Sometimes life may drive us to act in a particular private situation where professional skills are required. As a project manager at the time, I was suddenly confronted with the following question: “could I rely on these skills in a hostage liberation?”
Arrival on African soil
The story took place in Africa.
It was my first time in Ghana and also a great opportunity to practice my English.
I was invited to visit some friends and to discover the beautiful beaches of Ghana. I had already visited Togo, Benin, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.
Two days before taking the plane from Geneva to Accra, the brother of a friend of mine called to inform me that the friends I was supposed to meet had had an accident in northern Ghana.
Two days later, I was landing at Accra and the brother of my friend and another friend welcomed me at the International Airport of Kotoka.
The accident
We just heard that my friends and other people were in northern Ghana, travelling from Tamale to Zawire. My friend, a medical coordinator and his colleagues were supposed to bring medical care to this remote place.
On the road they were victims of an accident, as it often happens in Africa. Indeed, the 6 meter (African word to identify the road) is not always safe and the asphalt road can easily be transformed into a track which is difficult to overpass, especially during the rainy season. These bad conditions, plus an overload of luggage and people beyond the usual capacity encounter a lot of traffic accidents.
We decided to go to the area in order to know what really happened.
On arriving, I went directly to the police station. The first task was to identify what happened to my friends, with information provided by local police. We then focused on locating missing passengers after the accident.
In the case where they were not found, the police had to wait forty-eight hours before declaring the people as missing and to start investigating.
We get involved
Discussing with witnesses, we learned more about this strange story. We were informed that the transport route that my friends and other people were travelling had been attacked by kidnappers. These “Road Cutters” shot at the tires of the bus with Kalashnikovs.The bus suddenly stopped, wounding people inside the bus. Then, the hostage takers decided to kidnap them because of all the medical material inside the bus. They were probably thinking that they were wealthy people and that their family could pay a considerable amount to set them free.
Where project management comes to the rescue
Apart from the emotional aspect of this issue, it was necessary to apply project management methodology in order to solve this problem and set my friends and their colleagues free.
As a freelance Project Manager for several companies and having worked in an international environment, I thought about using the methodology and soft skills used within my professional context to solve this problem.
The great challenge was to adapt them to this personal issue.
Adapting to a specific context
As this project took place in another continent, it was also necessary to adapt to ways of working and to a completely different culture.
The difficulty of the situation was that families were involved separately in releasing their sons and daughters with their own resources.
The aim was to find the victims of this kidnapping and to quickly set them free because their conditions were bad. The kidnappers were moving a lot to escape the police investigation and it was difficult to contact them.
This is the reason why it was important to coordinate with all stakeholders.
The action plan
In order to move as fast as possible, I decided to launch an action plan to be able to find their whereabouts and above all, to find out what the kidnappers wanted to set the hostages free.
I then coordinated these actions with the police, the families and locals to organize the rescue team:
Pictures of victims were printed and distributed to local networks. People had seen them buying water and food, close to the area of the incident.
We called private investigators, as the police was powerless, due to a lack of resources. Thanks to them, we were able to identify the kidnappers and to contact the leader, in order to initiate a negotiation.
During the dialogue with the leader of the kidnapping, we asked about the state of health of the victims. We also requested to have regular phone calls between the families and the kidnapped people.
We organized and coordinated all the actions of the family involved in order to gather the amount of ransom money. We insisted on quickly fixing a date for the ransom delivery and the liberation of the victims. After twenty days of detention, the victims were eventually set free.
The aftermath
We coordinated all local strength and all medical and psychological assistance for the victims. We contacted the police to give them the necessary information for their final report and assisted in all administrative tasks, with regards to the investigation.
Most of the victims were hurt and suffering from head trauma, some needing surgery. Others sustained injuries from the bus accident.
Success at last!
After all the efforts to accelerate the process, we succeeded in liberating the victims!
Here I used my professional skills in incident and project management, adapted to this specific situation. I showed my capability to adapt to local ways and habits. The issue required a quick analysis, in order to make the right decision.
In Africa, work and time are not perceived in the same way. It was also necessary to be proactive with all the various stakeholders and to adapt efficiently to the situation as well as to observe and remain flexible in order to not go against the current.
Land is more precious than human lives…
It was a great challenge in this situation to find a way to convince families that life is more important than land. Indeed, land is the wealth and is more important than life itself. It took great skill to convince the families to sell their land in order to gather the ransom.
At the end of the day, I realise that the transferability of skills is not a myth, but quite to the contrary a reality.
A project manager lost in the middle of Africa? No. A project manager solving a kidnapping thanks to his skills!
Photo credit : puckillustrations via fotolia.com
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