Conscientious Objector: The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies

Conscientious Objector: The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies: "The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies The other day I was talking with two former small business clients of mine just catching up. Then ..."

The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies

The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies

The other day I was talking with two former small business clients of mine just catching up. Then we started talking about my new business ventures. At the end of our conversation, one of them asked if he could be a part of my business. I said sure – if his had a half of million dollars to purchase the license, why not. He laughed and suggested that how about he sign-up to get the license and when the business picks up he can then give me the licensing fee. I smiled in turn and said “Sure, that’s what I call in business a ‘Kangaroo Plan’, so keep on hoping!”  The other guy asked me what a “kangaroo plan” is. I explained that as you know the Kangaroo has a pouch it carries its baby, so a “business kangaroo plan is when you carry someone in your pouch and you do all the hopping work! We all burst out laughing. He like the term and was going to use it from then on. The Kangaroo plan is an expression I use often in my business training and conversations with small business clients. However, up until then no one had ever asked me what it meant so I had not really articulated the meaning of it. I just assumed that whoever heard me say it understood what I meant.
I recalled that a very dear friend of mine once said to me, I used a lot of animal analogies in my conversations. As it happens she was venting about her eldest brother’s mannerisms and I told her he is “a damn Rooster”. She asked me why I had called him a Rooster. Well, I explained that from what she was saying, all he does is stand on the family pedestal suggesting ideas and ordering everyone around, but he never steps up to the plate to execute solutions or contribute funds to the family problems – well that’s a Rooster! It gets up at the crack of dawn to give its crow, waking everybody else then spend the rest of the day doing nothing else but posturing in the yard or chasing the hens! She laughed so hard because she said it was so befitting of his mannerism. Then another time we were debating, more like disagreeing over something and I said she was acting like a goat (being stubborn and silly at the same time)!  She called her mother and told her I had called her a goat! Her mom thought it was hilarious, and agreed with me –she is a country girl who grew up in Louisiana – she knows how goats behave. From then on every time we got into our heated debates, I would accuse her of being a goat again and we would just burst out laughing and the difference of opinion would dissipate.

Growing up half my childhood life on a commercial farm owned by my paternal grandparents involved living and interacting with a lot of farm animals, as well as some wild ones too. We had cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, donkeys, dogs, cats, etc, encountered hyenas, vultures, rabbits, deer, monkey, baboons, snakes, lizards and all sort of insects!  The stereotype that in African people are living happily with lions, elephants, cheetahs, zebras and the like is not true. The ‘real’ wild animals don’t come near human habitats unless they get desperate for food. Anyway the experience of living on a farm taught me a lot about animal behavior. Over the years I unconsciously related these behaviors to human personalities and habits. It wasn’t till my friend made her observations about my analogies that I realized how often I make these parallels.

I have seen a lot roosters, goats, hens, bulls, cows, pigs goats and sheep in many of us! Hens fuss a lot for no apparent reason like damsels in distress and seemingly on the brink of hysteria, donkeys just take it and take it and then one day they just go rouge in public without warning; bulls always take charge stay cool and take their sweet time, sheep just follow each other in a bunch and if one gets separated it becomes so frantic like it missing its body parts, prigs are dirty, sloppy greedy and act like there is scarcity, monkeys are always needing something and when they can’t get it they will steal it and they are cunning at it too, baboons are very territorial, bullies and swagger around with a sense of entitlement and authority over what I don’t know. However cows are the most interesting because they have such diverse mannerism and behaviors. This I learnt from herding cattle.

Although we always had farm workers, my grandfather believed that ownership comes with responsibility and  a disciplined work ethic. When we visited on school holidays all the vazukuru (grandchildren) had to participate in some of the farm chores reserved for the grandchildren, like cattle herding, sheep and goat herding, weeding my grandmother’s groundnuts fields and occasionally going to the dip-tank, a system to combat cattle disease. The duty I liked most was going to dip-tank, because all I did was eavesdrop on conversations between my father, grandfather and uncles catch up with the other farmers and watch the cattle resist getting in the chemical water, but once they were in the barrack line resistance was futile! It was not a frequent chore as the cattle only went there once every six months or so. From this experience I learnt about what I now call the ‘dip-tank management style’ in organization management. However, of the herding chores sheep were easiest…they always stay together like jello! Cattle herding, which was the most frequent duty we did, was better than goats which were your worst nightmare. You got the goat herding chore instead of time-out. With experience, having cattle duty became easy - all you needed to do was keep the heard together in a contained spot till they were done grazing, then take them to the water hole  in the paddock. Thereafter, the sun would be too hot and once they had grazed and drank they usually go under the tree shed to sleep or just get away from sun..

 So one day, my cousin and I had the duty of herding cattle instead of going to the groundnuts field. It was one of those holidays close to harvesting season when all the maize (corn) is nice and green in the fields. The first rule of thumb in herding cattle was one had to watch them at all times. The second was making sure that the cattle don’t go into the maize field. My cousin and I had done this a million times. It was better than going to plough weeds in my grandmother’s ground nuts fields. Anyway on that day when we were herding cattle my cousin and I were supposed to drive the cattle to the paddock for their grazing, but we didn’t feel like it. Besides there were parts of the paddock that gave us the creeps when the vegetation was green and thick, so we were scared of being in there in the mornings because the cattle would have more energy and enthusiasm to wonder than later in the day when the sun is too hot in the afternoon and we could control them easier. She and I decided we were not taking them into the paddock but were going to keep them in another part of the farm with a grazing field near the house. All morning we managed to do this, and then to keep ourselves entertained we started playing hide and seek. After much  running around we decided to sit on the flat expansive granite rock (ruware) to enjoy the sun, tease some lizards while eating some wild berries we had pick up and continue our endless chatting. Then we fell asleep in the warm sun only to be awoken by loud yelling and screaming going on from the workers. From the direction where the noise was coming from, we knew instantly the cattle were in the maize field! We were in trouble. Our next chore would certainly be goat herding! It was. We were relegated to goat herding till my grandmother protested on our behalf.

Usually cattle are domesticated well and they know they were not supposed to go into maize fields. But in this particular herd there was one unruly naughty cow called “Milka”, so named because she always gave lots of milk, and she is the one we all knew had to watch. Milka could lead the entire herd astray and unravel your day with one move. Keep her in check and the whole heard would also be under control.  Due to her notorious tricks Milka wore a bell around her neck because she was known to wander off into all sorts of places and trouble and you could hear her comings and goings! I can never forget that damn bell of hers. Whenever it rang faster, you knew she was up to no good. Afterwards she would have such a look of contentment and satisfaction from her mischief. She was so boldly unruly that it was like dealing with a conniving, manipulative female human being. She would watch you all the time and the moment she realized you were not paying attention she would be at her shenanigans – whatever her flavor of trouble was for the day. I think she resented humans for taking her milk every morning.
I remember another incident I had with Milka. My cousin and I had been on cattle duty again, and we had had a great day in the paddock with the cattle. As we were heading home she broke away from the head and made a run for this thicket in the paddock. This thicket always gave me the creeps because it was a dark cluster of these big bushes, trees and vines all clumped up in this area. You could see through it but it was so dark, you did not know what might be lurking in it.  When she got into it, Milka just stood in the middle of it watch my cousin and I throwing stones at her trying to get her out. Two hours later she was still standing there, we were almost in tears as it was getting late and dark. It was like she was getting even with us, taunting and mocking us. We felt powerless. Finally by some miracle one of the bulls called Masvivi (named after my great grandfather) just got tired of it and went into the thicket and started thumping her with his horns till she got out. I was so angry at her I threw sticks at her all the way home.  As it got late, my grandfather got worried and had sent the workers to look for us because they did not know why we had not shown up. Being late usually meant that the cattle may have gone into the neighboring farmer’s fields and he would hold the cattle hostage till a ransom was agreed on. That was how disputes were resolved among the farmers.

The day of the maize raid, we knew Milka had orchestrated it. For a while we were not allowed to have cattle duty till my grandmother’s protest and also my brother and my cousin’s brother left the cattle to go into the neighboring farmer’s maize field. That was worse. They had been swimming in the paddock pond and lost sight of the cattle. Of course who had taken the lead into this trouble – Milka. I don’t remember what eventually happened to Milka but she certainly left a lasting impression on me. In school and at work I have encountered lots of female Milka’s too!

Copyright @ June 18, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA (Strategy Leadership Institute in Private & Public Affairs); Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

URBAN Entrepreneurship: Challenges & Solutions

Attended the White House Urban Entrepreneurship Summit at Rutgers-Newark today....what an eye opener!!! I urge all Africans to take their development best practices and repackage them for developed emerging markets, for this is intellectual property capital bar none!!! Our breakfast keynote speaker was Russell Simmons with his latest book, Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All. The first thing he said was integration destroyed minority entrepreneurship because it destroyed self sufficiency and innovation in the black neighborhoods. I expected to hear gasps in the room there were non so I took it as concurrence. It sounded like a social capital argument; I am not a fan of Putnam. Then he redeemed himself in my mind by saying in his conclusion forget just being friends with just people of your own race or ethnicity – make friends outside your comfort zone, network, invite diversity to your dinner party, because business is about embracing and knowing people of all backgrounds. He gets it.

The essence of the Summit was discussing ideas on how we can best promote urban entrepreneurship? Many ideas were generated from this conference. Of interest was the first panel of practicing entrepreneurs that gave their testimonials – challenges with people management, motivation and incentives;  payroll taxes to worker’s compensation; business liability insurance; building a business that’s scalable; operations management; need for more entrepreneurship training to CEO personal development and giving back through mentoring.

The other panel I had a chance to sit through was on public-private partnerships for urban entrepreneurship development made of all the local, federal, and not-for-profit dignitaries. I have been in this conversation before. They were selling PR. How much cash infusion (really AID) is “invested” into minority and women businesses and urban entrepreneurs to get them on a level playing field; what resources are available; all the initiatives coming out of Washington that will be so great for this business constituency; how much we finally got it in this administration or the other; initiatives and programs to promote young entrepreneurship – the catch them while they are young approach; how we love our urban entrepreneurs and how we feel their pain and suffering and we are trying to do everything we can to get them started and going. This is a common narrative! Frankly as an administrator in small business development, I am fatigued by this narrative and sometimes feel hopelessly defeated! Its well meaning sounds good, if not great at times even inspiring. But is inspiration what we need in this era of globalization? Sometimes they get it and sound like they are on point (like today) but sometimes they are completely disconnected from reality.

No one on this panel talked about technology competiveness and global competitiveness. We are living in the first developed wealthy country of the world with everything available in excess yet access to internet technology is inaccessible to most residents and microenterprises of the urban community. It should be free because, even if they wanted it they couldn’t afford the monthly premiums. For the businesses, they come for business plan training and they have no typing skills, writing skills, analytical skills – forget research skills – that we can teach, but one has to know how interpret that data! They do not know how to download basic information or use social media functionally to grow their businesses at no cost at all even if they have access to online technology. It’s unnerving to say the least and there is lots of work to be done.

My question to the public-private partnership panel was: “How come no one at the local, state or federal level had ever thought of putting an application demo or simulation that would help the federal or state contracting procurement process; such as  having the online business registration process demos; or the licensing and permit application demo; or the copyright, trademark registration process demo; or the minority, woman and veterans business enterprise certification application demo so that we can teach small businesses about completing the application form, demystify these application qualifying processes thus more businesses will gain access to these government procurement opportunities, instead of having only a live online protocol process that is accessible one business at time?” I have a PhD in research capability and even I sometimes find the process daunting when I have to do it for a small business! They looked at me strange – maybe it was my accent – who knows. Its common sense! I was clear at the implications of my question - if you want to get urban entrepreneurs to access opportunities you need to remove the barriers we all know are preventing them from getting it. Such as complicated application processes and certification requirement and buddle contracts that they cannot access because they have not yet mobilized the capacity and capability yet they are potentially successful small businesses.  You can’t put a big piece of T-bone steak in from of a baby and wonder why they are not eating it – they need to grow teeth first before they get bite into that steak. How do small businesses grow teeth, by trying out small contracts and fulfilling them so that as they grow they gain experience and capability to enable them to manage big ones. It was a similar question I asked to the White House Ex-Im Bank delegation to Newark about why they did not have different export-import financial funding packages based on business size that would enable different small, medium and big businesses to benefit from their services, like fishing nets with different hole sizes that enable a fisherman to catch different size fish if he so chooses. If we really want small businesses to participate in export initiatives we have to give them incentives that fit their sizes and gradually graduate them to medium then big business. Another aha moment!

As a public administrator, I know that too much customization or specialization of programs increases the cost of doing business, but the benefits in the long run outweighs the costs.  If reduces the income disparities. The Minority Business Development Agency notes that the quantity of minority businesses does not match the quality of revenue earnings from this business community given their numbers in the economy. The US Census Bureau study in 2002 of large minority businesses ($1million+ in revenue) vs. small minority businesses (under $1m) showed that 2% of large firms grossed 64% of revenues and had 58% paid employees whereas in comparison 98% of the small firm grossed 36% of revenues and had 42% paid employees! Clearly the difference in job creation was small yet the gross revenue disparity was much bigger. The implications are that wealth in large firms is in the hand of a few, yet they are benefit from exclusive government contracts that the smaller firms cannot access at their under 1 million dollar levels of capacity yet they are producing comparable job creation in the economy. The benefits of letting small firms take a bite of the pie certainly will outweigh the administration cost of introducing programs that they can access in the mean time. Using this data, the MBDA concluded that “while smaller in number, minority firms with receipts of $1million or more generate a much larger percentage of all minority revenues and paid employment than firms with receipts under $1 million.” What they do not mention is that at these gross revenue levels the percentage of paid employees is too low given that the opportunities are only open to a significant few – 2%. My conclusion, urban entrepreneurs and small firms are marginalized from access to procurement opportunities by government policy design!  

Copyright @ June 6, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA (Strategy Leadership Institute in Private & Public Affairs); Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

Conscientious Objector: Developmental Milestones for A Woman’s Life:

Conscientious Objector: Developmental Milestones for A Woman’s Life:: "The tragedy of most people’s lives is that they die without having fulfilled the purpose of their life on this earth. It is sad, but somet..."

Developmental Milestones for A Woman’s Life:

The tragedy of most people’s lives is that they die without having fulfilled the purpose of their life on this earth.  It is sad, but sometimes we can not control the circumstances of our lives. I have always told my siblings that I was a “late bloomer” or a “late comer”! I remember one time when I said this to my sister, she rushed to deny it for me saying that I wasn’t and almost sounding apologetic about it.  But I was comfortable with labeling myself as such. Growing up in a family of competitive over achievers, I had to accept that it’s OK to be a late bloomer, or a laggard as the metaphor would have it. In fact the older I get the more I don’t mind being a laggard on some things, because it gave me the time and opportunity to  survey then weigh my options, then once my mind is made up, I surgically strike with precision and passion for the goal I want! I call these achievements societal developmental milestones. I have not been good at them.

In my family you had to finish high school by a given age, then go to University and get a degree, then get the “right job” then marry the right man (meaning he was from the ‘appropriate social class’ with the ‘appropriate credentials”) then own your house, and have legitimate children, and live happily ever after! For a woman,  I knew these societal developmental milestones were to be achieved before or latest by your 30^th birthday. How did I know – through innuendoes and insinuations in conversations. Nobody really came to me and said you should have your first degree by  22 years of age; be gainfully employed or a proud housewife, married by age 24; have your first child by age 25 (which was acceptable if you went to college, if you didn’t you would have been 5-6 years late!). If you could multitask, even better – you were more efficient at. I was on course till I graduated high school at 16.  My path from age 16 followed a completely haphazard roller-coaster which I think sometimes almost gave my mother a heart attack, if not occasional nervous breakdowns! The only “developmental milestone” I ever achieved was finishing high school early, only because my father send his kids to school at age 5 instead of 7 as was the standard in the British colonial education system.

Well, at 16, contrary to the grand family action plan, I decided to go and work instead of going to University! There was an uproar. But at this stage, my father who had helped my grandfather raise his five sisters and my older sister had decided that maybe it was time to experiment and do things differently! The grand family action plan, which was my grandfather’s action plan for his girl-children had worked for some, but not all! Years before, my oldest Aunt had gotten married after Form 2 (grade 10) but it was better than having a child out of wedlock, and as a married woman she was her husband’s problem now. My sister, fell off the wagon for a minute when she got pregnant at 18, but was quickly put back on the path and went on to get her bachelors and MBA in flying colors, marrying well and having 4 beautiful children! This is not to say that her momentary lapse in judgment did not give my father a shock when it happened, and send tongues wagging in the family – both immediate and extended! My father was known to brag about his impeccable children, who were going to do what he couldn’t do himself. Besides, she was the first born and daddy’s favorite little girl, she had to succeed! I had been born a girl when he willed, or rather felt entitled to a boy-child for his second off spring – therefore, I was a disappointment to him from the day I was born! Anyway, I was his experiment – after 6 girls, what could go wrong? After all to whom less was invested, less was expected. Besides things always worked out and all his sisters were either highly educated or/and well married! So when I decided to go to  work instead of pursuing college, he was like OK, then I decided to move into an apartment in the city center (a taboo for any African girl from a decent family), and he said OK. On the other hand, though my mother was silently perturbed if not horrified. From the way she treated me like the ‘skeleton in the closet” at family gatherings, I secretly believed she had already concluded that I was going to be the shame of her life. But she was too polite, loving and sweet by nature to chastises me openly. For the most part she gave me the “EYE”…every black mother has the eye! Funny I also have it now for my teenage daughter – when she gets fresh or goes rouge on me!

The long and short of it was I worked in various jobs and by age 22, I was a manager running a department with 4 employees and being bypassed for promotions because I was a smart high school graduate without a degree. That’s when I realized, without the formal credentials to validate your smarts, no one really cared. So one day I woke up and decided I was going back to school. Packed my bags and left for UK via America. I never made it to UK. Got stuck in NYC. Twenty-two years later, I had a PhD and have discovered what an intellectual samurai I am partaking from time to time in my part-time academic endeavors. I had made my father and grandfather happy, postmortem, but I was still not married – an issue of contention with my mother. However, it was not so much that she minded my being a single Mom, because I was doing so much better than my “married’ cousins, it is more her aspiration for her daughter to find true love. But knowing my no nonsense, relationship romantic ‘miscapades’, coupled with my intolerance and short-leash for commitment-phobic men, she did not push it. A spinster daughter is better than a jailbird one any day.
According to me however, I still had not caught up to my woman’s developmental milestones! I had my daughter at 31, unmarried to my mother’s chagrin! To add fuel to the fire, when my fiancé confided in my sister that I was the reason a wedding was not taking place, there were a lot of painful female kangaroo court meetings in which I was told on numerous occasions that I must ‘submit’, for the ‘rewards’ of being MRS  were greater after the marriage! Instead I went rouge and was a recluse by the time I left my homeland. On the other hand to my surprise, my father, he was just relieved that, despite the ‘illegitimate’ grandchild, I was neither barren nor a lesbian! Which I found rather intriguing for the fact that in his African psyche the latter was worse than my having a child out of wedlock! When I asked why he was not angry he just explained that with an MA degree (at the time), I was sure able to support my child – with or without a husband! He was a strange man at times with his pragmatic reasoning! That was our last face-to-face conversation before his death in 2003. To illustrate how far behind I was with my woman’s developmental milestones at this time, most of my friends I had left behind had 2-3 kids, some who were already in elementary school or if not starting middle school. They were living the typical suburban lifestyle. Some were already getting divorced or going on for their second marriages! Wow, to me it felt like they had already lived nine lives! Without the marriage, I came back to my adopted home- the USA, which afforded me my anonymity and obscurity without the pressure of the “developmental milestones” of the elite African woman. I started my life again, this time joining the ranks of Western single parent female statistic. Certain only that stomach butterflies would persuade me to give up my single marital status!

Now as I reflect, I do not think I would have done it any other way, with or without a plan. I feel like I am exactly where I need to be, although knowing what my destiny is, I am late again. Ironically, the other day I hosted my WEN (Women Entrepreneurs Networking) Business Breakfast and my guest speaker was an awesome lady who spoke about her life, her entrepreneurial experience and how she had evolved into the multi-million dollar business entrepreneur she is today. Aldonna told the business ladies who attended this breakfast that nothing that happened in her life or career had been pre-planned, but the result of sheer tenacity and guts. The only thing she new at age 11 was that she wanted to be a consultant after listening to her father (who was a professor of mathematics) vent to her mother every weekend about how top management did not get it. She remember telling her parents she wanted to be a consultant to top executives and her father telling her that this was not a career for a woman, what made her think men with power would listen to her, let alone allow her in? Well they are listening now (The Growth Strategist Radio show -www.growthstrategistradioshow.com). She is a business strategy samurai! She said actually when she did not know what she was doing is when she delivered her best work. All that happened to her was the dynamic outcome of asking herself “Why not” when opportunity presented itself, then throwing fear to the wind and consciously or unconsciously taking the risk then strategically doing what she needed to do at any given time when life threw lemons on her path! She survives, but more importantly she prospers!

So having said all this, my advice is, as long as you are evolving in a spiral and not going in circles, you will be fine. People who have not been exposed to other elements in the universe or fail to learn from past experiences will always go in circles. People who have the exposure will navigate life in a spiral process, like climbing a spiral stair case, hitting the same points but at different levels, and gaining mastery as you go up! You peg your own developmental milestones! I am ready to launch to the next level – better late than never!!!

Copyright @ May 21 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

The Era of the New Migrant Worker

The other day I had my book club meeting with my sisters, M; L & K. It was great getting together again after such a long time. We were discussing our reading of the season: The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik. It was a lively discussion for about 2 hours. The discussions brought out the feminist in each of us. We all agreed Iranian women had the real power especially the power to impact other women’s destinies - though on the face of it, one would not think so.

Usually our book discussion last all of 2 hours and the rest of the 5-7 hours are spent discussing hot socio-economic; socio-political issues. The fun of it is we are passionate about our opinions, each bringing a potpourri of our personalities, world view, socio cultural values, our woman experiences (which are so diverse…) and above all else each our own convictions. This diversity makes for interesting heated conversation. I am a lover of looking at the world in parallels merging different lenses into similarities of the human condition. So when we were discussing jobs and layoffs, the concern was how we could stay employed or at least survive the current waves of recession retrenchments. Being an entrepreneur by nature I already have a paradigm shift on the classical employee/employer model, therefore when one of my sisters was lamenting about getting another job, I commented that maybe she needs to forget about “getting another job if she gets laid-off” as we are moving to a world where we are all migrant workers, so she should thing of repositioning herself as a migrant worker! What an uproar it raise. Rebellious L quickly interjected that she in no way is a migrant worker! To her, “migrant workers” are those people portrayed by the media jumping the fence, toiling in the commercial farms of America, and with no health insurance!  M gave me her “here we go again”  look, then smiled as she tried to explain to L that in actuality I was right given the context of my definition of the metaphor (M and I have had this conversation before).  So I explained to L that that when you take the expression out of the conventional meanings or label that media gatekeepers we listen to have attached to it, actually we are all becoming migrant workers. M then asked L to consider the concept independent of the negative mainstream media connotations and labels. L shook her head vehemently, repeating that she was NOT a “migrant worker”, then adding “I live in Florida and I know migrant workers!” K on the other hand was sitting watching us calmly one by one enjoying the unfolding debate drama, and reflecting on her position on the issue before she answered – she always weights her position on things before she comments.

Ironically L, who happens to be an untenured contract Professor, symbolizes the typical, new era professional migrant worker I was referring to! I pointed this out to her further explaining that it not a question of geography where the migrant workers we know of works, moving from one field to another. But then again, I retracted, the only difference in geography is being in an office, but we are all moving from employer to employer without guarantees of eternal job security till retirement or at best some long term permanence! I have accepted my fate of the new world order – and frankly, I also do not want to be an employer’s dependent anymore. For a moment, I thought I sounded like a republican, but God forbid!

As usual L and I being academicians, love debating these heavy duty intellectual conversations so the heat of the debate was now left between us. Still she objected. Not so much that the reasoning did not make sense but the idea of looking at her occupational circumstances as a migrant worker offended her prestigious status as an educated professional. I objected to her reasoning and pointed out that were all migrant workers already. The fact that she was not a tenured Professor working from contract to contract each semester; I was a contracted Director working in small business economic development, K was already self employed and M was looking to change into another career from the one she has been for the last 20 years, WE represented the classic definition of the new professional migrant worker. Thus we were!. Just because we had professional positions, did not mean that we were not migrant worker! We were all selling our intellectual properties to the highest bidder with no guarantees of longevity in these employment capacities! Our contract could be terminated at any time, and we would be all hitting the pavement looking for the next contract. I noted to L that we all have three things to sell – our minds, our physical labor or our bodies. At this point K – who was enjoying the conversation with engaged amusement -retorted that she would sell everything else before she sells her body! We all agree on this one – acknowledging that it was the oldest business model ever! By this time we were jumping out of our sits with excitement of the debate. Heck the migrant worker, despite the toil and hardship of their working environment, because they are selling their physical labor, they were better off than most of us

 In the meantime L was tallying her employment fringe benefits and above all else valuing her health benefits the most.  On the other hand, I urged L to take a pause and think about it – what’s making us all sick these days? The stress of our stressful jobs! I encourage L to imagine a day when you work when you want to work because you live within your mean, without the con-games of the mortgage industry  (which as it turns out we all bought into and as a result have them hanging around our necks), no real estate taxes, no home depot home improvement escapades, or the  need for shaving off chunks of our hard earned income on  credit card interests and payments incurred when the economy was in a bumper harvest, and vacation when you needed to vacation – that’s the life of a migrant worker! They work seasonally, accumulate their minimum wage and take time off during low seasons! That’s having ownership of your time, that’s ultimate freedom. That’s the future. At this point L took a pause, then reflected and finally conceded that indeed despite all her interesting exotic vacations the year before to all the unusual places of the world most of just dream about, the stress level of her college job instantly wipe off her rest the moment she got back to her job! We all laughed. Still I could see she was making her mental calculus about the cost/benefits of her current professorial occupation and having difficulty equating it to the image of a migrant worker.

As I was leaving to go home at 1am, she chided at me laughing then said “Damn, you now I am going to be thinking of myself as a migrant worker on my flight home….you gave me a new appreciation!” We burst out laughing as we hugged goodbye!

Copyright @ May 5 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

Conscientious Objector « Zimbabwe Blogging Directory

Conscientious Objector « Zimbabwe Blogging Directory

Conscientious Objector: Who is showing up?

Conscientious Objector: Who is showing up?: "Are you aware about Who is showing up when you are interacting or engaging with the universe and its actors? By WHO, I mean which version of..."

Who is showing up?

Are you aware of Who is showing up when you are interacting or engaging with the universe and its actors? By WHO, I mean which version of yourself are you projecting to the people you engage with? I am one of those people who believe there is a public persona and a private persona. The only thing is the  personas are made up of so many personalities – not in the  multiple personality clinical disorder sense – but in the idea that we are constantly projecting a partial part of our true self, hence we show up in bits and pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.  Then again, while it appears like many personalities it’s just one personality only showing a parts or bits and piece of itself!

The other day I was having a discussion with my niece and I was telling her that when you are in your thirties (which she is), all issues you had in your childhood with your parents, siblings, extended family, etc just surface to the top like a tea bag in water. The issues lie buried for years, then thirty something comes along and boom one day they just surface. If you do not deal with the unburied tea bags there and then, chance are you may end up getting estranged from your loved ones by the time you hit your 40s. Even worse, the unresolved issues will manifest in other ways, show up negatively in your relationships with your friends, husbands, boyfriends, kids, associations, etc. My niece laughed, said I was being dramatic and made it sound like these “unburied tea-bags” were more like body snatchers that gives one multiple personalities! To which I said definitely yes the personality is shaped by issues we experience from childhood life

As it happens, this conversation with my niece was like a déjà vu, because in the same week prior our conversation, I had gone out to a friend’s house for dinner. After a lovely evening of great food, wine and conversation most of the guests left and I found myself in the company of three interesting women around our host’s dining table at the stroke of midnight. That’s when the real deep intimate conversations usually begin. Other than the lady host, we really were strangers to each other. One of the ladies who happened to be the youngest of us around the table and in her mid thirties, just blurted out that she was avoiding her mother (not her biological mother, but the Aunt who had raised her from baby when her birth mother couldn’t). She intimated that while she felt guilty about avoiding her, she couldn’t help herself; she just felt she did not want to deal with her and had been avoiding her calls for weeks! 

I knew instantly without really knowing the exact detail of her issues, as they were unnecessary, that she was going through the “buried tea-bags surfacing period” of her life! The tea bag(s) had come to the surface! They always do in your thirties whether you like it or not and when they get unburied the tea leaves are no longer contained in their nice thin casing, but are all gashing out in an uncontrollable floating mess all over your life!

I looked into her eyes, and I asked her why. At first she said she really did not have any explanation, other than that they were issues that she was dealing with and didn’t really feel like talking to HER. The way she said HER you knew these were issue about their mother/daughter relationship.  Instead, I just said to her “Don’t be angry, it’s better to just confront it and deal with it now, rather than later. It will not be easy but it will be worthwhile.” She looked at me as if I had said a foreign language that she knew she did not understand yet was surprised that she did. She looked at me and asked what I meant? But in actuality the unsaid question from her eyes to mine was “How do I deal with it?”  So I explained to her and the other two ladies at the table my own tea-bag liberation journey with my Mom and how when I got into my thirties, I had to do my own house cleaning with her in order for us to turn a new leaf. It took six long years. It was risky because it could have gone terribly wrong. But it got done! Today my Mom is my best friend forever and I love our mother/daughter relationship.

After I had shared my experience with the ladies, I turned to the young lady and reiterated that she needed to confront this with her own “substitute” mom instead of avoiding it. It was obvious she loved her. But she was angry on so many levels because she felt that her substitute mother had failed her in more ways than one and like a tea bag, all the issues and incidents where floating to the surface. When she shared with us the incidents of her pain, I understood. The woman who raised her and she called mother  had denied her pain, her traumatic experiences, her reality, and the experiences that she had suppressed for years were not awake like a knives twisting in her back. The best thing she could do was deal with it and unless she dealt with it these knives would keep on twisting reminding her of her hurting girl child! And it was showing up in more ways than one. By 2am, the other ladies had also shared their mother/daughter stories and tensions. At the end of the evening I felt that in retrospect, my girl child issues with my Mon were so trivial and paled in comparison to their traumas! But still emotional pain, while relative, was still pain and it hurt regardless.

The best part of having the buried tea bags surface is to allow you to become self-conscious in knowing who is showing up! Who is showing up in public or private associations, in friendships, in relationships with love, money, self-worth, self image, etc.  The personality is a versatile, multifaceted entity because of the way our life experiences and adventures has manifested in us into an interwoven unique personal quilt. As such one’s personality has an elephant syndrome – one part could show up to some people while another to others and yet another to others and before you know it they all know different parts of your rump but never the whole elephant! It’s just means they only know a bit of you and that’s a healthy thing.  It’s only unhealthy when YOU, are not aware which part of yourself shows ups - when, why, how, or in what context. Then you create confusion with your unconscious piece personalities and wonder why loved ones and friends see you that way when you think you are actually projecting yourself a certain way!

 Copyright @ April 7, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

Conscientious Objector: NETWORKING: Success OR Are you working yourself in...

Conscientious Objector: NETWORKING: Success OR Are you working yourself in...: "Many small businesses these days are using networking as a business development strategy to either meeting potential strategic partners, fin..."