Leaving on a jet plane

On Sunday I will travel to Hyderabad, India to attend the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Reproductive & Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSH). It will be my first time to travel to Hyderabad, but this is already my 4th trip to India (previous 3 were to Delhi and Agra). The first APCRSH conference was held in Manila, where I was part of the rapporteur team. The second was held in Bangkok while the 3rd was in Kuala Lumpur.

I’m quite excited to make this trip especially because this is the first time that I have received a full scholarship in any of the international conferences. My abstracts have been accepted in at least 5 AIDS conferences, but I have never received even a partial scholarship from any of them. This is why I was hesitant to submit an abstract for this conference but I guess my (hopelessly) optimistic self prevailed and I was pleasantly surprised when I was informed that I was indeed a recipient of a full scholarship.

My abstract is another story, though. I actually submitted 2 abstracts: 1 for my MSM-related consultancy, and another for my project with young people. I was more confident of my first abstract but it was rejected; the second was accepted. And even if I submitted it to be a poster presentation, it was accepted as an oral presentation. I was astonished when I learned this. Not because I have a fear of speaking publicly but because the project behind this abstract did not end satisfactorily (for me, and I can only assume, for my client).

It’s one of those unfortunate confluences of circumstances that independent consultants would just like to forget and put behind them as quickly as possible. In late 2006 I was commissioned by PLAN International to develop a curriculum for teaching adolescent reproductive health to out-of-school youth with very low literacy levels. After a long period of wrangling on my professional fee (a sign that I ignored) and the general budget, the work finally started. By March of 2007 I already had a draft, which was based on a series of consultation with the client. I was astonished to receive a slew of negative comments on the draft. New issues surfaced when we made sure every issue was taken up before I started writing (another sign that I ignored yet again). But I remained focused and determined to complete the project, even if it required new tasks that were not part of my contract. Then my expatriate contact person was replaced by a Cambodian staff member, who was very slow in responding to my inquiries, causing more delays in the project.

By May I already needed to be working on another project with UNAIDS, which I favored because (1) this was a regular client; (2) this client paid me appropriately, i.e. no haggling; and (3) this client trusts my judgment in a way that I hadn’t felt with PLAN. So I decided to let them know that as soon I have submitted the revised curriculum, I will not do the last part of the consultancy anymore, which is the training of trainers. They agreed. The submission, however, was delayed further because they were very slow in responding to my specific requests and inquiries relating to the finalization of the curriculum.

When I finally submitted the final curriculum, I was a few days away from going to Beijing to do a short project there. I sent this client the document (hard & soft copies) and then I got this harsh email informing me that I had to meet them to ‘process’ the document that I submitted. I replied that I had no time to meet them because I was about to go to China. I suggested that if they have further comments to just put those comments in an email then send it to me and we can meet again when I am back in 2 weeks. I was already irritated at this point but I kept my cool. Then I received this email saying that if I do not meet them within 48 hours they will not process my final payment. I sent the same reply and added that the decision to pay me is entirely up to them. ‘I can easily earn that money elsewhere, without this much aggravation’, I said finally.

Almost a month after sending that email, a PLAN human resource staff emailed me to tell me that they will not indeed issue my final payment. As if I was still counting on that money. I had said my farewell to the USD4,000.00++ that I was entitled to receive right after I replied to their previous email.

In the whole time that I had been doing independent consulting, that was by far my worst experience. But it looks like something good still came out of that terrible experience. The abstract was written while I was revising the curriculum, when I was still optimistic about the project as a whole. The abstract focused on the process of developing the curriculum, not really on the content. There were many lessons learned in developing the curriculum. As many as the lessons I learned from working with PLAN. These, however, will not be part of my oral presentation.

And on Sunday I’m going to India! I’m looking forward to seeing my good friend Joyce, people I know like Glenn, Malyn, Arpita, Radhika, Dede, Sushma, and Dok Eden. Many Cambodians got their abstracts accepted for this conference. I know some of them. I’m just not sure whether all of them got received scholarships. I probably won’t be able to post anything from there because of the hectic schedule (I will try) but for sure I’ll tell you about it when I come back to Phnom Penh on November 3. Joyce and I decided to stay an extra day to visit some sites and, of course, to shop for some Indian bling-bling!