Do Over

 January's return from Ghana was a complete mess. On top of bad managed jet lag arriving, the mess of returning took 54 hours and luggage two days later. NOT ACCEPTABLE.

I ordered a 'Do Over' for this month's trip and everything went fine. I did a superb job of managing the jet lag in both directions even to the extent of having a full 7 hours of sleep yesterday (Sunday night) on my arrival. 

I had managed to get my return leg on Air France. Gastronomic Home Run! Seriously, most airlines even in Business Class are just trying to get by with as little as possible to ensure some shot at profitability. But on Air France...I don't know, maybe it is Gallic arrogance about their culinary heritage. But the food and drink were way beyond anything I've had in recent years. Each item was quality...not easy in an airplane galley I would add. And the alcohol...this is where the difference really showed. The wines were truly nice, and in once case, a Pouilly Fuisse from Burgundy, excellent. One of the flight attendants made a point of making this aware to me before we took off for Dallas from Paris. I normally drink red, but he was totally right! 

Then there were the 'after dinner digastifs', the brandies that the French claim cut through all the heavy food to aid digestion. I love my French Brandy. There were three choices, each way better than you would find even in many restaurants. My serving flight attendant was having a great time describing them to me and finally gave me a tasting of all three! There was a Cognac, an Armagnac, and a Calvados. Each was of XO quality (take my word for it, you NEVER see that on other airlines). After the tasting, I chose the Calvados. Bliss. This is the way to air travel. He would have kept plying me with this all trip but I would never have made my jet lag management goal.

I really wish I could afford Air France for my Ghana trips regularly...sigh.

The Invisible Hand Continues To Move Us Forward

 I have more than once on these pages made reference to my belief that something much greater than I is moving this Theodora Africa Project forward. I simply am not smart, visionary, competent or capable enough to have things coming together the way they are. 

Just two posts ago I waxed poetically on the remarkable transformation I have witnessed in our first group of participants. This week we have been dealing with our need to expand our office space. The space we have now is nice enough. But it is way far in the downtown part of Accra. Since getting affordable housing requires being far out of town (not dissimilar to many large cities in the US), this can mean hours of travel in each direction. So we set as one of our goals for Phase II getting space in an area that was more accessible to our base of participants.

A problem is that these areas are among the priciest in town. So what are the chances on the very first week looking at potential alternatives, the near perfect location would become available? Evidently pretty high if there is someone or something out there looking after you. 

I was somewhat skeptical but we had various board members out to look at the location. They announced unanimously it as (and I quote) "probably the best possible property we could find taking into account location, accessibility, price and ability to grow." What are the chances of that kind of consensus happening? It is large enough to take care of our projected needs for the next five years. We will still need to raise a fair chunk of capital to pull of as a lot of services combined in our current space, we will need to pay for separately. 

But at this stage of the game, almost nothing surprises me.

Revelation

 At Theodora Africa, we deal with mutual cultural surprises and disclosures all the time. My last trip, I was commenting on a local snack mix which was quite a bit crunchier than what one would find in the States. (Note: Being a 'texture' eater in Ghana is the polar opposite of the U.S. They like things that require a lot of chewing and crunching when it isn't FuFu which is soft and slippery). I promised I would bring supply of U.S. snacks when I came next. 

So I brought Costco/Kirkland Mixed Nuts without Peanuts, (the official nut mix of the upper middle class - literally I have referenced these with fellow professionals around the country and been served them in many places in the country.) AND, I had Wife make up a batch of her Chex Mix. This Chex Mix has been a Wife tradition since Christmas of 2021 (when desperate for a snack idea for the arriving #1's, she remembered it from childhood and looked up a recipe. It was a hit). I figured what could be more American than Chex Mix.

The nuts, of course, were immediately a big hit. However, the Chex Mix was viewed with quite a bit of suspicion. At least until first bite, as captured on this video.

 

The Sprout Grows And Is Sobered

It has been an amazing first week here in Ghana. When this program started, we understood we were dealing with women who had trauma in their lives…a lot of trauma. As we started to try to bring the initial group together, trying to develop the collaboration and trust needed for good teamwork, this trauma manifested in all kinds of behavior, not the least was outright conflict and antipathy between our participants.

 

Fast forward now two years. I am sitting in our office enjoying the banter between the team members as we are hashing out one challenge after another required to implement Phase II of our project. It’s astounding. It’s mind-blowing. It’s almost beyond belief. That these women who were almost in outright conflict with one another, could now be working as such a cohesive group. Not just working but being confident in themselves to allow each other to tease and be teased in return is so far beyond anything I could have imagined.

 

It is so hard to get across to people who have not experience this saga first hand just how big a transformation we are talking about. The credit for this goes to a lot of people. My co-founder, Gail, who saw this potential. Board members who stepped in a crucial times to intermediate between are participants and between some of them and me when the conflict got really tough. All our clients and our volunteers providing training from the U.S. who feed the steady dose of treating people with respect.

 

What really brought the amount of change to light was starting interviewing for our next group of trainees. We’ve given our existing team the major role in doing this. I am there, participating for sure, but mostly watching them. The compassion, the understanding, the encouragement, the firmness they communicate has one hardly believing they were just like those we are interviewing two years ago.

 

It has also been sobering listening to the stories of these new candidates. Rape, abuse, being trafficked, on and on. A lot of tears are being shed by all of us as the new candidates realize they, just maybe, are in a true trusting environment, with people who understand them, people who are not going to judge their past or close doors because of their past. As one of our women said after an interview looking to our future.

 

“I think this is just the beginning. I think we are going to be listening to many, many of these stories.”

 

That our initial group has gone beyond that to a position of self-confidence and self-belief is nothing short of a miracle, one they clearly intend to pass on.

Groundhog Day

You may recall from January this post about the incredulous experience of being told that the only means the neighboring apartment had for reaching the roof to repair an air conditioning unit was through the apartment I was using. And the subsequent multi-day saga of having work men haul themselves, their equipment, the old unit and the new unit through the rather small living room of the apartment. 

 What are the chances that something like this could happen again? Evidently 100%. Sure enough, the very first Saturday of my stay, the weekend where my goal is to relax and recoup energy from the long trip, there is a knock on the door. It is the compound security. The next door apartment has another air conditioning unit out. May they come through mine so they can access it? I suppose I could say no. Come back in two weeks when I’m gone. But if the shoe were on the other foot, I wouldn’t want that to happen. So instead, I had four hours on Saturday afternoon of people schlepping in and out of my apartment with tools and heavy air conditioning units.

 

Then in a new development this morning, Tuesday, I awoke to no electricity and no water. A high end unit like this advertises it has backup power supply. But I get the impression this whole complex was built on the cheap. I think it is time for me to find an alternative.

Jet Lag Management - The de-I Way

 If you travel a lot internationally, you will hear a lot of different ideas on how to manage jet lag, the issue of your internal body clock being out of synch the actual day/night cycle your body finds itself. Here are a few.

1. Adapt quickly to your new time zone. When you arrive at your destination, try to forget your old time zone as quickly as possible. ...
2. Manage sleep time. ...
3. Drink water. ...
4. Try light. ...
5. Drink a caffeinated beverage. ...
6. Keep your sleeping space comfortable. ...
7. Try melatonin. ...
8. Use medications.

I don't use any of these. I have developed my own system. It is a system based upon making use of the longest, transoceanic leg to readjust the sleep cycle so when you arrive at your destination you are well on your way to acclimating to time zone you have arrived. 

Sometimes the way the flights are timed makes this much easier. For example when going from the U.S. to Europe, one typically leaves in the evening and arrives in the late morning. By going to sleep as soon as possible after you've taken off and eaten, you get what is close to a regular sleep (depending on how long you usually sleep). Then if you immediately get into the day when you arrive, you are well on your way to getting adjusting.

However coming back the other way is more of a challenge. Now you leave late morning Europe time and arrive early afternoon U.S. time. As the day goes on in the U.S., your body clock thinks it is way in the middle of your sleep cycle. If you give in to it, you will be awake at just the time for local time to say you should be sleeping. The key here is to get some sleep early on, then fight to keep awake until it is finally local sleeping time.

Anyway you get the idea of how this works. This technique has helped me be incredibly productive and functional despite all the international travel I do. However, you may remember my last trip to Ghana in January my arrival was totally screwed up and I had the worst case of jet lag I'd had in years. The root cause of this was the particular routing I had taken. The core of the problem was a 7-hour layover in the evening at New York's JFK airport combined with a midnight departure to Ghana. As an early morning person, that 7 hours during the evening in New York was painful. I slept through most of the flight to Ghana meaning I had done exactly what I just explained you shouldn't do. I had kept myself on my original sleep cycle.

This trip, I was on the same flight so I knew I had to come up with another plan. The plan called for at least two naps during the 7-hour layover in New York, followed by a very circumscribed sleep of 3 hours during the 9+-hour flight to Ghana. Then, being sure to stay up after arrival to Ghana until the normal go-to-sleep hour, local time. The biggest impediment to executing this strategy was the lack of good areas to lie down and nap at the Delta Airlines club in JFK. However, I was to find an adequate place. I executed the strategy to perfection and have slept well both nights since arriving.

Theodora Phase II Is Leaving Earth Orbit!

 Off to Ghana again. Phase II of the project has been initiated. Thanks to a sizeable donation by one of the most wonderful couples in the world (as far as I am concerned) we have enough funds to initiate the second phase of our project. To review:

• The first phase was 'Proof of Concept"
• This is where we had to prove that we could indeed take these women from West Africa, living by their wits on the street and somehow train them to be acceptable virtual administrative assistants in the United States
• In the event, we took a target group of 4 young women and did just that. (Can I be candid here? I honestly don't think anyone who supported me in the beginning really believed we could do this. I think they decided to just take a leap of faith with me. It was so outlandish an idea. I have no idea why I believed it could be done. I suppose I can put it down to being in thrall to the higher power.)
• Now we need to prove that this wasn't just a fluke. We have to create replicable systems for everything we are doing. We have to create a model business that has the ability to expand and grow.

So you ask (actually you didn't ask but I need you to rhetorically ask so just be a nice reader and ask okay?), what specifically do you need to do to accomplish that? 

Why thank you for asking. Here is what we are creating.

• A system for recruiting new participants
• A means of evaluating and selecting from those we recruit
• The training system whereby we will transform these 'people from the street' to the raw material we can create virtual assistants from
• An entire marketing system to bring in the volume of new business we require to scale up
• A client on-boarding process integrated with on-going project management
• On-going capability training for all our participants so they get better and better at what they do
  
• Quality control systems to ensure client satisfaction
• A new U.S. 'for-profit' corporation (Newco) so we can move our people into an environment where they can earn the benefits of their work (profit sharing and ownership)
• A new Ghana subsidiary of Newco so we have a legal way of paying everyone here and our other expenses
• A new accounting and bookkeeping system for Newco
• New banking and money transfer systems for Newco

I am going to be working on all of these during the next two weeks I am in Ghana. Plus we have a major donor visiting us to do due diligence to possibly find other big donors. Someone paying their own way and giving us their valuable time to check us out! How cool is that. Truly there is something bigger than de-I (and you know how big de-I's ego is so it has to be REALLY BIG) that is pushing all this forward.

🙏🏽

 

Like A Phoenix - The Network Reborn

 I funny thing happened on the way through the pandemic. My network, my rich collection of personal contacts and resources, was reborn.

The changes resulting from Transitions 1.0 and 2.0 had slowly but surely made my life and experiences less and less relevant to the hundreds of people I had met and built connections with over my decades of being in business. Then came the coup de grace, the pandemic. 2020 was the year of the great isolation. With the exception of the work I was doing with Theodora and the few contacts from my old life who were interested in that, my contacts with my old network virtually dried up. My prior network had been built upon personal, face-to-face meetings and a focus on my local business world. I had the hardest time trying to maintain those connections in the new virtual world. And the issues they were interested and struggling with related to local business had no interest to me. The result was a period of darkness.

Then, last year, a change occurred. One of my board members in Ghana introduced me to a new global, virtual network building service called Lunchclub. Despite initial skepticism, this turned into a force of rejuvenation. The AI behind the program brought me people with a genuine interest in my life's trajectory. I began to meet the most interesting people all around not only the country but the world. This in turn got me back into my role of connector. It has become an exciting and stimulating part of my life as I build and entire new network focused on the social impact world I am now a part of.