Half-buried

The workshop that’s been the focus of this week terminated today with various debriefs, wrap-ups and next steps. We clambered back onto the minibus and were in Maputo by late afternoon, bidding farewell for now to the beach. Tyres half-buried in sand are a mainstay in a beachside town like Ponta do Ouro.

Today also provided an interesting exercise of a professional situation colliding with a personal stance. I was advised not to consider a project proposal involving a very large partner organisation (one of the largest NGOs in the world) of over 30,000 employees because on the ‘system’ it was flagged that there had previously been wrongdoing by one of the NGO’s operatives in Gaza, which was detected and addressed. Apparently, our US office would need to be notified and advise further. I didn’t pursue the idea because the last thing we need to do is to replicate the very imbalanced state of global politics within large institutions. It’s also impossible to control the behaviour of tens of thousands of employees without some rogue elements and we ourselves would hate to be tarred by the actions of one individual from one of the offices.