Big Man

Government officials fit into a variety of categories in Kenya. Some are helpful, others bored. Some incompetant, others corrupt. Yesterday I found a new type- an agricultural officer suffering from what I call, "big man" syndrome. He was the type of person that was clearly impressed with the power he held (which was minimal) and wanted to make sure everybody else acknowledged his "size" and were humbled in his office.
The background story is that while in the process of writing a report for a Food For Work report, we needed data on monthly rainfall in the project area. The coordinator of MIDI and I went to the office of the local agricultural officer to get this data. We soon found the person who had the data, but it was clear he wasn't about to just give it to us. He starts grilling us about the project, sceptically telling us why we were doing the wrong thing or quizzing us to make sure we were doing things properly. He lectured us both about everything from relief, to the role of the church, to which plants to grow. My friend did a great job is simply humbling himself and not taking any offense. We both agreed with his endless rants and tried to wait him out until he just gave us what we wanted.
Finally he broke down, decided we'd paid enough homage and gave us some of the numbers we wanted. After leaving his "office" (corrugated metal sheet shanty) he returned with a second file of data that was less helpful before leaving a second time to find more files. I paged through what he gave us and found that the monthly data we wanted was hidden in the midst of the folder, he just had missed it. We quickly wrote down the numbers and left the office before he returned for another round of lectures.

Overall, we got what we wanted. It required some humbling and a little grovelling but in the end we succeeded.