Just one of the team

One of the biggest challenges facing me on starting work with the hospital was integrating myself within the various teams that I was going to be working with and hoping to develop.

The luxury of a settling in period is not something I have.

I am only here for 4 weeks and there is an awful lot to be done in that time, much of which can only be achieved if I hit the ground running and have the support of various people from day one.

Fortunately, I haven’t suffered from any serious bugs or illnesses which can often afflict new arrivals in their first couple of weeks (I say, tempting fate) and therefore I have been able to concentrate on building a relationship with the various teams I am working with and in particular certain members of the finance team who I hope to mentor throughout the time out here.

This has certainly been helped by the genuinely friendly welcome the people of Malawi have extended to me everywhere I have gone, such is the warmth of the people that I have met that it is difficult to comprehend the constant warnings not to go out after dark, such is the level of danger should I do so.

(Whilst I am not quite able to reconcile the warnings with the welcome received I am heeding them – I am willing to tempt fate with a comment about not having felt too ill but I am less inclined to tempt fate with any machete wielding Malawian muggers in a Blantyre back alley).

However, I digress. Going back to the challenge of integrating myself into the teams several people have been very helpful in suggesting a number of approaches to take and I have deliberately adopted a number of these methods in the hope they would help.

Almost everyone I have spoken to has suggested learning a few words in the local dialect (Chichewa) and this has proved immensely helpful, if only because the locals delight in answering my basic greetings with long soliloquies which I of course do not understand and am unable to respond to.

Fortunately I know the word ‘pepani’ which means ‘sorry’ and I’ve started saying ‘ndifuka kuphanzira’ meaning ‘I would like to know more’ and these poor attempts at the local language are well received by people who seem to appreciate the efforts I’m making.

Additionally, another suggestion I have followed was that on day one the first thing I did was sit down with each member of the team individually and spent half an hour getting to know them before we talked about work.

The purpose of this was to try to help me understand what makes each of the team tick on a personal level and also to allow me to pry a little into the Malawian way of life, of which I know little, whilst at the same time letting them get to know a little about myself.

I am less sure how well this approach worked as whilst I now know that one of the team is a big basketball fan and hopes one day to work as an accountant in England (consider this an early claim for any referral bonus), there are others who I still think are less confident when I am around.

I don’t think I have helped myself by basing myself in the previous finance managers’ office, which is separate from the main finance function and as such from Monday I will be relocating to join the rest of the team in the main office.

As I left the hospital on Friday at the end of my first week I wasn’t feeling that these methods had given me the instant success I was looking for and in all honesty I was a little disappointed.

Basing myself away from the team felt like a mistake and there had been little suggestion from any of the team of meeting up outside of work to have a beer or look around the town etc (by comparison, every stranger I have met has wanted to meet again, Malawians love the idea of an English friend).

I popped into the hospital on Saturday to visit to a few patients and to do a little more work (there is very little to do here socially, running and swimming are the two options and it’s the rainy season which limits both of those considerably).

A couple of the team were also in and after half an hour or so one of them popped in to see me.
He wanted to ask me if I would help him with his revision for one of his ACCA exams that he has next week.

He also said that another member of the team had asked him to see if I would be willing to teach him how to use spreadsheets in excel.

This genuinely made my day (and not just because I am sad spreadsheet geek). In coming and asking for help in this way it feels like there is trust and respect between us and that the team wants us to work together.

I am still going to move out of the managers’ office and into the main office on Monday but I will now be doing so believing that we see ourselves as a team, have established a trust and rapport with each other and enjoy each others company sufficiently to want to stay behind to learn more from each other, many of the things I had thought to be lacking the previous evening.

Mind you, I now have to try to demonstrate a detailed technical knowledge of several ACCA modules so we could be back to square one again by the end of the next week!

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