Working at Zanzibar College of Health Sciences

Mbweni, Zanzibar

Working at Zanzibar College of Health Sciences – meetings, meetings..

You may be interested in the work I am doing so I’m posting a series on what it is like working here.

To enliven the narrative, I’ve posted some photos of the safari Rose and I went on in January, which was lovely. The juxtaposition seems suitably surreal as I would be pleasantly surprised if I had got to grips with 80% of what goes on here. Much remains mystifying!

Scared rabbit..

Meetings with the boss

Most days I start by 8 a.m. to catch the boss – the Principal of the College - for a chat as this seems to work best - he has never asked to see me! Sometimes he is too busy for more than pleasantries but occasionally we have longer sessions, for example earlier this week nearly two hours to go through the presentation for a meeting we are planning on the Consultation draft of the Strategic Plan. I did not anticipate this so it seemed fortunate that I dropped by!

The hazard of this method of accessing the boss is that everyone else does too, so we are likely to be interrupted several times, by people coming in, the mobile etc. The people ranges from external visitors to the ‘fundi’, the handyman, who often seems to take his orders from the boss!

Team of weaver birds..

All staff are very helpful, but tend to respond to questions rather than volunteering much, so I’m trying to ask the right ones! There is a pleasant working atmosphere and a very informal approach compared with what I am used to. This is a small place though – only 50 College staff (and only 1.2m people on the islands – so certainly anyone in the health business knows everyone).

Internal business meetings

As the teaching at the College is in English (at least in theory), I assumed that was how the College operated, but not so, unfortunately. The business at the College at meetings is conducted in Swahili, as are the letters, memos reports etc.(business is in transition from paper to electronic, perhaps where UK offices were 15 years ago).

I have been extremely lazy about the language – I do not seem to have the mental space to do anything except the work in English and mundane tasks like washing clothes by hand, shopping for food and cooking a bit.

Getting on with day to day..

So I’ve only been to one internal business meeting, in early December on a Saturday morning which about next year’s budget, in preparation for an application for funds from the Ministry for the next financial year, July 2012 to June 2013, the ‘subvention’. At least I thought it was about next year, but when the note was produced all the figures related to this year. Mystifying, but possibly as the College is a department of the Ministry of Health the management infrastructure, such as it is, is there rather than at the College. Certainly only recently has a Registrar function been established and an accountant appointed because tuition fees have been raised and the income needs collecting and accounting for.

The Saturday morning meeting was held  It was held in Swahili but I managed to follow some of what was going on as I had my computer and could use ‘Google translate’ – you put a word, or phrase or sentence in one box in Swahili and it shows the English translation in an adjacent box. Possibly adequate for budgets as the subject matter is straightforward, e.g. vehicle maintenance, electricity, water, but not much else!.

According to my calculations, the recent student fee rise means that the College has lots of money, a point I made to the Principal a few weeks ago. Having done more work on the figures, I still think that is generally true but it is also true that non-pay running costs have been under-funded at best and in many examples, e.g. teaching materials and laboratory equipment, text books, repairs and maintenance of buildings, not funded at all. My main contributions to the budget/subvention discussion was to suggest there should be a significant budget for repairs and maintenance and that the desire for a conference/examinations hall should be listed as a capital not revenue requirement!

The last I heard about the progress of this application for a ‘subvention’ was that the Ministry of Finance has asked the College for the last five year’s cash flow figures. This seems very odd to me, not least because the main variable is student numbers in the future and therefore forecast fees, but what do I know?

Stakeholder meetings

Then there meetings of stakeholders in the Zanzibar health world (health is a devolved function) - the Ministry, Development Partners (e.g. UN Agencies, Africa Development Bank, Danida which is the Government of Denmark development agency and a very significant investor in health in Zanzibar) and institutions like the College and the main public hospital, Mnazi Mmoja, which is about 6 km from the College.

Dangerous outside world..

I went to a two day meeting in Pemba, the other populated island that makes up Zanzibar, in October. This was the Ministry’s annual report to its partners, held in English. The ‘Development Partners’ contribute over half the costs of the public health service in Zanzibar.  I also went to a stakeholder meeting on the HIV/AIDS programme strategic plan.

Dependency culture..

Both were characterised by great assiduity to working through the material in detail. In Pemba there were a series of power point presentations, one after the other. The meeting started about an hour late (standard practice as far as one can tell) and was then interrupted by a flying visit from the President of Zanzibar (and large entourage including armed guards).  The first day was scheduled to finish @ 4.30 but went on until well after 7 pm, and people stayed!

The AIDS/HIV meeting was also two days, it started an hour later than scheduled but again people were willing to stay on at the end of the day way past 6 pm to get through the agenda. This meeting was facilitated, and after some presentations there were small groups. An hour was taken up sorting out who would go in which group and then the groups were asked to work through sentence by sentence whole sections of the draft strategy.  Each group was given a laptop with the text so they could agree ‘tracked changes’ - I lost the will to live well before lunch!

Lunch ..

At both these meetings there were constant late arrivals, mobile ‘phone conversations, etc. etc. 

Meetings for the College Strategic Plan

Anyway I thought I’d try something different for the meetings I would run for the draft Strategy, but that proved difficult. I’d written a proposal about the process we would follow to arrive at the Strategic Plan. I assumed we were following this, but in the event we didn’t! One staff meeting on the 1^st draft of the Plan I thought was going to be four or five people so we would just go through main issues.  In the end there were 26 people!

Large group..of hippos..

An earlier meeting at the pre-draft stage was planned for the teaching staff, and I knew there would be about 30 people. This did have more a lot more preparation but was characterised by:

- a room that was plainly too small and did not have enough chairs

- late arrival of two out of three of the people who were to present at the beginning

- constant to-ing and fro-ing as latecomers arrived, found there was no chair and went to get one and bring it in

- mobile ‘phone conversations

- decision not to break for refreshments but mass exodus at prayer time (c. 1230), with different people arriving for the 1^st time after that

Plus to add to my befuddlement, much of the discussion was in Swahili!

Nevertheless we got through and I even wrote up a note of the event, from the small groups, which again assiduously worked through the suggested questions and reported back as requested only three main points. What I am used to tends to be the reverse: very orderly meetings but participants much less likely to do what the facilitator suggests.

So it is a different experience from work at home, and you may see why I am not convinced I have got to grips with the way things are done, let alone the content. But it does seem to me a Strategic Plan should take a few months, not years, to produce, so I continue to muddle through with the aim of a final Draft by end February.

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