57. Plotting Our Path - By Br. Bill Firman

57. Plotting Our Path

Over the past few months our management team in Southern Sudan has worked together to produce a draft Strategic Plan for the consideration of the Solidarity with Southern Sudan Board that meets in Rome next month. The Plan is as comprehensive as we can make it and, although written with conciseness in mind, covers some 40 pages plus another 27 pages of Appendices. Yet given the unpredictability we face in Southern Sudan, I think maybe we need a different word to describe this document – maybe a ‘chart’ or a ‘plot’. I’ll settle for the word ‘plot’ but minus most of the sinister overtones this word might suggest.

To me the word ’plan’ suggests a reasonable confidence in how and where we are going to achieve our gaols in orderly fashion. The uncertainties here, however, are abundant and it almost seems an overstatement to call it a ‘plan’. Rather we are attempting to plot our way through a minefield of possibilities beyond our control.

This is a country of developing infrastructure where government ‘forward planning’ is commonly no more than last minute planning. It has just been announced that registrations for the referendum will be extended for another week and there will be extra public holidays to make it easier for officials to register. Late changes of this kind are common in Southern Sudan. There is usually minimum prior notice and key calendar events affecting us such school dates are simply not announced well in advance.

There is no postal service in Southern Sudan other than a central post office box. There are very few street names and no street numbers. This also can be a problem, so I discovered, when applying for a new passport. The passport application form requires one to give an address, not a post office box! Further in first world countries the documents used to establish personal identity are credit cards, social security cards, health care card and bills for utilities showing house address. Here there is almost no use of such cards and services are normally ‘purchased’ in advance by buying credit for pre-payment meters. Utility invoices and receipts usually don’t have addresses.

Shopping is an exercise in grasping occasional opportunity. If you see what you want buy it now, plus any reserves you may need, as the item may not be there when you come back. So we move ahead, not by striding forward resolutely on firm ground, but by placing one foot tentatively before the other seeking firm ground on which to progress. The reality in Southern Sudan at present is that plotting a path around confronting obstacles cannot be ignored even as we seek to attain more distant goals. Yes it is important to set goals and know what we want to achieve but it would be stupidity to be so focussed on delivery of outcomes and meeting targets that we ignore the more immediate pitfalls. Sudan is littered with unfinished projects such as partly-constructed buildings, owing to the failure to accommodate the local reality.

The practice in Southern Sudan is that someone who is purchasing a product or a service may be asked to pay a large percentage upfront. Experience confirms that there is huge risk in this. Some nearby Church buildings have no roofs. The contractor was paid to finish the building but he simply disappeared with the money. I believe there is a large half-built school that has suffered the same fate at the hands of this contractor.

One builder, who is doing very good work for us, completed several government construction project months ago. He has not been paid. He has signed contracts but the existing infrastructure is not effective in bringing about justice. What is more effective is graft and other forms of corruption and that is a problem for those of us who try to act justly. This is a place where plotters are, for the moment, more effective than planners! It is something we must try to change but we ignore the current reality to our peril. Hence, as I once heard a professor say, ‘we tiptoe into the future on the brittle egg shells of the past’. My strategic plan is to head in the right direction, but carefully! - Br Bill