Internships

We have been in Cape Town for 5 weeks now and have started our internships. I am interning at Inyathelo, where I am completing research on philanthropy and private banks in the US and Europe. I have also had the opportunity to sit in on a meeting of the FPA which is an organization that is holding the government accountable for paying out grant money. I honestly have never been present at such a dysfunctional meeting in my life! For starters, the meeting was planned from 11 until 5 with a half hour lunch break...I have never heard of a small organization of 8 people needing to meet for 6 hours to decide answers to 10 questions! The meeting was recorded so that I could go back and write the minutes later. There was an agenda and there was a facilitator, but apparently neither of those things meant anything at this meeting. The facilitator decided to start off playing some get-to-know-you games when this group has been together for over a year working, and considering that no one involved me, I know that this was not for the benefit of us getting to know each other, but seemed to simply fill the space of 45 minutes. The agenda was then introduced, and then everyone proceeded to argue about the purpose of the meeting and how they felt that they did this big research project and something needed to be done with this research, but they didn't want to do anything!

Next came the time to decide how to do advocacy for the research, to which half the people still continued arguing that they didn't want to do advocacy because they didn't want to do anything, while the other half of the room began talking about all the people they knew and all the vacations they've taken with so-and-so from such-and-such organization.

Finally it was time for lunch, I had 4 pages of notes for meeting minutes, all of which were seemingly meaningless as nothing was really agreed on. Talk continued to be of everyone's connections and who was having lunch with which member of the government and who was going to Europe with which important people...the agenda was pointedly ignored.

Following lunch were more discussions and arguments and people talking over one another. Finally, 3 major decisions were made...the three main points that the FPA would pressure the advocacy group (which was still being contested due to people not wanting to do anything with the research project) to approach the government with. As soon as people started to leave, one of the women from Inyathelo looked at me and said "well that was very productive, I'm proud of what we achieved today." I guess I looked stunned or something, because she looked at me and said, "well, what do you think?" I replied, "I have no idea what just happened here," although I had 6 pages of notes! We returned to the office, I was given the recorded meeting, and on Monday, I spent the whole day re-listening to the 6 hour conversation about nothing and got even less out of it as I heard people talking louder over one another and whoever was loudest was the one who made the final decision!

6 hours...and 3 bullet points ended up being the final draft of the notes I took!

To better understand the dysfunctionality of the meeting I just described, let me just say the office here is like nothing I've ever experienced at home! While Inyathelo is much more organized and professional than other internships here, it is nothing like an internship in the States! On my first day, I wanted to clarify my start and end times, my supervisor said "oh we try to get in around 8:30, but whatever time works for you is fine. And we normally end at 4:30 or 5." I have yet to see most of the office come around 8:30 and it has proven impossible for me to get here at 8:30 with a minibus or taxi, as they all seem to run on their own time. I still have not seen more than 3 people stay until 5, and most of the time people leave between 4 and 4:30. The dress code was described to me as "business casual," however, people wear anything from jeans to full suits...I guess it's pretty much anything presentable is ok.

While I do have a supervisor and a major project that I work on, my supervisor does not really come into the office all that often, and usually works from home. I thought she called in sick or something, so I asked another person where she was and she said "oh, she isn't here today? She is probably working from home." Considering there are only 3 people (myself included) in the philanthropy department, I had no one to really collaborate with and needed to send an email asking details of the research project I was working on. I knew what my project was, but for the first 2 weeks, had to simply peruse webpages of banks hoping I was gathering the right information as I was promised a more detailed description of my project 4 times! I finally received it, but I guess I have been working really fast, so was told to slow down because they didn't want to run out of work for me to do (the last intern they had here ran out of work after her first week and had nothing to do the rest of the time).

At any given moment, there are usually 13 people in the office and 3 are on facebook, 2 are outside smoking, and 4 are texting or taking personal calls. When someone calls the office, everyone has their own desk phone, but they say "let me transfer you" and then take a cordless phone, look around the open-floor-cubicles and then either run with the phone to the person being called or say "sorry, so-and-so is at lunch, can I take a message?" After hanging up, they will yell across, "hey, so-and-so's husband/mom/daughter/son called, can you tell her to call them back?" Now that is some very high-tech call transfer and voicemail system! By the way, I also have a phone, and no one wants to actually get up and walk the 10 feet to the person across the room to ask a question, so they call one another even though you can clearly hear both sides of the conversation without a phone. One day, another person wanted to have a similar conversation with me, but I guess my line is crossed with another, so we then had the complicated switching of phones around cubicle walls.