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30th January 2018 // Trying to get back into the swing of things, starting with planning for my upcoming negotiation exercise. I found a cute little coffee shop in centretown Ottawa which does the most insane nutella hot chocolate - a much-needed treat to get me through the winter!

Download my ‘Planning a Negotiation’ template and tips here.

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How to Ride a Donkey Cart

December 4, 2017

As I am now a little less than five months away from the end or “close” of my Peace Corps service in Senegal, I have slowly but surely started thinking about what I want to do afterwards. Ideally, I would like to work for a consulting company that focuses on development work. This way, I could continue doing the work that I love (strategy development) in the field I am passionate about (international aid/development).

And so, in the search for a job, I am updating and revising my resume to include my Peace Corps experience, a task that quite a number of volunteers are currently struggling with. Most of them are only at the beginning of their career (the majority of volunteers joins the Peace Corps right after college), and they are not quite sure how they should/can summarize their work in village. After all, as a volunteer, you have to find and create your own work in village (you may “technically” have a supervisor, but you are essentially your own boss). However, a lot of the project ideas you come up with fall through when you try to implement them, due to a lack of interest, money, motivation, or a combination of these.

The inexperienced/young volunteer may think this is a Senegalese problem, often becoming disillusioned and demotivated along the way. S/he struggles to see the many things we learn during our service that are valuable work experience, including, for example, grant writing, monitoring and evaluation, and business coaching. And then there are tons of “other” skills I wish I could add as a “miscellaneous” category in my resume. What employer would not want to hire an employee who knows:

- How to ride a donkey cart

- How many bricks can be made with one bag of cement

- How to make “attaya” (=Senegalese tea)

- How to calculate how much cement is needed for a latrine or a building

- How to pound millet

- The different types of latrines and their relative advantages / disadvantages

Hands down, though, the most important skill we learn in Senegal is how to negotiate. I always thought I was a pretty good negotiator, even before coming here, but boy was I wrong. I was playing in the little leagues. Fortunately for me, the Senegalese/Africans (this is, after all, not a uniquely Senegalese skill) have taken me to a whole other level. I have, in fact, become so used to negotiating, it feels strange not to do it, for example when standing at the counter of the Starbucks at Lisbon airport where an iced coffee costs 3 Euros (3 Euros? Are you kidding me? That’s outrageous!) Naturally, the Senegalese start with outrageous prices as well, but then all the fun (or exasperation, depending on who you ask) lies in bringing that price down as much as possible. And they will admire you all the more the tougher you negotiate.

If only the Senegalese negotiated with the West with the same fervor they exhibit when haggling for a taxi ride or a t-shirt. When negotiating actually matters, and the stakes are so much higher. And maybe they do, but it sure seems like they tend to end up with the short end of the stick. And so it is up to us Westerners to negotiate fairer and to actually give Senegal and other developing countries a fighting chance. We have paid too little too long for their resources.

#howiseepc #senegal #negotiate good #skills