Wednesday, July 6, 2011

What I love about conference in sub-saharan Africa

Disclaimer: n=2

· Ladies in Fancy Matching Dresses: Typically they are young and beautiful and the matching dresses change every day. They are ostensibly present to provide directions to the bathroom or hand out revised schedules however sometimes their duties include standing beautifully in full view of all participants.

· The first-timers. Another staple of conferences is the random participant who has never attended a conference before and is THRILLED to be involved, if not totally cognizant of the conference do’s and don’ts. My favorite moves beyond the classic talking at full volume and letting your cell phone ring (“when I get older I will be stronger…”), are the really loud snorer and the new-to-me, person who scrolls through all their photos with the little beeping noise on for every button they press. I think these people serve a vital role; they keep people like me awake and give all the angry people staring at them some common ground in an otherwise potentially divisive environment. Maybe they are plants…

· Formal McFormalson. The formality at these conferences is really quite impressive and never fails to remind me how incredibly American I am. I’m looking at my watch after thirty seconds and wondering how many more VIPs need to be welcomed by name, title, and full biography. Honorable chairperson, Distinguished panelists, Madame the [some high role] of [some important thing], Assorted Dignitaries… At a conference in Ghana there was this sneaky trick that I wrote down where the 8th person to speak skipped all the formality and said “all protocols observed”. No one at this conference took the short cut until the second day when an American dude (surprise) said “I hope you’ll forgive me if I skip formalities and jump right to content”. Laura: YES!! Everyone else: WHAT???

Literally 1.5 hours into the conference some dignitary actually formally declared the conference “opened”. I guess I didn’t realize the similarities between a conference on supply chains and the freaking Olympics! Both require extensive opening ceremonies.

· The mike-hogs. Now these are not unique to SSA conferences, they are found the world over. I think it’s just that people are actually polite enough to tolerate them in SSA. Now I was jazzed about the UN microphones too, but sadly had nothing useful to contribute. That didn’t stop others. They would turn on their mike and then agree with every point, one by one, that the speaker made. There’s always also that person who takes a general conversation about big ideas and makes it about their particular situation. “We should be vigilant about the product quality of reproductive health supplies” “I have a friend who got pregnant on the pill”. What??

Okay I’m done generalizing, now I’ll talk about this conference in particular.

· UN Badass. So one thing that was sorta awesome was that we were in the UN conference center which means we had those sweet individual microphones and simultaneous translation. When I hit the post lunch sleepy time I decided to amuse myself by trying to simultaneously listen to the English speaker and the French translation. I am always amazed that people are able to literally hear in one language and speak in another at the same time. I am still amazed, but a little less so when I noticed how often the French translation contained “et cetera” and “et d’autres choses” in place of the actual information spoken.

· No signs rule. I was pretty excited to arrive at the UN Conference center and only slightly less jazzed when I arrived at the third entrance and was actually allowed to enter. I did the metal detector, the passport check, all feeling quite important. Then once I had my little badge, I thought, what next? Apparently my conference was a ten-minute, un-marked, windy walk from the registration barracks. The whole group of us had to walk into each building and ask “is this the conference” and then be shooed forward. Could have used a fancy lady in a dress (with knowledge) then.

· Djiboutians. At this conference there was a group of three guys and their mother who were from that sweet little country that still makes me smirk due to the word “booty”. This was a conference largely of ministry of health officials and OBGYNS but these guys were street outreach workers who may or may not have actually been part of a formal organization, their mother spoke only a local dialect so mostly sat there bored for three days. They sat behind me the first day and we became besties once they realized that I speak French. First move, the group photo, clearly. In the afternoon they came up to me to say “other people didn’t understand the picture?!” I understand it perfectly. Must document all interactions with weird other people, makes perfect sense.

· THERE WERE M-FING ASHTRAYS IN THE BATHROOM STALLS! Yeah, think about how addicted to cigarettes you’d have to be to want to smoke while taking a dump in a public restroom at the UN?

· Talking heads. It really depletes the gravitas of the super fancy speech when it is being made from a set of panelists with chairs that are so low that only their foreheads really show above the podium.

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