The Triple Think and a video on Malaria

I was reading another JF’s blog the other day (Annette from UWO, http://annettedunlop.blogspot.com/) and she had made a post about how much more difficult decision making was for her overseas. After reading that post it occurred to me that I felt the same way, so I thought I should share my thoughts on it with you guys as well.

I call the process the Triple Think, where every decision you make, you seem to go through three conclusions before finally bringing up the courage to act on your final one. I’ll walk through the process for a pretty simple example, shaving.

The first time I was going to shave in Ghana, I spent a good couple hours thinking about it and planning it out. It’s a pretty different process here, I mean, no running water or sink (I went and bought a small bucket) and no mirror (I bought a small hand mirror, it was a mission to shave with, you actually end up dividing your face into quadrants, and basically go from one quadrant to the next of your face, making sure it’s clean). So I gathered all my things, had my bucket, razor, shaving cream and mirror ready to go, and was about to go out and get my bucket of water, then the triple think struck.

In triple think, you have two voices battling it out in your head, so, to make this a bit easier to read, I’m gonna name them Caution and Action (yea, naming voices in my head…)

Caution: What if they ask me what the bucket of water is for?

Action: Well, tell them your going to shave.

Caution: What if they don’t use water to shave?

Action: Well you do, tell them that and go get your water.

Caution: What if they catch you shaving in your room?

Action: People shave, I’m sure they know that, go get your water and lets do this before it gets too dark.

As you can see, Caution’s a bit of a wuss, but wants to make sure he doesn’t offend people or make a mistake. Action just wants to get stuff done, and deal with the repercussions as you go. So, we’ve reached conclusion 1, Action winning the argument and your about to get up and get the water. But then, Caution speaks up.

Caution: Wait, what about those people you see who shave others at barber shops using those little blades?

Action: What about them?

Caution: Maybe we should go to them, they seem to know what their doing.

Action: It’s true, good point, and you can meet some new people this way, let’s go to the one down the street.

So, we’ve reached conclusion 2, your about to drop everything you’ve set up and go to the barber to get shaved by him. It seems like Caution’s won, but really Caution never wanted this to happen, Caution just didn’t want to get water, now you’ve gotta go and deal with a whole new crazy situation. So as you’re about to put your things away, Caution speaks up again.

Caution: Wait, how much will it cost?

Action: It can’t be more than a few Cedi, don’t worry about it.

Caution: Will those weird blades they use work with your hair? You know it’s different from African hair. (I actually thought about this…)

Action: I would guess so, but you may get cut up pretty badly, better go with what you know. Plus, you’ve already got everything you need, just go grab the water and let’s do this.

So, that’s it, conclusion three, and you finally go to get the water. I’ve skipped a lot of stuff just cause I can’t remember every excuse I thought of to delay shaving, but yea, you get the gist of it. And this happens most times you do anything even slightly different from what you’re used to out here.

For shaving, it’s not so bad, you know you gotta do it eventually and people here do it, if it comes down to it you ask one of your Ghanaian friends about what they do. The tough ones are usually work related. Like, I want to set up a meeting to discuss the results of a study done by the Government of Ghana on the governance procedures in districts. The neighboring district got $450 000 (USD, yea, big money) because they preformed reasonably well. We got nothing, because a report from 2006 (actually, a CIDA report) called the district corrupt. And from what I hear, the district was corrupt back then, financial mismanagement was rampant and accountability was slim to none. CIDA wants us JFs working with District Assemblies to get the reactions from the districts in regards to this study (and the financial incentives tied to them) and give them to EWB by August 1^st.

That’s Saturday…and I’ve been triple thinking every single little decision that goes into this meeting. My director is going out and the new one is transitioning in, do I really want to drop this on him now? What insight could he bring anyways, he’s brand new. Who else should I invite to this meeting? I want my planning officer there but he hasn’t been at work for the past week and a half. Maybe I should make this more informal, both directors invited me out for beers with them and Budget tomorrow, maybe I should do it then. Should I do this interview style using the questions EWB and CIDA gave us or try and get a conversation going just based on the general themes. Man, do I miss intra-organizational email, I hate having to go to Directors office and wait for him to be free anytime I want to discuss something, it can take hours sometimes…(just an update cause I wrote this on Monday, this worked out fine, had an interview with just the old Director and Budget on Director’s last day, and we talked for like a good 2 hours and I even got an audio recording of the interview which was sweet).

So yea, that’s the general idea behind triple think, and the paralyzing affect it can have on my decision-making process out here. It’s funny, I can’t remember ever having this problem in Canada, having to think out minor decisions so much. Maybe it’s cause every decision seems so major here, and with 3 work weeks left, I don’t have much time to make up for mistakes.

Anyways, media for this week is something pretty cool. Adam from U of M has been busy churning out videos, and so I thought I’d share another one of his creations, about his time with Malaria (he actually took the video while he had Malaria, the guy’s a trooper).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6-LoyWiUw

Enjoy! And definitely continue sharing your comments and questions. Really appreciate the feedback I’ve been getting recently too, thanks!

Cheers,

Gajan