... is very much like trying to teach a shark how to swim. Or bite.
I regularly employ small teams of south sudanese staff, as do all of my colleagues. Wherever we work we need to hire daily staff that can go out into the communities we are targeting, to carry out the surveys we have been set. There are dozens of tribes here, all of which have their own unique history and language. If we need to work in a particular area, then we need to employ people who come from the tribes that occupy the land we are working in. We have to do this for two reasons.
The first is that, obviously, we need someone who speaks the local language to do the translations for us. We have surveys that need to be filled in. We need someone who can ask the questions in Dinka, or Nuer, or Bari, or Shilluk. They will then translate the answers back into English for us. If the translation does not go well, you get rubbish data. You had better check out how well they can speak and read English before you hire them.
The second reason is less directly practical, but has much more serious consequences if something does go wrong. The biggest threats to security here is not necessarily the tension between South Sudan and Sudan, who they fought a war of independence with. The biggest threat to your everyday security is inter-tribal conflict. In a country where owning cattle symbolizes your material wealth, cattle raids are deadly. Attacks on other tribes lands, in revenge for previous killings, also happen with depressing regularity. Struggles are sparked over the use of water and grazing land. These conflicts occur at local levels, but they are represented at a national level as the tribes vie for influence and look after their own in Parliament. Practically speaking, I am not saying that I am likely to get some Nuer guys shot dead if I take them with me on a field trip into another tribe's land. However, I might be setting them up for more than collecting bad data. They may also collect a few bruises.
What this means is that they are used to sticking together. Individuals within a tribe do conflict with each other, but when they are threatened by someone from outside the tribe each and every tribemember will line up alongside their relations. Disagree with someone from the other tribe? None of his tribemates will take your side. Enter a dispute with one of your employees? You will be hard pushed to find a court or judge that take your side if he is connected to the local community. They know that banding together and helping each other out gives them strength. This is how they managed to survive decades of war. People here are used to working as a group. Now let me give you an example of how this can play itself out in my work:
I was recently commissioned to supervise a large survey in Upper Nile state. The data collectors that were to be part of the survey were salaried staff that worked for the NGO that had contracted me. The staff were being taken away from their usual work in order to carry out this survey. Because they were taken away from their usual places of work, they are granted an extra daily bonus. A "Per Diem". Now, it should be remembered that this survey plays an important part of the NGOs funding application. The survey shows how much work there is to do in the area and that they deserve the funding which pays for their projects, and incidentally pays the data collectors regular wages.
I trained this team of 20 or so people for 4 days in the various skills that the survey required. At the end of the 4th day we gave them all their certificates, everyone was happy, and we tell them to prepare to leave in the morning for the area in which we will start work. The next morning, we let them all know that we are leaving at 9am so they could start packing their things in the cars. No-one moved. An hour later, while having a briefing, a spokesman stands up and begins to deliver a list of demands for their continued participation in the survey. They wanted: raincoats; rainboots; daily allocations of tea, cake, and soda; and a 33% increase in their per diem.
In short, they are going on strike, and they waited until the last moment to tell us because they thought that was when we would be most likely to give in. Arthur Scargill would be proud.
This has happened to me and my colleagues in other places too. Much of the time it is over an additional 10 or 20 south sudanese pounds per day. On some short projects where we just wanted the work done, their strike action succeeded. We paid them. In this case, it did not. The strikers held their ground, but so did their employer. The employer went to the local authorities to look for help, and to other organisations to try to find an alternative source of data collectors. However, as they were in conflict with people from the local area, the authorities supported their own. After 3 days of negotiations, the survey was cancelled. The organization failed in its attempt to produce a yearly survey that is uses to apply for and justify its funding stream.
It is also worth noting that the group of employees also lost out on what would have been almost a months salary on top of their normal pay, but they were not willing to give in on their demands. This points to another interesting part of the national psyche of the South Sudanese that I have only just begun to realize. They will stand firm on a demand, even if it may mean hurting themselves as they do it. South Sudan's largest export, by far, is oil. The problem is that the only oil pipeline running from here to the coast is through Sudan, its old enemy. Sudan was levying a high price for South Sudan to pump its oil through that pipeline, and was also making a lot of money out of the oil as it resold it. South Sudan tried to negotiate a better deal for their oil, but Sudan though it had them in a strangle hold.
South Sudan decided the only way to break the deadlock was to stop producing oil. This hurt Sudan a lot, but it hurt South Sudan even more. The South Sudanese lost 98% of their national income.
The thing is, not one single South Sudanese person complained. They supported the government's action. They were happy to hurt themselves severely, so long as the north did not get the advantage on them.
You may be fooled into thinking that because the South Sudanese are poor, they will have to take the weaker position in any negotiation. This is FAR from the truth.
I regularly employ small teams of south sudanese staff, as do all of my colleagues. Wherever we work we need to hire daily staff that can go out into the communities we are targeting, to carry out the surveys we have been set. There are dozens of tribes here, all of which have their own unique history and language. If we need to work in a particular area, then we need to employ people who come from the tribes that occupy the land we are working in. We have to do this for two reasons.
The first is that, obviously, we need someone who speaks the local language to do the translations for us. We have surveys that need to be filled in. We need someone who can ask the questions in Dinka, or Nuer, or Bari, or Shilluk. They will then translate the answers back into English for us. If the translation does not go well, you get rubbish data. You had better check out how well they can speak and read English before you hire them.
The second reason is less directly practical, but has much more serious consequences if something does go wrong. The biggest threats to security here is not necessarily the tension between South Sudan and Sudan, who they fought a war of independence with. The biggest threat to your everyday security is inter-tribal conflict. In a country where owning cattle symbolizes your material wealth, cattle raids are deadly. Attacks on other tribes lands, in revenge for previous killings, also happen with depressing regularity. Struggles are sparked over the use of water and grazing land. These conflicts occur at local levels, but they are represented at a national level as the tribes vie for influence and look after their own in Parliament. Practically speaking, I am not saying that I am likely to get some Nuer guys shot dead if I take them with me on a field trip into another tribe's land. However, I might be setting them up for more than collecting bad data. They may also collect a few bruises.
What this means is that they are used to sticking together. Individuals within a tribe do conflict with each other, but when they are threatened by someone from outside the tribe each and every tribemember will line up alongside their relations. Disagree with someone from the other tribe? None of his tribemates will take your side. Enter a dispute with one of your employees? You will be hard pushed to find a court or judge that take your side if he is connected to the local community. They know that banding together and helping each other out gives them strength. This is how they managed to survive decades of war. People here are used to working as a group. Now let me give you an example of how this can play itself out in my work:
I was recently commissioned to supervise a large survey in Upper Nile state. The data collectors that were to be part of the survey were salaried staff that worked for the NGO that had contracted me. The staff were being taken away from their usual work in order to carry out this survey. Because they were taken away from their usual places of work, they are granted an extra daily bonus. A "Per Diem". Now, it should be remembered that this survey plays an important part of the NGOs funding application. The survey shows how much work there is to do in the area and that they deserve the funding which pays for their projects, and incidentally pays the data collectors regular wages.
I trained this team of 20 or so people for 4 days in the various skills that the survey required. At the end of the 4th day we gave them all their certificates, everyone was happy, and we tell them to prepare to leave in the morning for the area in which we will start work. The next morning, we let them all know that we are leaving at 9am so they could start packing their things in the cars. No-one moved. An hour later, while having a briefing, a spokesman stands up and begins to deliver a list of demands for their continued participation in the survey. They wanted: raincoats; rainboots; daily allocations of tea, cake, and soda; and a 33% increase in their per diem.
In short, they are going on strike, and they waited until the last moment to tell us because they thought that was when we would be most likely to give in. Arthur Scargill would be proud.
This has happened to me and my colleagues in other places too. Much of the time it is over an additional 10 or 20 south sudanese pounds per day. On some short projects where we just wanted the work done, their strike action succeeded. We paid them. In this case, it did not. The strikers held their ground, but so did their employer. The employer went to the local authorities to look for help, and to other organisations to try to find an alternative source of data collectors. However, as they were in conflict with people from the local area, the authorities supported their own. After 3 days of negotiations, the survey was cancelled. The organization failed in its attempt to produce a yearly survey that is uses to apply for and justify its funding stream.
It is also worth noting that the group of employees also lost out on what would have been almost a months salary on top of their normal pay, but they were not willing to give in on their demands. This points to another interesting part of the national psyche of the South Sudanese that I have only just begun to realize. They will stand firm on a demand, even if it may mean hurting themselves as they do it. South Sudan's largest export, by far, is oil. The problem is that the only oil pipeline running from here to the coast is through Sudan, its old enemy. Sudan was levying a high price for South Sudan to pump its oil through that pipeline, and was also making a lot of money out of the oil as it resold it. South Sudan tried to negotiate a better deal for their oil, but Sudan though it had them in a strangle hold.
South Sudan decided the only way to break the deadlock was to stop producing oil. This hurt Sudan a lot, but it hurt South Sudan even more. The South Sudanese lost 98% of their national income.
The thing is, not one single South Sudanese person complained. They supported the government's action. They were happy to hurt themselves severely, so long as the north did not get the advantage on them.
You may be fooled into thinking that because the South Sudanese are poor, they will have to take the weaker position in any negotiation. This is FAR from the truth.
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