Echo! 7th Floor!

My time in Liberia this summer is rapidly coming to a close (less than two weeks to go!) and as I work on wrapping up my projects, I’m starting to think about all the things I am going to miss. For example, I don’t know when next I would ever hear people shouting up an elevator shaft “ECHO! 7TH FLOOR!” to have the elevator come to their floor (or “VIP ECHO! VIP! 7TH FLOOR! ECHO!” if it is the Minister who needs to get in the elevator).

Here’s how it works: there is a lovely lady, Gladys, who sits inside the elevator ALL DAY pushing the buttons for people to stop at different floors. I’m not sure whether this is because the management thinks allowing the public to operate the elevators may cause damage or whether there is a special technique to operating this elevator because some parts do not work well (or both).

Getting into the elevator on the ground floor is easy enough; the tricky part comes when you’re trying to go down from the higher floors. You could either wait for an indefinite amount of time and hope that someone gets off the elevator on your floor, or you could get the Minister’s protocol officer to call Gladys on the office intercom, OR.... you could just shout as loud as possible up the shaft- “ECHO!" followed by your floor number and then a final "ECHO”! (I must confess, I’ve always felt too ridiculous shouting up the shaft so I tend to just walk down the stairs if Gladys does not arrive after a few minutes of waiting).

Note the chair in the elevator and the radio phone Gladys is holding:

One of the first year courses at the MPAID program is titled “Getting Things Done: Management in a Developing Country Context.” The elevator situation at the Ministry is an amusing illustration of getting things done given the constraints in the environment- the situation is by no means ideal, but a “somewhat” functional system that is compatible with the user sophistication and technological constraints has been developed for that context. Do I hear any MPAIDs saying “second best solutions?”