybe miss some hidden gems. 

  The Interviews

Try to dedicate as much time as you can for the interviews. People can surprise you at interview and contradict your expectations of them from the CV and cover letter. If it is a position that you feel really strongly about spend a few days interviewing, this might mean covering 12 – 15 people but it will be worth it to get the right person.

• ·         Get help interviewing. This might be a neutral person or a colleague, but it’s best not to have someone on the panel who will be managed by the successful candidate because it could create uneasiness in the future.
• ·         Give very clear directions and the number of a receptionist etc because people WILL get lost and will be very late. Some will be very early and you can swap them around in that case.
• ·         Allow two hour slots per interview. This is so that you can have a break between each one, because if you interview well they will be draining. Also, an hour goes quickly and you may easily find you go over if you are enjoying it and also if you still need more time to really get to the bottom of something.

When the interview kicks off the interviewee will be nervous. Of all the people I have interviewed there have been very few exceptions to this and that usually meant they didn’t care. With this in mind it can be good to ask a fairly generic question that lets them loosen up. From here on in I recommend that you turn it into a conversation. If you interview well you should try and pick something from what they said in the last answer to move on the next questions, and if not make it clear that it is a definite progression to a new topic (“OK let’s move on to some management questions”). This style will enable the interviewee to relax and open up a lot more than if you ask jolted bullet point questions. Don’t feel constrained to keep to the prompt sheet, let the interview take its own course and let them reveal what really motivates them. In the same vein, make sure you respond positively to their answers – I cannot see any benefit at all in intimidating them and making them feel uncomfortable, even though I know a lot of interviewers do that.

• ·         Make notes make notes. It can be hard to do this and may seem austere, but you WILL forget what they say if you don’t. By the end of the day your mind will be a mush.
• ·         Discuss each candidate immediately after each interview with the other panellists. This can be interesting to see how first impressions can differ but you will also remember those discussions a few days later when making your final decision.
• ·         Then prep up properly on the next candidate before they come in. You will already you feel you know them because you had to short-list them for interview but remind yourself of the crunch questions and the areas of their experience which you want to know more about, and which they will probably want a chance to highlight. 

When the whole process is over, go back to point number one at the top and follow your instincts – your brain will be telling you all sorts of unravelled logic but when you finally make that decision you will not know exactly how you got to it, but make the call and be confident. Tell them you want to offer them the job but that you would like to talk about it in person. Only when it is all tied up should you go and reject the other applicants. Remember that for some people they are interviewing you while you are interviewing them and they may not yet be 100% set on the job so don’t presume that they will take it.

Rejections

One thing I have always done is email each of the other interviewees with an individual message explaining that they did not get the job but stating something that I enjoyed in the interview. This has gone down well and is good easy PR for your organisation as well as being the right thing to do. Then I have written a copy and paste message for the other hundreds who didn’t get invited to interview at all and asked a volunteer to log on the jobs@ email and send it to every single applicant with their name at the top! (I hope none of them are reading this and finding out that it was a copy and paste!) That is an unusual thing to do but it doesn’t take that long and is very well appreciated by people who might have had big hopes of getting the job.

Now you’re ready to get hiring.

Nairobi x13 ZOOM

In 1963, the population of Nairobi was 350,000. It is now estimated to be 4.5 million, ie 13 times more populous. Nairobi has its unique flaws that revolve around crime, poor sanitation, overcrowded living conditions, terrible traffic, lack of reliable water and electricity and others – in order of severity in my opinion. They are all connected and congestion coupled with inadequate opportunities make up some of the reasons behind these flaws. However, Nairobi functions as a city and while some issues continue to get worse, like crime, other aspects like traffic and electricity are improving.

Nairobi in 1963

 Nairobi’s explosion in population was the result of rural – urban migration that has continued unabated since independence and really since Nairobi began in the late 19^th century.  And the only reason people have been coming is because of jobs – this is still where the jobs and opportunities are to be found. Nairobi has youth unemployment of 40%, but it is impossible to monitor the informal economy and we know that slums in Nairobi have a domestic product of millions of dollars a day. Nobody is really from Nairobi, and even people who have grandparents who were born in the city claim that their real home is in the countryside. As a result, there is no feeling of animosity from an ‘indigenous’ population who feel that the land of their forefathers has been invaded by foreign tribes.(It also means that nobody feels responsible for looking after the place but that is another story). Occasionally, there have been pockets of Nairobi that have been the scenes of proprietorial clashes between two tribes such as the conflicts in Kibera in the 1990s and the post-election violence in 2008 but for the most part different tribes have lived side by side without any explicit concern for groups of economic migrants moving in as neighbours.

That is because people are aware that the migrants are an opportunity as much as they are a challenge. If the commonly believed myth was true that there is a set quota of jobs in any one country or city then clearly over 90% of people in Nairobi would be unemployed – leaving only the original 350,000 people with the original jobs that were designed by some master plan. The economic migrants have come to look for jobs but unwittingly they have created jobs at the same time. Those who really want to work have found a way to do so and their energy has spurred Nairobi’s economy and the economy of Kenya as a whole.

It is easier to make this argument in Kenya because a detractor cannot say that these economic workers have been a drain on the welfare state – you pay for what you get in Nairobi with very few exceptions.

With this history in mind I am surprised that many Kenyans feel threatened by the presence of refugees in Nairobi. If anything, refugees are even less of a drain on the state because they don’t qualify for the very few benefits that Kenyans enjoy on the expense of the tax payer. So if they are living a sustainable lifestyle in Nairobi they must by definition be contributing to the economy – they are not taking away anyone’s job. Those who feel that their jobs are being taken by refugees should look at all the other Kenyans the same refugee is supporting by successfully surviving here.  What is more, the estimated 80,000 refugees living in Nairobi make up less than 2% of the population. If you are one of the 350,000 Kenyans who was living in Nairobi in 1963 then I can understand you complaining about the massive explosion in population, but why target your concerns at this 2% and not the other 90% who have joined you since independence? The only difference is the nationality on their passports in every other way they are exactly the same – yes they look different, but Kenyan tribes can look different; they speak different languages, but so do Kenyans from all parts of the country. Their influx has been no more dramatic than an influx from Western Province or Nyanza.

A lot going on

So Nairobi manages OK with a 2% population of refugees and a 90% population of economic migrants, and yet I believe that Nairobi is the worst case scenario of what could happen if we were more liberal about migration worldwide. Nairobi has faced challenges that would be easily avoided by the majority of countries that migrants are heading to. Since independence the city has been poorly managed. Corruption has been a key ingredient in keeping people in poverty and allowing crime to escalate, and poor economic policies ensured that Kenya as a whole had a stagnant economy for a long time and a shrinking one throughout the 1990s. Desperation pushed people to live in conditions that are not fit for humans and the slums with all the challenges they brought were able to sprawl unabated. But with a few steps forward and a few steps back Nairobi is evolving in the right direction. Just to give a few examples: thousands of youth every day are moving through the slums developing better sanitation, de-polluting and building infrastructure under the National Youth Service; Kenya Power and Lighting Company are providing legitimate power to the slums on a pre-pay basis while electricity output is getting closer to meeting demand; slum regeneration projects starting on the peripheries of slums are transforming whole areas into lower-middle class neighbourhoods; the Chinese are developing the roads and I believe noticeably taking the sting off the huge increase in car ownership in the city that inevitably leads to congestion. The city has a dark side but the hopeful Nairobi spirit is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Nairobi functioning (courtesy of chelipeacock.com)

If this is the worst case scenario is it really that bad? Let’s stop the fear mongering over migration first – more on other positive benefits later.

Solidarity - Xavier Project's Core Value

At Xavier Project we are proud that refugees form the core of our team and our decision making processes...  It sounds like a statement from a page on our website. Which it is. But what does it really mean when we say that? It is actually untrue that we have more refugees than non-refugees on our payroll, (only just). But we don’t consider the staff on our payroll to be the only people in our team. Everything we do relies on the co-operation of the refugee community and I should go further than that to say that everything we do relies on the inspiration of the refugee communities we work with.

It still sounds a bit like the website - but then I did write most of it.

 In February on our annual retreat we decided as a group of 26 that our core value should be ‘solidarity’. That’s it – just solidarity. I was excited when we settled on this because everything seemed to click together, but since then I have been trying to work out how we should express it. I suppose the reason you have a core value (or a set of values) as an organisation is to try and determine what defines you, and even what makes you stand out from other organisations. Otherwise it is just lip-service. What is the point in celebrating a core value of ‘honesty’ as a charity or an NGO, or even ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ – isn’t that what we are all meant to exhibit? What is more, in 2008 there were plenty of NGO’s who were displaying honourable core values and they were doing a fairly good job, so why would Xavier Project come along with the same core values and expect to be an improvement? Therefore, we shouldn’t conceive our core value of ‘solidarity’ in a way that everyone expects – ‘we keep the best interests of our beneficiaries at heart’, or ‘we do needs assessments to find out exactly what refugees want’. Instead we need to have a radical interpretation of ‘solidarity’ if it is going to be what defines us and makes us different.

It starts with attitude. Refugees come to Kenya and Uganda as functioning decision making people who want to control their own lives but in many cases they are herded like animals with limited freedoms. They have no democratic representation and as such have minimal influence over sweeping policies that determine their futures. These policies are often made by very few people who have little understanding as to what it means to be a refugee and these people talk about ‘durable solutions’. These durable solutions, which include repatriation, local integration and third country resettlement, are elusive – maybe there’s a lack of will somewhere along the chain of cause and effect. Maybe it’s just a lack of understanding. (sound-bite alert) In the end the only people who will put into effect these durable solutions are refugees themselves. What is clear is that if refugees are left in the dark as to the reality of their situation, and have no voice to express it from their perspective, they will be no help in finding the durable solutions that we are all want.

This may sound so obvious, but why is it that refugees still have almost no say in the policies that affect them and even worse, do not even understand the realities they face as refugees? I may sound patronising, but we have put it to the test. In May we asked over 300 refugees across Kampala and Nairobi whether they expected to be resettled in a third country and over 90% said yes they would be. But between Uganda and Kenya less than 1% of refugees are resettled every year. So their expectations about one of the key durable solutions is wildly inaccurate – can it be so different for the other two?  That suggests that the interventions carried out by all the agencies here are on thousands of ‘blind’ beneficiaries who have little idea of what is going on - the herding metaphor becomes relevant once again.

An attitude of solidarity would not let this happen.  Refugees need to be aware of their situation and need to have a voice to raise their concerns and express their ambitions both from the perspective of human dignity, but also from the utilitarian perspective of achieving durable solutions.

But how do we adopt this attitude and display solidarity in practice? Before we even get onto activities (of which there are many – just look at our workplan) there is the question of approach. Once you consider refugees as the owners of their futures the conception of an NGO changes quite drastically. Rather than being an authority we become simply a vehicle for all of our stake holders. Primarily, these stake holders are the refugee communities we work with, but you could also say we are a vehicle for our supporters, whether donors, volunteers and other aid agencies so that refugees can use their generosity and energy to their advantage in the most efficient way. If we are going to be an effective vehicle we must be accessible to all these stake holders. For the donors, this is where the clichéd values of transparency and accountability come in and for the refugees this is where the values of visibility and approachability come in. I was reminded of this no more clearly than the other day in one of our Tamuka Hubs when one of the members stood up and addressed the group, asking why more organisations could not be approachable and offer an environment where refugees could come and ask any questions, share their burdens and share their dreams. It was relieving to hear that we are succeeding in this approach where many others apparently aren’t (waiting rooms, security questions, never-ending queues, computer-says-no etc etc), but we must hold onto it and enhance this quality.

 His colleague a few minutes later commented that it is vital that NGO staff really understand the challenges of being a refugee -he was hinting that often agency staff don’t seem to care.  This is where our full time refugee employees have been so helpful (shout-out to Rinaldo, Alex, Anna, Sandra, Frank, Sam, Patricia, Pascal and all the rest) but the point is that empathy goes beyond hiring refugee staff. We are all able to empathise with refugees and share their hopes and fears and this is an approach that must start with the right attitude. Again accessibility and empathy are vital in working with refugees from the perspective of human dignity, but also from the utilitarian perspective of achieving durable solutions.

This attitude and approach may not seem radical but it will take a culture change for them to be fully adopted. There is another vital approach though that goes beyond empathy and is more testing to the existing culture. This is the approach of sharing. We cannot honestly have an attitude of solidarity, be accessible and understanding if we do not share our lives with the people we work with. Sharing resources is difficult and not always possible, but if our lifestyles are excessively different from the people we are working with our ‘solidarity’ will not be honest. This idea is best expressed by our staff alumnus Stephen Windsor in his blog on the same topic (https://muzungualihomba.wordpress.com/) which I would definitely recommend reading. But the easiest and most effective aspect of sharing, yet surprisingly the most radical, is opening ourselves up to the people we are working with. We have weaknesses, we have quirks, we are individual people and we need help from refugees too. We want to learn about and respect refugees as individuals so we need to reciprocate and not close ourselves up behind a wall of faux professionalism. Being as open with refugees as we would wish them to be with us is where we will start a real partnership of mutual respect and the possible consequences of this are as obvious as they are numerous.

The next step would be to consider activities that are spawned and nourished by the attitude of solidarity when coupled with the belief that everyone has the right to equal opportunities and protection wherever they live and whatever their background (c’mon - that was taken straight from the first line of the home page...)  - but we can leave that for another day.