Tejinder's Story

Cohort 12: An Indonesian Story

Reminiscences of Tejinder Bhogal, Lead-India, Trainer & Facilitator.

When I think back about the ten days I spent in Indonesia, I am inclined to imitate Steinbeck and say: Cohort 12 was a splash of flowers, a gust of crazy energy, a Babel of accents, the slap of masking tapes on charts, a drama for the media, a concentration of power points.

Trainers and Trainees, we rushed from room to room, intent on finishing one or the other group discussions, or ensuring that the training sessions went off well, and on schedule. In between group discussions and the training sessions we trainers and facilitators squeezed in our own reviews and plans. These discussions carried out in a room incredibly full of training material, power lines, internet cables, and the buzz of the local Indonesian support group – for whom the room was also the field office for the event – tended to be entertaining and fractious in equal quantities.

Our trainers’ group was both skillful and, entertainingly different. There was Abdour Khadir, a young fifty-some Grandfather from Senegal who used tales from his childhood to leaven the training sessions; there was the stunning Uzbek Saodat who despite her other-worldly expressions, and her assertion that she was handling an training session for the first time, promoted one of the most exhilarating groups in this event.

Saodat’s (and Wiwien’s) working group, incidentally, prepared a presentation of their field trip in a few hours which combined slick entertainment reminiscent of Richard Gere’s Chicago (the 2002 Hollywood musical) with penetrating insights into Climate issues. Watching the group in action, I knew that if there was one abiding memory that I would take back it would be of this group – this international group of Asians, Africans, Europeans and Americans, who had hardly known each other for a few days, but who had been now able to work so confidently, seamlessly and creatively with each other.

There were others trainers too, Wiwien, Any & Chandra representing the soft-spoken, smiling, unflustered Indonesian cool (“What problem, no problem! Ha, Ha!”), Aida with her explosive Mexican exhilaration, Fernando, the Brazilian, the eternal friend (“take it easy, why don’t you come and have a beer”), the New Zealander Gitanjali Bedi with her serious spiritual concerns, and many others who worked together right from an early breakfast in the morning to an exhausted dinner in the evening. In all this, I learnt how to deal with different trainers with very different cultural orientations: from the always-on-her- toes Canadian Carole, to the philosophical Brazilian D’ Alberto; how to speak ever so slowly with an internationally mixed audience, and how to fit my own creativity into the broad sketch provided by Lead International.

The event had started with a free flowing presentation by Emil Salim – the head of the Indonesian team to COP 13 - that laid bare the issues of climate change with such humor, clarity and simplicity it seemed that we did not need any more training. Emil’s mood was chatty and easy, and though that session was supposed to be formal, in our minds we had already taken off our formal wear to get into a comfortable thinking and discussion mode.

The event ended the way it had gone on, with energy, and by then, the usual gust of craziness. At this, the last formal event Simon, the LEAD chief honcho, flung his coat gleefully into the audience (the wicked among us wondered what else would follow) before starting off the certificate awarding session. If ever there an event which combined zest with serious exposure to the global issues of climate: this was one.

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