I am in Mumbai for the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene organized by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).
I have to give credit to the organizers that they brought me all the way from Ethiopia covering all my costs and, I have to say, it is a learning experience I will pay every penny I have for. I met some great people, saw a different culture and picked up some interesting lessons for the job that I do.
But I have also to say that the biggest lesson came from the worst of my Mumbai-Forum experience. I woke up on the second day of the Forum, went online and emailed my girlfriend back home that I loved the hotel and service before going out for breakfast. And, ironically enough, as I walked out of the elevator on my way to where breakfast was served, I met one of the organizers who has been corresponding with me all along. I said hi and she hi-ed back. And, then, as an afterthought she said, “oh by the way, we have been informed by the hotel that there has been overbooking here and that we are gonna have to move you to another hotel.” And she said this with so much politeness that I totally understood her situation. I could see how difficult it was for her to tell me that I had to move out of my hotel and she was giving me such a short notice. In fact, I was just going to pack, check-out and would stay in the conference facility the whole day. The transfer was all arranged so well that I barely have anything to complain about in terms of organization/arrangements. However, the very thing that I was told out of my hotel to make room for someone coming later on would’ve caused me to respond somehow differently had I paid for my travels and my accommodation. But I was here on a bursary and didn’t have the bargaining power to confront that good lady like: “Come on, I know there can be overbooking, I organized a few international conferences myself. But the late comer should go and get the rooms in the other hotel. First come first served, isn’t it?” But as I said, I was on bursary and it was so a natural step for her to pick me out. I told my friends what happened and as I was returning to the elevator to pack my things, I met this guy with luggage coming back from the registration desk with name tag hanging from his neck. The two words I saw read…United States – that is where he is from. So we started this little discussion and I asked, “So are you arriving just now?” And he went, “No, I arrived late last night but they didn’t have room for me. It seems they are trying to get me one…” They were looking for a room for him and others who came later on. Little did he know that I was kicked out so he gets a room.
It would be simply natural for the organizers to ask me and not him to go to the other hotel. I would have done the same and given how good the lady has been in the process it would be stupid for me to assume that I was less cared for because of any other reason than the way my travel and accommodations were financed - I was on a bursary fund and the guy (or his organization) paid his bills. It was merely a class difference. So I have no grudge at all with the wonderful lady. In fact it wasn’t personal. It was an institutional decision.
But that made me think about my ‘class’, and how I can change that. I thought, being in the country of the great Mahatma, I must ‘be the change I wish to see’ in my future. And when does change begin? TODAY. So I made the first change. Instead of going out and visiting Mumbai’s slums I opted to attend Dr. Everold Husein’s training on Communication for Behavioral Impact which will affect my career positively. I realized that I would get the treatment I want not by visiting someone else’s poverty but by overcoming my own. That’s how I ended up in Dr. Husein’s session. But that happened to be the best session of all and I hope to follow that on with the “measuring behavior change using outcome mapping” training that will take place on Friday. I decided to make the change happen in my career, be self-sponsored next time and not get ‘kicked out’ of my hotel room to make room for someone else.
I want whoever reads this to remember and focus on ‘the moral lesson’ part and not the hotel-room-change thing. In fact, I eventually managed to stay at Renaissance moving with an extra bed to my good friend’s room and that happened because the organizers including the lady I mentioned above kindly helped me to.
Last but not least, if you wonder what Dr. Hosein’s session has done to me, I give you the following before-and-after thing. Imagine that I am a communication expert for Dr. Hosein and my job is to help get people in my situation to his sesion over other competing sessions at the same time. Before, I would have said, “Come to this training and you will have a lot of knowledge about COMBI”, now that I know COMBI cares more about and taps into what people ‘want, need or desire’, I would say “Come to this training, be self-sponsored next time, and avoid getting kicked out.”
