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Tuesday 27 March 2012

Visiting the brothel

Posted by: Helen

A post about computer viruses, and why work can be a puzzle

Grrrrr
With limited resources to keep PCs protected from malware, trojans, spyware and other nasties, computer viruses seem to be the scourge of Kenyan workplaces, and a real challenge for people like me, spoiled with IT departments throughout my whole career so far and now plunged into a very different world.


With regular office power cuts here in Nairobi, plenty of people visit the local ‘cyber’ (café) during the week and at weekends, having no PC at home. They carry their work with them on their ‘flash’ (USB stick).  Visiting a cyber café in Kenya is like frequenting a brothel without regular healthchecks: your stick always comes back diseased.  And with nowhere to download your files and reformat your ‘flash’, you just carry the virus around from machine to machine, infecting everyone.  The brothel analogy is no leap of imagination.


It’s a big problem where I work.  With no network or shared space for files, and no internet in the office since November last year, we can only work together on the same document if we use USB sticks.  Last year, my whole USB stick was infected 3 times, meaning that I lost my work over and over again, too scared was I to save work on the office PCs which regularly died peacefully in the night, refusing to switch on in the morning, or ever again.  We take advantage of free antivirus downloaded when we can scrounge a modem, but it's of limited strength, and useless without regular internet access to update the software to cope with new nasties.


Four viruses I have contracted recently:
  1. porn.exe
  2. sexy.exe
  3. secret.mov
  4. and one where every word document was wiped and replaced by: I’m a Somali worm!  I won’t stop destroying your documents until Somalia is free!!!!!!!!!!  which seems to be the most useless attempt at healing international wounds since Prince Philip last went to Asia.
So what to do?  After 4 months I gave in and bought a fancy phone which acts as mobile internet for my work PC, and I top up with internet credit from my own pocket every week.  I also regularly back-up on our home laptop (lucky me), and refuse to let any USB near my PC without a full scan/complete formatting.  My colleagues are now used to me saying:

Wait!  Stop!  Is that clean before you stick it in? (the brothel analogy runs and runs…). 

A fellow VSO volunteer on an IT placement answered my plea to audit the technology in our offices and make recommendation to our boss (thanks Tara!).  The results were: get a new internet provider, buy toner, buy antivirus, service your photocopier and for goodness sake contract an IT person to continue this work.  Office equipment was donated a few years ago to 'build' an office environment, but this first generation of NGO office workers are unfortunately learning the hard way that you can’t just receive a bunch of PCs, plug them in and expect them still to work a year later.  

I’m glad to report that improvements are happening slowly, and with a bit of funding trickling in, we now have a freelance IT guy who works here twice a week.  He’s young, skinny and he stands too close, but he’s created a network, procured antivirus and is teaching my colleagues what to ask when choosing internet providers.  He’s even fixed the printer halleluiah.  With limited resources, I understand that my boss has to choose carefully what to invest in, but it's been interesting to see that IT maintenance is not seen as an office essential here (even in an office where several visually impaired colleagues rely on screen reading, or magnifying software to do their work; surely it makes sense to maintain the technology that essentially gives them sight?)

As you can see, the technology in the office regularly fails me and my colleagues.  But are they angry? 

The answer is: No, not really, and here is where an issue of computer viruses puts a spotlight on how Kenyan work culture is different from where I’ve come from:

In the UK, people would be outraged if they were not given the tools to succeed in their work.  Frustrated, they would complain to the people in charge.  But in Kenya, I’ve not seen much evidence of disagreement, confrontation or performance management.  Problems are not fixed; and often not identified as a problem in the first place.  People just try and try again to make things work by themselves, to find their way around.  Pride is paramount, in leaders, their work, and themselves.  They don’t complain, they don’t give up, and they don’t blame others.  Just because it looks like offices do in the UK, doesn’t mean the rules are not totally different.  One of the reasons why my work was such a puzzle in the first few months was because no one wanted to speak badly of others, admit to problems or be honest about why projects are stalled.  It’s an admirable approach in lots of ways, but so rooted am I in a western work style, I can only see this approach as a barrier to realising the things we in the west hold most dear: productivity, progress, improvements and the ability to ‘get stuff done’. 

Here comes my personal lesson for the week...

Once again I’m challenged about what is the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to do things; things done ‘well’ or ‘badly’ depend on who is judging, and which benchmarks they trust.  Often what I see as a ‘problem’, is…just…life here.  Hakuna matata Helen!’ no worries, I’m told.  But I do worry, about how things will happen, about how things will be improved.  We were placed here as VSO volunteers to build capacity, to strengthen the work that happens – but build in which direction?  Strengthen which parts?  I never know if what I’m suggesting is much better or just wrong for this working world, and the only way to find out is by working in partnership.  I believe in all the VSO ideals here in bold, but often think I would need to be here 10 years before I was working together with my colleagues in a truly meaningful way.  But I only have 3 months left.  On the good days you make baby steps towards (what I might call) progress, but on the bad days I just miss working in an environment I fully understand.

(are you finding all this personal growth as tiring as me?!)

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