When Mum Turned into a Monster

When the children were small, storytime was my favourite bit of the day.  Hopefully a 20 minute respite when high-energy chasing-his-tail-in-circles SecondBorn would come and snuggle on a lap, when three year older FirstBorn would huddle up on the other side. When, if not peace, then a cessation in hostilities, would fall.  And some books depicted the reality we, the family, were living.  'When Mum turned into a Monster' by Joanna Harris stands out.

In it cousins in freshly ironed dresses give an hour's notice of an unanticipated visit. The family has been press-ganged into tidying up. Fairy cakes and jam sandwiches have been made. Piles of papers have been stuffed into cupboards, bedrooms have been hoovered. Ten minutes till they arrive, and the son and daughter are let off the leash 'To do something quiet.'  Which they interpret as setting up a muddy assault course in the garden using duvets, cushions and tablecloths and taking random bites out of fairy cakes.

The next picture is of a mother transformed with green spikes, monster head, green crocodile tail and snake gorgon hair. Screaming. And though mollified eventually by the children pulling together, as the freshly ironed cousins sit round the tea-table, we see the mother's tail poking out from under the tablecloth, gone but not forgotten.  A satisfying read, which the kids loved as much as I did.
September has been an angry month. That Mum has been a frequent alter ego.  But why, I wonder.  Why do I feel so stretched, arid and inflexible, when in many ways I am so much more settled?  No one factor is the killer. Together they break the camel's back.

* Our one day on, one day off powercuts are continuing.  It feels to have been over a year at this frequency, without warning.  Several blocks of flats are being built on our road and it seems that no sooner has the cabling been upgraded and installed to one lot, then it all comes down to add capacity for the next.

* The AccessKenya email transmitter is on another electricity spur to ours. So either we have a powercut (ie no radio mast) or the transmitter does (no internet access). If you log on at 625 am you get heady access to the internet - but within a maximum of 3 minutes, off it goes again.  I've phoned, pleaded, been logged, pushed, requested credit for our lack of access, in vain.  Today the engineers turned up.
'Give us your largest spanner and pliers so we can sort this job out.'
Engineers regularly arrive without the basic bits in the toolkit - or indeed any toolkit - and disappear off again, tutting the while, when you inform them you don't have an industrial size spanner for removing bolts from aerial masts either.

* SecondBorn has moved up the school to year five. Keys on a chain round his neck and the need for organisational skills to have the right exercise book and equipment in the right room at the right time. Not a happy transition. And the homework after a long, long day. A plague on all your houses.

The Kenyan school system is not a child-centred one. What the teacher says, goes.  And while our kids, in a British curriculum school, are taught by many inspirational, creative, caring teachers, they also have far too much to do with several who shirk responsibilities, rule by fear, push blame onto children rather than acknowledging minor misdemeanours, enforce rigid regulations while failing to apply them to themselves, and even who fail to teach at all.  I don't mind supporting with homework. See it as part of a parent's job description some of the time.  But object, massively, to large chunks of the weekend being taken up teaching SecondBorn the lessons his exercise book suggests he was to be taught in school, - except that the teacher, specialist and being paid for the job, has handed out photocopies, failed to explain them, handed out a worksheet, insisted on silence, and ignored any troublesome, messy requests for support or explanation.

* My career guidance business has taken off.  Lots of individual clients, and from them, individual cheques to the business account. Hurrah - even she can't moan at that can she? 

But the Kenyan banking system have adopted a new system with cheques. Any minor amendment or inaccuracy, - 'thousand' spelt wrongly, any crossing out or overriding the date e.g. changing 23 to 24 September, - misspelling the company name - and the cheque is refused.  My bank isn't far away. 10 minutes drive. But there is never any parking within half a mile, and if there is, you have to pay 140 KSh. You queue for over an hour in over-intimate queues to reach the counter.  Have the cheques accepted, receive a receipt. Breathe a sigh of relief. And a day or two later receive a phone call.

'Your cheque is rejected.  The system does not accept it. They have spelt 'thousand' wrongly.' Or
'It is not made out to your company.'  (Well it is, but the client has added the word Kenya to the account - correctly - its just your bank staff set up the bank account in the wrong name....)
Of the four cheques I have paid in this month three have been rejected.

Accuracy in banking matters. But this accuracy isn't seen as a two way pact. Last visit to the bank I picked up my new ATM card. Drawn on a company account, instead it is made out to a new identity (?maybe MonsterMum) consisting of my first name and my wildly misspelt middle name.  No sniff of a surname.  I'm not complaining.  Doubtless vendors will check it against my ID card (made out in a different, more accurate, name - and despite the discrepancy, accept it nonetheless.)

* Botched haircuts (http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/haircuts.html), uninvited new roofs (http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/guerilla-roofs.html), staff turnover, sackings & retirement.

* And it's taken me three weeks to calm down enough to write about the final fireworks with BigCorporate.

I worked for them at their marble headquarters two days a week for a year. Had my successes lauded - the students I supported to get full fees scholarships to US elite colleges were featured on tv, presented to the President, the subject of double page features in influential broadsheets.  True my hand in this wasn't acknowledged. Well as the only non-Kenyan, - as only the second non-Kenyan to ever work in BigCorporate - that's maybe understandable. But irking.

And once my work permit was agreed, afixed in my passport, I presented my invoices at the rate we'd agreed. Waited. Reminded, represented. Submitted the next too.  Secured written agreement that all was in hand, invoices with Finance, agreed. Went on leave.  Returned five days short of a year that I'd been working for BigCorporate, to discover that my bank account was bare.  Emailed a calm but persistent email to all my managers (attaching further copies of the invoices) noting that I'd welcome immediate payment and an explanation.  Two days, no response.

I saw red. 'Leave it with us,' they'd said. But really. It had been left with them for a year. Still no sense of urgency. Now no sense of collegiality. That even if it wasn't their priority, if it was mine, and I'd waited a year, bust a gut for them, been successful, was a scarce skilled resource, even if a deadweight member of the team, maybe they should act, today.

Recalled the tale of an OldKenyaHand waiting for key paperwork, when in her case bribes were what was wanted. How she'd prepared the way by going to the toilet. Brought a flask of tea, several packs of sandwiches, a weighty tome to read. Arrived as the office opened, was clear, persistent, and refused to budge.  And eventually, ten hours later, as the office manager wanted to go home too, her finalised paperwork was produced, without a bribe.

So in my case I gatecrashed two meetings.  Popped to the toilet, then placed myself in the UberBigBoss's executive office. Showed him the email chain. Re-presented the invoices. Repeated, again and again, that it had now been a year without payment and that that was more than enough. 

It was rude in a Kenyan context where status, gender and seniority really matter.  It would have been rude in a UK context too.  The security guard was alarmed, unclear what to do with this red-faced middle-aged angry mzungu woman. But to treat someone who had (till then) been a key and integrated member of the team like that is beyond the pale - at least in my culture. 

But it worked. The electronic payment was in my bank account that afternoon. A miracle in Kenya.

I get that accidents happen. I get that, in Kenya, multiple accidents happen. Multiple invoices, payment orders, direct requests, urgent emails get shelved, or lost, or sat on and wilfully suppressed. Over twelve months. The job doesn't necessarily receive the wage you negotiated.  Clients try and bargain you down once you've finished the job to their satisfaction. Down to nothing in some cases.  People don't say thank you. The attitude is that staff are two a penny.
'There are far more where you came from.' 
But I also think its a sign of a culture where with seniority comes not needing to dirty your hands, or to demonstrate mastery, to chase, or to oversee implementation, to be responsible for the performance of your staff or yourself. Seniority just Is.  No further requirements. Where attention to detail isn't valued. Where the difference between ill-focused going through the motions and performing a good job isn't valued.  Where what is valued is to come up with a rousing vision rather than to follow through on it, or to look back and identify what went wrong or could be done better.  And that's actually why they needed me, because in US college applications, spinning an empty line without analysis, evidence, articulation, coaching or grounded attention to detail just isn't enough.

Well it feels better to get that rant off my chest! Here's to a brighter, monster-free, tomorrow.