“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that is the essence of inhumanity.” The Devil’s Disciple. George Bernard Shaw, 1901.
I helped facilitate a post-diversity sensitisation experience for an Avo client at the Apartheids Museum today. It was harrowing.

Firstly the exhibition was like our very own South African holocaust commemoration, bringing up memories and emotions I hadn’t felt or thought about for years. The helplessness, the useless guilt, the frustration, the anger and the pain of all that suffering, all that loss, so many lives and opportunities wasted. I always get the feeling that I should have joined the struggle, should have done more than rage helplessly at the stupid white boys in my school who beat up black people in the streets after dark for fun.

It was difficult to hear the stories of the people in the group, to sympathise with people who “didn’t know”, to hear the defensive arguments, the xenophobic statements, the flippancy and the nervous humour and to remain objective. It was difficult to facilitate a space in which ALL voices could be heard, while knowing full well that the pain of the people without a voice was still not over.

Those who had suffered, were still silenced. They were still not allowed to say “we were killed and tortured, humiliated, degraded and negated and you did nothing to help us” Their sobbing is still silenced by white self-righteousness and ignorance.

I cried when I left that place. As I walked through the gardens of the museum I felt as if I was channeling all the unspoken anguish of our land. How can we begin to make people feel empathy; to hear and see and feel these broken things if they refuse to acknowledge that they exist? How can the healing begin, if their own wounds are not even acknowledged?

Even ‘though the experience was upsetting, I still believe it was a valuable learning opportunity for me and everyone else concerned. People were given a space in which to tell their stories. It is important for all of us to remember when working in the vulnerable space of relationships and communication, that a story is a person’s truth. It is the reality about who they are and how they experience the world.

My world may look and feel different to me, but it is not more valid or real. We need to tell more stories and listen to more stories. As Tracy said, telling stories is like surgery for the soul.

It is one of the most fundamental human needs: To be known. To be seen. To be heard.

In the beginning was the word: “Blogging”…

Jules, as an early adopter, was as passionate about blogging as she always is about new technology, new people, new ideas or new words. Old is boring, in with the new.
So, at Avo, we blog. We were told in the beginning (when there was just the word) that we would not be forced to blog and that some people are bloggers and others are just boggers. Jules was convinced that I was a blogger and would take to the medium, fish-to-water. Jules had high hopes for me to become a passionate and voluminous blogger. Alas, alack.

I must be such a disappointment to her: I really don’t like blogging. I find it tedious and tiresome. And frightfully onanistic.

But here I am, blogging away, while I could be doing something useful. Who am I to argue with the boss lady?
How does she do it? How does Jules get boggers to blog? She uses underhand scare tactics, she orders me to “blog this” and “blog that”, she sends links to comment sections to go blog on, she competes with other blogsites. She gets competitive; she wants us to be prolific and be cross-blogged across the world.

So, whilst I am blogging so self-reflectively, about blogging (hey, check the post-modern intra-textual circular reference, okes!) I can’t help wondering whether Mike and Jules meant all those things about blogs being about free speech, choice, having a voice, irreverent and the great leveller…hope so, else I’m in kak!

My brief this time was to blog about the pretty photograph of Avo that Peter Velter sent which was taken from his house on the other side of the valley. Peter and I sometimes have cappucino (the best in the world, he says) in his kitchen before I dash across the valley for the weekly Avo staff meeting. (He always has “Nutella” choc spread for me too, my favourite)

Ok, Jules. You happy? I blogging well hope so!

Hanli’s Health Update: The Travel Doctor at the Fourways Travel Clinic says I don’t have Malaria…quite a relief, let me tell you. It’s a dastardly disease.

I still feel rather yucky, ‘though. I did too much tropical sea swimming and snorkeling, so now my sinuses are in a revolt against the rest of my body (and revolting, let me add). Hence the high fevers and delirium that was mistakenly thought to be Malaria.

Socially, very busy. Read: “Dating update”…as promised: In between dawn cappucino’s on Kensington mountain (with interesting inventors) and bohemian parties in Houghton with actors, Bollywood movie directors, philosophy professors and anar-chic accountants (who wear mascara and fishnets instead of pinstripes!) my life is very, very interesting. The dilemma of knowing where I am going to fit it all in to my hectic workweek!?

Any suggestions on Work/Date Balance?

My mother once introduced me to a rather deaf elderly gentleman: “Meet my daughter, Hanli Buber.” To which the gentleman replied: “Honey Bluebelle! What a charming name!” My mother did not correct him, and neither did I. I have been using the name as a pseudonym ever since.

Who is Hanli Buber? At the moment I am a sniffing, coughing, wheezing, shivering Zanzibarian recoveree. I spent a deliriously glorious ten days on the island-of-spice and it was very, very, very nice! But now I am waiting to hear whether I contracted Malaria, which is endemic (and epidemic!) to Zanzibar.

At Avo, I am jacqueline-of-all trades and master of some. I am the key account manager (I love that title! It sounds so grown-up; like a real job!) for SAB and Standard Bank. I rustle up new business, I develop new training products, I project manage and I train Avo courses.

I love networking, discovering the hidden webs of people who know other people. My best is when I meet people who have problems I know the solutions to. I get a lot of satisfaction from linking people together in new, satisfying and creative ways. A job I would probably love to do would be managing an exclusive dating agency. (An issue close to my heart at the moment, but more on my dating life when I know you a little better…)

When I lived in a small town called Donnybrook in the Southern Drakensburg, I used to throw notorious parties, to which I would invite anyone and everyone I liked; hippies, rich landowners, farmers, politicians, artists, rasta’s…anyone. I would feed them lots of cheap wine and watch new groups of people develop almost organically.

By the end of the party, new friendships and partnerships and insights were formed. And I, as the catalyst, would watch from the sidelines, like a satisfied deity. I still do that at Avo. In the business world it’s all about Networking; about being a ‘Connector’, like Malcolm Gladwell refers to in “The Tipping Point” It’s something I want to get better at this year.

My Strengths (Gallup, Marcus Buckingham) are Communicator (hence long blogs and long emails!), Individualisation, Input, Maximiser and Woo.

Apart from Connecting, I also develop funky Avo products like Pirates, Popcorn and the Corporate Fable and the Ama-Zing-Zing Race, I am a trainer and I facilitate meetings using a process called Participlan (which I love because it is so interactive and engaging) (Secret about me: Meetings freak me out. I can’t sit still, or shut up or listen. I hate all the talking, talking, talking and the knowing that work is piling up while the most verbose attendees verbally compete for floor-time, or slap each other on the back, or insult each other politely or just chew the fat. Meetings suck!) (Except Participlanned ones!)

I love working for Avo because of the flexibility and the alternative avant-garde way we structure “work”. It doesn’t feel like work. I get to be creative and productive and innovative and self-directed and sociable and trustworthy, all in a day’s “work”. Avo is like the seven-day-weekend workplace (Ricardo Semler, eat our Avo’s!) I love telling my friends who work for big corporates what it’s like working for Avo. They usually shake their heads in disbelief, groan and sigh and then beg me to get them a job with us!

I met with my friend Mark Kahn yesterday and we spoke about ‘core values’…interesting dilemma if your core values are in conflict with what your work expects of you. And your values are not what you think they are, either! I want to talk to him about it some more, then I’ll blog a thought-summary.

(I have a feeling I am going to be banned from Blogging, ‘cos I don’t know when to stop, as usual. Maybe I should just get my own site?) Ok, enough already.