Conference Culture

In the world of aid, conferences and trainings are huge. In many ways, it makes sense. Bringing together professionals, healthcare workers, and other various community leaders to share information about health, education, and development is a good idea in any setting. But I’m starting to think too much of a good thing can be bad.

During the first fifteen weeks of 2011 the ten nurses and high level administrators at my health center have attended a cumulative total of fourteen weeks worth of trainings and conferences. This does not include the various lower level administrative staff and nurses who also attend conferences.

These trainings are almost always sponsored by international NGOs or foreign aid agencies like USAID, UNICEF, or Save the Children. The events generally take place at nice hotels in the larger cities. Hosting organizations provide all attendees with lodging, food, transport, and per diem. Topics include family planning, vaccination procedures and policies, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, etc. and are repeated often. Three different nurses at my health center have attended three separate conferences on TB this year.

I sat in on a very modest two-day conference held at my health center where the daily per diem was 30,000 RWF. The standard salary for a nurse at my health center is around 90,000 RWF a month (approximately 150USD). Needless to say, people are ager to attend trainings and conferences. This creates quite a bit of tension and animosity among staff.

I do think trainings are important and beneficial for development. I am, however, becoming much less enthusiastic about them.

A few weeks ago, there was quite a bit of drama at the health center. Two nurses were mad at each other. Turns out a nurse (we’ll call her Nancy), was attending a conference in Butare, the big city two hours away, with one of the administrators (we’ll call him Bob). Another Nurse (we’ll call her Betty) was furious. The conference’s topic was Betty’s area of expertise, but Bob decides who goes to the conferences, and he chose Nancy. Betty is an older nurse, married with children. Nancy is a younger nurse, single and flirtatious. Bob is also a well-known womanizer. Everyone at work thinks Bob invited Nancy to the conference so he could sleep with her. … And I thought I was going to miss Grey’s Anatomy!