Field Journal: Friday Aug. 12 – The Secretary General

My field trip has been productive so far. In Warrap on Wednesday afternoon, I interviewed a county water/hygiene/sanitation coordinator and got some scoop on a new water source GPS mapping project we're doing with local governments, and how it’s helping improve/expand safe water supplies for people in that state. On Thursday I took a truck drive four hours north to another state, Northern Bahr el Ghazal (NBG), to catch up with a couple of consultants my company has hired to help the state’s Council of Ministers streamline operations, and to assist the Labor Ministry in its overhaul of statewide human resources systems.

On Friday morning, my company’s team leader in NBG grabs me as he’s heading out the gates. “I am going to the Governor’s office,’’ he says. “Come with me. You need to meet the Secretary General.”

Garang Kuot Kuot is the highest ranking civil servant in NBG. He’s also a very important man in state government, with an office right across the hall from the Governor’s. I am told he is a young rising star -- smart, visionary, and respected by the Governor, and that many people have entrusted him with their hope for a corruption-free state that can gradually become capable of delivering public services to the people – clinics, schools, physical infrastructure, agriculture development. Kuot is also a former Lost Boy, one of the thousands of South Sudanese child refugees who fled the killing fields in South Sudan in the late 90s and walked hundreds of miles without food or adults to guide them, to camps in Ethiopia, then Kenya. The Lost Boys airlift landed him in British Columbia, where he graduated high school and then college.

The guards at the Governor’s compound recognize our vehicle and wave us through. We park under a big tree and walk inside a sprawling new, one-story building framed in front with modest flower gardens and carefully trimmed grass yards. Outside there are water tanks, a radio tower, a big satellite dish. We enter the building and turn left toward the SG’s office. In an anteroom, there is a woman sitting at a large desk, a couple of armed soldiers posted near an interior office door, and a group of five to six men in suits standing and apparently waiting to see Kuot. My colleague and I approach the door and ask to see the Secretary General.

“He is very busy today,’’ someone clucks at us, shaking his head.

“We just need to give him some papers.’’

More head shaking. “He is very busy. You will have to come back.”

The door opens and, by luck, the SG himself is there, escorting a pair of men in business suits out of his office. He is built like a linebacker, over six feet tall, perfect teeth, handsome and well dressed in a black tailored suit. He greets my colleague and I warmly and quickly ushers us into his large office. He sits down behind a massive desk cluttered with stacks of paper, two laptops, three cell phones, pads and pens.

I realize I will only have a few minutes with him and have come with some prepared questions, but get only half-way through my first when his door opens to admit people who are much more important than we are. In the course of 20 minutes, we are interrupted approximately four times by people who absolutely have to see the Secretary General immediately, including the Minister of Finance. Kuot’s three cell phones chime in various ring tones throughout the stop-start conversation, and in between answering my questions, he gives serious-sounding instructions in different languages to a range of needy information seekers.

My final question for him is a softball: Are we helping in NBG?

He cleared his throat and clasped his hands in a thoughtful steeple under his chin.

“Teach me to use a net, I catch my own fish. Give me the fish, I come to you for another,” he said, modifying the Chinese parable to illustrate that our company’s collaborative, learn-by-doing approach is helping build his government’s capacity instead of feeding into the dependency cycle.

Boom. It was a grand slam of a sound bite. Time to get out. Look for this guy on CNN soon. As my ex reporter’s goose bumps subsided, I slapped my notebook shut and Kuot walked us to the door while charismatically greeting four new suits walking in.

Apparently he gets a lot of work done on weekends.