A Visit to the Bus Depot

In true Global Nomad style, friend Mads, who is currently spending 9 months travelling around Latin America, managed to show up in Antigua the same week I was there, so we took a little time to wander round the town with our cameras.  Random meandering brought us through the local market and to the bus depot. While hardly a premier tourist destination in itself (save for those entering and exiting the town via public bus), the combination of dark skies, shoddy foreground, and bright colours on the bodies of the buses themselves, all made for a creative and alternative photographic diversion.

It’s fun to see how buses get treated in different parts of the world.  Highly functional in the west, in poorer countries they are a capital investment of the highest order for middle-sized businessmen, and can be highly lucrative once a service and line can be well established.  They are both a source of blessing (income), and a magnet for all kinds of superstition and fear given their propensity to crash in many of these places, with high fatality rates associated.

My first real exposure to the world of colourful buses was in Nairobi in 2001.  Their minibuses are called ’Matatus’ (a derivative of the kiswahili word for ‘three’- ‘tatu’- after the original cost of a fare, three shillings. Tatu itself has its roots in the Arabic word for three, ‘thalaatha’, Kiswahili being a trade language derived from a mix of Arabic and the traditional Bantu group of languages spoken along the east African coastline).  Matatus were a gloriously offensive expression of Kenyan street culture- painted in gaudy hues, airbrushed densely enough that the chassis could rust away and the thing would still hold together, and with a sound-system that ensured you didn’t just hear the Matatus coming, you actually felt them.

As in most places in the developing world, the fact that the Matatus were primarily Nissan and Toyota minivans didn’t stop their conductors cramming sixteen or eighteen people inside as a matter of course- four to a row, hips jammed together in the dense, sweaty interior, produce and babies and all, while the subwoofer vibrated your ribcage with an intensity that could pop a chicken’s skull.  Competition for routes was severe- at times leading to violent confrontation- and negotiating the roads near a bus-stop was always a gauntlet to run.  Driving was horrendous, however.  The drivers were ramped on miraa (the local variant of the herbal chew khat, that comes over by the truckload from Somalia), helping them stay awake despite fatigue, and creating a false sense of invincibility that would have them overtaking at high speed on blind corners, with routinely predictable results.

With soaring fatalities, the new Kenyan government under Kibaki pushed through a set of gutsy reforms a few years after I was there, forcing the industry to be regulated.  Routes were formalized, paint-jobs were replaced with a ubiquitous yellow stripe, sound-systems were limited to certain decibels, and speed-governors were installed on motors.  This was, ultimately, a good thing, as the number of lives lost to reckless driving fell substantially.  However I have to say that in my opinion, a little of the soul of Nairobi was also stripped away in the process, and in a city that needs all the help it can get to present a positive face, I felt it lost a little.

Kenya’s not alone in the colourful bus stakes however.  Juddering through Colombo’s steamy streets during last year’s monsoon in two-stroke tuk-tuks, I can vividly recall the searing stench of diesel exhaust from the oversized, windowless Lanka Ashok Leyland buses, with hyper-real murals airbrushed front, back and sides.  Sitting in the passenger seat of the rickshaw, my head would barely reach the top of the rear tyre of the beasts while the enourmous engine rattled behind its panels just inches from my ear in the claustrophobic rush-hour.  Peering up at rows of resigned brown faces peering back down at me, I occasionally wondered whether the driver even knew we were down there, worrying at what was keeping us from being turned into a thin slick sheet of crushed aluminium.

For an altogether different approach to public buses, the Jeepneys of the Philippines are hard to go past.  Like the bastard child of a 1940s army jeep and a decrepit stretched limo, these ply the streets of Manila in airbrushed hordes.  Images of Hollywood starlets, soaring eagles, or religious montages cry out for attention off the sides of the awkward vehicles, rows of people crammed inside in the dense heat.  The windowless sides provide what little circulation can be created in the crawling metropolis traffic, a mixed blessing in air so polluted you can pretty much see it.

Almost certainly my favourite to look at, however, are the trucks and, specifically, buses of Pakistan.  Taking frivolous decoration to new heights of sheer gaudiness, the transports are wrapped in fabrics, mirrors, tassles and shiny things in all manner of colours and styles.  Fringes hang from windshields until they seem to obscure the view.  Swirling hues scream from the chassis to be noticed.  Airhorns, seeming ripped from oil supertankers, announce the arrival and imminent departure of services.  Loud Sindhi music blares from speakers while Urdu variants of Bollywood cinema flashes across a tiny television screen mounted at the front of the aisle.  They are truly marvellous creatures to watch coming down the road- and if I ever make it back to Pakistan with my camera I’ll do my best to capture some.

For now, however, this series of photos are all from the jaunt through the Antigua bus depot, and I’ll have to leave your imagination to fill in the images that I can only suggest with words.  But I thoroughly enjoyed this shoot, and a chance to explore a little of another nation’s culture, as expressed through the medium of public transport.

*So this clearly isn’t a bus.  But it kind of fit into the vehicular category I’ve been exploring.  And I liked the angle and curves on this old VW Beetle that was parked at an Antigua roadside.  The Spanish word for car, ‘coche’ is actually from the same place we get for the English ‘coach’, synonymous with bus, so it kind of works.  A hark back to the day when the word ‘coach’ refered to a range of horse-drawn carriages which early automobiles mirrored in form and function.

**Mads in Antigua, with a colourful fairground stall as a backdrop.  The fairground backed right onto the bus depot (see the ferris wheel in one of the earlier shots above) and was colourful and in use, but very run down.

Colours of Antigua

In Antigua for several days, I was able to take my camera for a number of walks in the down-time (usually stealing 30 minutes during lunch-breaks to go for a conspicuous wander of the old colonial town’s colour-laden streets).

One such jaunt took me to the markets that sprawl over on the western end of town near the bus depot (subject of a coming post).  There was a local market, full of cheap manufactured goods and produce in a wide array of aromas (but relatively little visual interest).  And there was a tourist market, chocked top to bottom, end to end, with the sort of colourful trinkets and souvenirs that prompt magpie-like travelers to pronounce “Oooh… Shiny!” and immediately open their wallets.

Which I did too.

After all, gifts are fun.

Having made my purchases from one such stall, dripping with tones and textures, I asked the shopkeep if I could take some photos of his wares, and he obliged me without too much prompting, so I spent a few minutes exploring the brightly coloured fabrics with my macro lens, and thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Trialing something new, I’m posting these not as a column of photos, but as a slide-show, which I hope will be a visually appropriate alternative to my normal layout.  Let me know how it goes for you.

If galleries are more your style, then check out some of my Antigua pics over on my Bubblesite page… There are currently 3 for Antigua, with more pics still on the way.

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Oooh… Shiny!

Fiji Babies

When you say the word Fiji, the sort of thing that comes to mind is generally some variation on this:

(In fact, the variation is probably a little more attractive than this particular beach, which is artificially created- and raked- on the edge of what would once have been mangrove swamps around the heavily developed Denarau Island)

Fiji, like many places that are high on the tourist agenda, is actually a bit of a melting pot.  It has rich bits and poor bits, pretty bits and ugly bits, and all kind of swirly dichotomies in the mix.  Its population, for example, is a blend of Melanesian, Polynesian, and Indian (or Indo-Fijian).  (The Indians were brought in as labourers to harvest the sugar cane crop, and stayed to set up businesses; they now make up slightly less than 50% of the population and were apparently an absolute majority before the coup).

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing about Fiji.  It’s kind of under a form of Military Dictatorship Lite.

I’m faecetious about the thing only because when you compare Fiji’s to other coup-prone countries like recent bloodbath in Guinea, or the cuddly chaps who run Chad, Frankie (Bainimarama- who heads up Fiji’s junta) comes across as all kinds of benevolent.  Of course, for political opponents on the little archipelagic state (and for the Powers That Be in the Commonwealth, who have suspended Fiji, putting it into the same category of nations as Zimbabwe- God Bless Bob) this isn’t much of a laughing matter.

Digression.

At any rate, behind the touristy facade of Hiltons, Westins, Sheratons and Holiday Inns (or is that Holidays Inn?), there is a real country with real socio-economic disparity.  Again, compared to the levels of poverty and physical deprivation you find in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s hard to get too excited about the situation in the Pacific (as I discovered during my time in PNG). Fiji really isn’t all that poor by comparison, especially with the huge annual influx of tourist dollars.  None the less, there’s a more impoverished side that most visitors don’t visit.

I was in Fiji for work (yeah, I have a crappy job, eh?), which I’ll probably tell you more about on a later post sometime in early August for reasons which will become clear then.  Part of that work involved checking out some of the local communities, and while it was interesting to take a wander round and see bits of Fiji I’ve missed before, I did, obviously, take the opportunity to do some clicking.  Just for a change.

This little series of shots I took at a village at the very end of the day, as the sun was going down behind the trees.  As such a few of my photos were a little blurry as I was shooting in moderately (though not extremely) low light.  As we came out of the village meeting house, there were lots of kids playing on the green, and when they saw the camera, they got very excited.

I took this first shot moments after bringing the camera up.  These little tykes over in the distance (I’m shooting on my 85mm stopped all the way down to f/1.8 here) took one look at me and dashed together into a huddle, grinning cheekily despite being 20m away from me.  I loved the effect- the kids in focus and the rest of the frame blurred out from the shallow depth of field- and the free-form mob they created.

(Click on the image to see the full-size pic, which will let you enjoy it a lot more)

After that I had kids rushing at me and it was a scramble to keep them off the lens.  The 85mm was useless for snapping group photos at close range, and at first as I backed up, they kept following me.  However I did manage to get this one shot which I really loved.  The framing is ‘imperfect’ in that I’ve lopped off the head of one lad, and a second is out of focus with the shallow depth-of-field.  However I love the expression on the face of the taller boy, and the sharpness of that image, and somehow the balance of the composition with the three heads just works.  Well, I like it anyway.

I managed a couple of group shots after that.  They’re a hit-and-miss sort of photo in that they can be boring, and they’re often less intimate than portraits of one or two people (see above), and the chances of getting all members looking at the camera are pretty much nil- especially with kids.  In this case the children all insisted on making hand-gestures at the camera, the value of which I’m not sure about, but they clearly meant something because from the largest to the smallest they seemed intent on doing so.  But these two shots I liked.  The first was taken on the 85mm, and the second on my 16mm (which on the full-frame Canon EOS 5D gives an enourmous wide angle).

A brief comparison of the two shots also tells you a little about the difference between telephoto and wide-angle.  While the children in both images are taking up about the same amount of the frame, you can see how the telephoto has sucked right in to (and blurred) the background, while the wide-angle has embraced a huge chunk of the village behind it.

Also, I love the waving hands of the little tyke in blue.

I was only in Fiji for 2 days (it’s my 3rd trip there so I didn’t feel too hard-done by), but I’m heading back to Fiji at the end of this month and I’m hoping for stacks more shots.  I will, predictably, keep you posted.

Embracing the Chaotic: Cynefin and Humanitarian Response

Note: Many thanks to Dave Snowden for his willingness to comment on this article prior to release

Because I’m always a little behind the eight-ball, a friend of mine* recently introduced me to the Cynefin framework. It’s a way of analyzing and understanding systems.

Cynefin draws the world’s systems into four paradigms, arranged in a quadrant as per the attached diagram**. They can fit into Simple, Complicated, Complex or Chaotic. Each paradigm has its own characteristics, and systems can shift from one paradigm to another.

When I talk about systems, I’m refering to chains of causality- that is, I do X, and I get result Y.

The content of the following post came about from conversations held with members of our response team a couple of weeks ago during a facilitated discussion.  Thanks to Andrew for being happy for me to reinterpret and share it here.

Cynefin Demystified

In a Simple system, the relationship between X and Y is direct, linear, and easy to understand. When I do X, I will always get Y, and it’s easy to understand why that is the case. A hand-pump is a good example of a Simple system. I move the handle up and down, and I create hydraulic pressure within the pump, and water comes out of the nozzle. If the system is working properly, I will get this result every time, and if I don’t get this result, then the problem is some easily identifiable breakdown within the mechanics of the system.

In a Complicated system, the relationship between X and Y can be worked out, but there may be many stages in the process. When I do X, I get Y, but a lot of other things need to happen along the way for that to remain true. An Airbus A380 is a good example of a Complicated system. When the pilot pushes forward on the throttle, all sorts of electronic commands are sent via carefully constructed circuitry to various mechanical components which allow fuel to flow to other mechanical compenents which eventually cause turbines to spin which force air through intakes which push the aircraft forwards until thrust creates enough forward momentum that air flowing over and beneath carefully arranged flight planes can lift the aircraft into the air. The planning and analysis that has allowed this reality to occur has taken decades to develop. If I do X, I will get Y, providing other parts of the system are in alignment and the analysis has been successful.

In a Complex system, X and Y have a relationship, but it is one characterised by feedback loops and a measure of uncertainty. It is not necessarily clear how I get Y from X, and by reaching Y, I may in fact affect X. An example of a Complex system might be a Hummingbird. It is an intricate, delicate set of chemical and biological reactions which allow it to remain alive and in flight. It requires all manner of inputs to maintain stasis- heat, energy in the form of nectar, oxygen to feed into its bloodstream, and even (on a simple level) certain needs that are best described as ‘emotional’ (or perhaps ‘evolutionary’) such as a mate. The way these various inputs react will determine how well the hummingbird functions, and the links, while perceivable, are highly interdependant and affect one another in a delicate ballet of constantly shifting targets. If I do X, I will get Y, which will inadvertantly impact upon X, which then affects Y, and so forth.

In a Chaotic system, the relationship between X and Y, if there is one, will be very difficult or impossible to determine. If I do X, there’s no guarantee what I’ll get, and I certainly can’t be certain that I’ll acheive Y, and even if I do achieve Y, it may have nothing at all to do with having done X. A good example of a Chaotic system is a burning house. There are so many processes happening so fast and in no discernable order, and the situation is evolving so rapidly and unpredictably, that it’s nearly impossible to actually map what is happening, either during the process, or even with the benefit of hindsight. The molecular and physical interactions taking place between heat, fuel and oxygen can, on a broad level, be understood, but how the intake of air through a particular cracked window, or the failure of a particular wooden support-beam, or the intensity of heat caused in one specifc portion of the ceiling, all work together to cause the house to collapse, will probably never be understood in detail. I can do X, but whether I get Y or something else entirely will be determined by a range of factors that are most likely entirely out of my control, and may never be fully analysed.

You now know pretty much all I know about Cynefin.

Well, except that Cynefin is a Welsh word (given to the framework by its Welsh creator Dave Snowden) which in its approximate translation means (and here I quote Wikipedia because it is far more eloquent than I’ll be able to explain) : ”the sense that we all have multiple pasts of which we can only be partly aware: cultural, religious, geographic, tribal… illustrat[ing] the evolutionary nature of complex systems, including their inherent uncertainty”. A pretty sophisticated philosophy to be summed up in a single word, if you ask me. As one whose Grandparents hail originally from Cardiff, it makes me quite proud of the language. And as a Geographer it gets me kind of excited too.

Complicating Chaos

So what has this got to do with anything outside of academic text books? Well, actually it helps us understand how organizations respond (or fail to respond) to the challenges they face with the systems they have developed.

Let’s look at aid work.

When aid gets talked about in the public sphere, it’s generally messaged very simply in the media. Children are starving. They need food. An X-Y relationship. Ditto following an earthquake: houses are destroyed and people are in the rain: Give them tents. A Simple paradigm. Likewise there is a tendancy for agencies (and most other organizations) to create simple management systems, like financial acquittals and purchasing procedures. You spend amount X, and you acquit accordingly; you want to purchase Y, and you follow the linear procedure step-by-step. Simple.

When aid agencies manage their response programs, they create complicated management systems that involve careful analysis of all the factors, putting them into project documents with LogFrame Analysis that looks at cause and effect and all the possible links along the way that need to be managed. An X—Y relationship. A Complicated paradigm- certainly not Simple.

However the realities of aid responses are neither Simple nor Complicated. At best, if you take a stable long-term chronic emergency like the situation in Darfur, it is fraught with feedback loops and vague inter-relations where cause and effect are highly flexible and interdependant. In Darfur there are more than two dozen armed groups operating, with their areas of control shifting on a weekly basis. When one gains strength, others weaken. They have their foundations in specific community and ethnic groups with long historical relationships. The drivers for the conflict are primarily natural resources, but there are also ethnic, political and other economic implications as well. By providing aid to one group you inadvertantly exclude or depower another, and emotions such as resentment or loyalty then shift that landscape. I could go on for pages describing the Complexity of Darfur. We can understand bits and pieces about it, and trace some of the loops and mechanisms in the systems, but we’ll probably never manage to map it in its entirety, and there will always be things outside our control- from human behaviour to the climate.

Worse are the very large rapid-onset emergencies, especially ones where there is pre-existing political tension. Take the earthquake in Port-au-Prince. In the days following the earthquake, nobody knew what was going on. There was no knowledge of how many people had died, what resources were available, what access routes existed, what authorities still had control. There was no clear understanding of what the needs were, of how big those needs were, or how best to respond. Uncertainty was rife. With the underlying criminal and political dysfunction, there was no knowing whether bringing food into the city would save lives or create riots; whether distributions of aid goods would fund black markets or help people get back on their feet. There was a vacuum of reliable knowledge in the midst of an enormous and rapidly evolving crisis, and all the while more and more organizations were pouring into the city, all of which having to be managed, all with their own relationships and resources, and all impacting the context itself in an interrelated and entirely unpredictable way.

CHAOS.

There is also a hypothesis that the paradigms are representative of a transition process.  Emergencies start off as Chaotic, then as things settle down they become Complex, and then as time passes and new systems become established they become Complicated (and by inference able to be analyzed), and finally they might even settle into a Simple paradigm where cause and effect can be well understood and managed.

In reality, this is not the case.  Even long-term development contexts with slow changes, high stability and no underlying conflict issues (of which there are relatively few) will sit very firmly in the Complex paradigm (and not, as I suggested earlier,  in the Complicated realm; the presence of human relationships and interactions, even in the simplest of development contexts, ensures that even stable development programs usually live in the Complex realm.  Thanks Conny for pointing this out).  Emergencies, especially large ones with political, social or conflict issues embedded, will often cycle from Chaotic, to Complex, and back to Chaotic again (Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad…).

So take a step back. Humanitarian organizations have to operate either in Chaotic or Complex paradigms. However they attempt to manage them using tools that assume a Complicated paradigm. And they talk about them to their donors and the media as though they are a Simple paradigm.

That doesn’t add up.

Flawed Hypothesis

Communicating to the world as though a situation is Simple when it isn’t has two major drawbacks. The first is that, by patronizing your constituents, you not only do them a dis-service, but you actually maintain ignorance rather than educate. And an ignorant public, while easier to manage in some ways in the short-term (because you can continue to feed them Simple messaging rather than investing the time and effort to explain Complex or Chaotic paradigms to them), becomes a problem in the long-term when you start having to draw resources and understanding from them when a context does not fit easily into a Simple explanation (e.g. why I wrote these blog posts about Aid Delivery to Haiti and the Nutrition Crisis in Niger). The second, and related to the first, is that by doing so, you create expectations in the public that the context really is Simple, and when your subsequent explanations about what you’re doing don’t match up with Simple messaging (because the paradigm simply doesn’t fit) you have unhappy constituents (“What do you mean my sponsored child is still poor? I gave $35 a month didn’t I?”)

However far worse from an organizational perspective is attempting to manage a Complex or Chaotic paradigm using tools that assume a Simple or Complicated one. Take a look at procurement procedures. They are Simple. They are driven by things like purchasing committees, bid analysis and spending authorities. You can only purchase good X when a committee has agreed that X is an appropriate purchase to make, when 3 different bids have been submitted to the committee and one of the three has been identified as most cost-effective, and when a manager with the appropriate level of authority has signed the appropriate forms.

What do you do in a Chaotic environment when in order to save lives you need to purchase X, but two of the five committee members are digging through the rubble of their homes looking for family members, only one provider of X still has a functioning storefront, and the manager with the appropriate level of authority has had to travel out of the city for two days to follow up another developing crisis? Simple systems fail.

Or what about the Complicated systems, relying on careful analysis? Procedures suggest you carry out a careful needs assessment, taking into account gender concerns, environmental impact, human rights, long-term sustainability, a careful transition plan, a Do-No-Harm analysis of how your intervention will affect relationships between different stakeholders, and a detailed critical assessment of the cultural appropriateness of the specific intervention. Is this the best possible intervention in terms of impact, and have other alternatives been assessed and discounted? Have you carefully mapped out the cause-and-effect relationships through the chain, looking at what inputs are required to carry out activities; what outputs can be delivered from those activities; and what outcomes will come about as a result of delivering those outputs, all contributing to a higher goal, assuming that certain caveats are met and certain risks have been appropriately managed.

In Chaos, this pressure to conform to a Complicated process is hardly appropriate. Not only does it take too long in a rapidly evolving emergency (putting lives at risk) but it is also entirely questionable in terms of its value. In Chaos- and indeed even in Complexity- there is no way to guarantee that analysis is accurate. There are so many uncertainties in the system that any number of outcomes could result from you actions, and any number of other factors could input into your carefully devised response system to throw the result right off balance.

And it happens all the time.

Yet for some reason, we continue to try and manage Complexity or Chaos using Complicated systems and Simple assumptions.

A lot of this is, of course, human nature. And more specifically, organizational nature. Organizations naturally try to protect themselves. Few organizations are as risk-averse as NGOs, who have a fragile grasp on their own financial and organizational existance due to a reliance, effectively, on other peoples’ goodwill. And the best way to do this? Create systems that manage their environment and (ostensibly) reduce risk to the organization and its members (particularly, those members who hold the responsibility near the top and would otherwise be held to account, if those systems didn’t protect them).

I’m not singling anybody out for criticism here. This is how people function when you have heavy organizational hierarchies and structures. The biggest NGOs out there have in excess of 40,000 employees globally- absolutely massive- and having convoluted management systems that go along with that is very nearly inevitable.

Accepting Paradigms

Realistically we do need to find another way if we hope to remain relevant and effective however. It’s easy to see how too many Complicated systems could choke an emergency response making it slow and useless. What we need are approaches to managing a response (that is, the decision-making processes, authorities and accountabilities which staff running the response are bound by) that are flexible, lightweight and rapid.

First and foremost, in my opinion, we need trust. Organizations need to have trust in their personnel, and have confidence that given the responsibility, they will make good decisions in the heat of the moment. Organizations need to be prepared to stand by those decisions, for better or for worse, accepting the process that occured.

In order to trust, of course, organizations need to invest in people. They need to develop not just their skills, but their experience, and not just their experience, but they need to allow them the opportunity to develop experience with authority and decision-making. Yes, this involves a real risk on behalf of the organization, and this is where quality decision-makers and judges of character are required up the organizational hierarchy.

Processes (and people) need to be motivated not by procedure but by principle. Emergency responses need accountability to communities, for example. The Humanitarian Accountability Project (HAP) has all kinds of standards and checklists for demonstrating downward accountability- but in the early days of a response they are far too unwieldy to be applied completely and universally. Instead, the principle of accountability needs to be applied by decision-makers and implementers. An organization must invest in its staff so that they are motivated by and personally immersed in those principles, so that they can then reinvent and apply them as they go, almost instinctively. An organization shouldn’t have to prescribe what accountability must look like, but instead leave it to the capacity of the individual responding to find how best to apply that accountability principle in the midst of the chaos.

Systems themselves need to become quick, adaptable and light. Rather than spending hours or days negotiating what a response team should look like, you need a standard, scalable response model. What are the basic functions in a response team? Take a simple Incident Command System setup for example (Leader, Communications, Security, Operations, Planning, Support Services). Six people, optimal to manage, and depending on the scale of the emergency you might just need six people, or each person might become the director for each of those branches which may then be populated by teams or even sub-teams within teams- but the starting point is already there, and within minutes of making a decision to respond, you already know where to begin with your staffing, your lines of responsibility, and your terms of reference.

Many other response systems and procedures need a similar stripped-down and scalable approach applied to them.

Feedback mechanisms need to be made light and flexible. Reporting to donors needs to be fast, reactive, easy. Social media anybody? Imagine if, instead of providing long detailed report templates populated with data which took hours or days to compile (using up valuable staff time that could have been spent elsewhere) the public were satisfied with the medium of Story- live Tweets from the field while the response was going on, and periodic blog updates providing thoughtful analysis.

Imagine if, instead of doing household surveys that take five or six days to plan and construct, and a week for a team of assessment staff to actually complete (not to mention the time respondants have to invest in answering questions), and another week to analyse and write up, it was actually the norm to carry out drive-by assessments and informal key-informant interviews.

Imagine if, instead of designing detailed project logic templates, analysing cause-and-effect, and trying to decide which interventions to run, we looked at the broad context in a snapshot and then picked from a menu of pre-written response programs based on what we’ve seen and done in prior emergencies, tweaked them to fit the context over an hour or so, and just started running them- tweaking as we went once we saw what sort of effect they were having.

Am I suggesting we remove program quality and due diligence from NGOs? Am I suggesting we go back to truck-and-chuck operations and knee-jerk line-of-sight planning decisions? Absolutely not. What I’m saying is twofold:

1. In a Chaotic paradigm, there is relatively little difference likely to occur in quality between a response that is based on three weeks’ worth of detailed analysis and one that is based on the gut reaction of a team leader

Provided that

2. The decision-makers within the response team are intelligent, experienced people who have developed the ability to read and respond to an emergency situation.

In fact I do want to stress- as I have mentioned repeatedly on this site and linked elsewhere to others better at saying it than I am- that program quality is essential, that we as aid agencies and humanitarians owe it to the recipients of assistance to give them the very best we possibly can in line with their God-given human rights. But in a rapidly evolving chaotic situation where lives are at stake, the best way we assist in protecting those rights may not be through applying Complicated management approaches or Simple compliance mechanisms, but rather in the reactions and responses of trusted individuals, working with experienced teams, making immediate judgements based on rapidly observed realities, supported by rapidly deployable resources within flexible management systems, which can then be swiftly adapted once impact and feedback mechanisms have been observed.  We don’t, currently, have this.

We need to meet a Chaotic paradigm with tools that embrace the Chaos, and not try and make it any more Complicated.

Footnotes:

Dave Snowden, designer of the Cynefin Framework, points out quite correctly that two elements of the framework are not discussed above.  The first is the notion of a fifth space called ‘disorder’ which sits at the nexus of the four other spaces.  In this space- where uncertainty around casuality dominates (we have no idea at all what the causal links are), systems break down and people revert to their own comfort-zones in order to make decisions.  You might look to something like the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to illustrate this example- where the economic systems of the day were crumbling, people were panicking, nobody knew what to expect or what was going to happen, uncertainty was supreme, causality went largely unanalysed, and everybody was making decisions for themselves- whether dumping stock, pulling money out of banks, or jumping out of windows.

The second element not discussed is the catastrophic failure boundary between ‘Simple’ and ‘Chaotic’ paradigms.  It is the implication that if there is an over-reliance on Simple systems when they are not appropriate (‘complacence’), systems fail and an organization will drop suddenly (and with violent results for that organization) into the Chaotic realm.  This can be found where organizations fail to adapt- take a look at the failure of the US housing market a couple of years ago for a good example.  Or the risk, for NGOs, that if they don’t adapt their management systems away from the Simple/Complicated paradigms to be appropriate to the Complex/Chaotic paradigms in which they live, they too could drop off this catastrophic boundary and find themselves swimming in managerial Chaos.

*Thanks Andrew for some lively conversations in Antigua, and to @vivmcw who introduced us to Cynefin in the first place.

**A note on sources: I’ve constructed the preceding explanation and associated diagrams from the discussion and presentations made during the response-team meeting as they were shared with me (largely on butcher’s paper) and they are not drawn directly from the original source material.  I understand the original model was shared at the Knowledge Management Aston Conference (KMAC) in 2000, as cited below:
Snowden, D. (2000) “Cynefin, A Sense of Time and Place: an Ecological Approach to Sense Making and Learning in Formal and Informal Communities” conference proceedings of KMAC at the University of Aston, July 2000

Dave Snowden highlights the following references:
Snowden, D. & Kurtz, C. (2003) “The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-Making in a Complex and Complicated World“
Snowden, D. (2005) “Multi-Ontology Sense-Making: A New Simplicity in Decision-Making“
Snowden, D. & Boone, M. (2007) “A Leader’s Framework for Decision-Making“

All photos, from Candy to Ice Crystals, are my own as per usual.

Then and Now: Antigua

I first went to Antigua in 2007 and enjoyed the colour, architecture and vibe then as well.  My first trip I was there just for an afternoon- on the way back from several days’ worth of field visits up in the far north of Guatemala (Huehuetanango)- so the volume of photos I took was pretty limited.  Going back three years later, I was interested to see that it was much as I had remembered it, and I even revisted some of the same old photo spots from my first trip (and yes, apologies, you’ve seen these two older images on this blog before).

This perspective was the one that amused me most.  The shot at the top was taken in May 2007.  The shot beneath, in June 2010.  I’m intrigued by the fact that despite the obvious re-paint (and the new street-name sign), the more recent scene looks every bit as scuffed and worn as the older one- I wonder if they’ve developed that look deliberately?  I also love that the dodgy wiring box hasn’t been touched, despite the cosmetic overhaul.  And, very best of all, there’s still a little old lady sitting on the corner with her basket.  Life changes.  But not all that much.

(Incidentally, both photos were taken with similar setup; the first, with a Canon EOS 350D, and the second with a Canon EOS 400D- effectively the same camera with a slight improvement in performance and megapixels; both were taken on the same lens, a Tokina AT-X 12-24mm f/4 wide-angle which has the nickname ‘Gustav’ for its rather large and rotund presence).

This next shot is of a ceramic stop-sign on a mottled wall- probably my favourite shot from my first trip to Antigua.  I loved the blend of colour and texture.  I managed to find the same corner wall again this time, and the shot at bottom is what I took away.  As you can see, not much has changed (indeed if I recall, even the scrawl on the wall was the same in ’07, but cropped out of the first image).  Funny, though, that the photographer’s eye changes over time.  In the first shot, I thought the graffiti was unsightly and I cropped it out; in the second, I’ve come to feel that it’s an integral part of the wallscape and have deliberately included it.

Again, the first photograph was snapped on a Canon EOS 350D (the one that died in Nepal… tragic) and the second with its replacement, the EOS 400D.  Both were taken with a Canon EF 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro.  The lens is really a portrait lens- and a beautiful one at that- but has close to a 1:1 field of view (very slight telephoto) which means that capturing walls, windows, signs and other structural details, the distortion of straight lines is kept to a minimum.  It’s probably my favourite lens on the 400D.

(My main camera, the Canon EOS 5D, is more of a behemoth and did not come with me on this trip, partly for weight and partly for insurance- or lack there of- reasons.  The glassware I have for that body is vastly superior to those for the 400D, however, so I will try and make sure it comes on more trips with me into the future…)

Lots more Antigua shots to come (lucky you!) but I thought this pairing was a fun one to share, to see how both setting and photographer have changed (and not) over the last three years.

An Antigua Overview

Lately I’ve been a bit remiss at keeping Wanderlust populated with the stories and images that many people seem to enjoy. I’ve been using it a bit more for some light professional applications, and been discussing some of the merits and otherwise of social media and the humanitarian sector.

I have to say though, much as I enjoy engaging on aid-related issues, I do like keeping photos, stories and travel accounts flowing here. It’s what the blog was first created for, and is certainly a passion of mine.

I’ve not really had a lot of time to invest in processing photos or in writing up blog posts in my free time. That’s not to say, however, that I don’t have things to share, nor that I haven’t been taking lots (and lots) of photos. Recent trips include a weekend in Victoria’s autumnal High Country, some time in Fiji for a planning exercise, and, as alluded to in earlier posts, a week or so in Guatemala.

Antigua Guatemala is [one of] the old colonial capital[s] of Guatemala. It was badly damaged by earthquakes in 1717 and 1773, and in 1776, the crown ordered the capital relocated [again] to the site where present day Guatemala City stands.

Antigua showcases traditional colonial architecture in a calm and laid-back setting just forty minutes’ drive from the seething collossus that is Guatemala City. In sharp contrast to the capital, where violent gangs control portions of the city and crime rates are among the highest in Latin America, Antigua is safe and serene. It’s possible to walk around the town centre alone, even at night time, and traffic along the rough cobbled streets is light.

I was able to find time to do several walks around the town centre, which is small and laid out in a typical grid-like structure, with buildings’ outer structures centred around ornate inner courtyard sanctuaries. The walls- one of my favourite features- are wonderfully and diversely coloured and textured, and I spent considerable time photographing doorways and windows set against the bold hues. Cracks and the remnants of earthquake damage only add to the interest.

My personal mission while I was there was to photograph the street signs. On my first trip to Antigua 3 years ago, I found several Stop signs made of ceramic tiles, and I loved the colour and texture, and photographed several. Going back this time, I had it clearly set in my mind that I would track down as many as I could and build a photographic collection of them. I’ll share the results presently, but I had a lot of fun doing it.

I also took a crack at some street photography.  I enjoy the outcome of street photography immensely- in fact it’s one of the most rewarding photographic styles for me alongside candid portraiture (closely related) and photojournalism (also related).  People are shy in Guatemala so you have to be a little careful, and many refuse to have their photo taken, but I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed snapping off a few shots as I explored the street life.

All up, Antigua is a fantastic little spot- quaint, easy, picturesque and friendly. It is, of course, a tourist mecca and pretty overrun with gringos, so don’t go looking for that authentic experience you’ve been hanging out for. However for a safe, gentle and terribly atmospheric experience, spend two or three days here and take it easy.

More to come…