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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
YOUR VOICE
In this section:
Tim Born Reflects on 15 Years in Mozambique
Tim Born Reflects on 15 Years in Mozambique
by Tim born
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Tim Born at the Limpopo National Park, March,2004
Sidney Kwiram, Carr Foundation |
In introspective moods, I ask myself why I've spent 15 years
at USAID/Mozambique—a USAID record, I believe, shared
only by my wife, Julie, for continuous service by an American
in one country.
As the child of a foreign service officer, I grew up in Haiti, Australia,
Turkey, and India from the late 1950s to the early 1970s—when
the world was a bigger place. Four years of boarding school
in New Hampshire left me with a conviction that whatever I
did in life, it would take me out of the United States.
This led me later to the Fletcher School, where I dabbled in economics
and discovered that I had no idea what it was that I wanted to do. Halfway
through the two-year program, I joined the Peace Corps, serving in Aioun
el-Atrous, Mauritania, some 90 kilometers north of the better-known
Nioro du Sahel, Mali. I returned to Fletcher and focused on development.
Through a friend's chance rejection of an internship in
Kinshasa, I went to USAID/Zaire in the summer of 1982 and
stayed for nearly six years as a PSC. USAID's program was
a model of politically motivated aid—"kleptocracy"
was coined for Mobutu's regime—one of our favorite examples
of why aid's failures are not our fault.
But for several years I had the time of my life. Part of the fun was
our conviction that no matter how bad the government, we were making
a real difference. This proved to be largely an illusion, although many
of the NGOs we worked with somehow survived the 1990s.
On to Liberia, where I learned to appreciate the advantages of Doe's
laissez-faire, incompetent government over Mobutu's interventionist,
incompetent government. Through luck and good advice from my director,
I moved to Mozambique before chaos and tragedy shattered the illusion
that you can get away with really bad government of whatever kind.
So I found myself in Mozambique in September 1989—a
country that was at the very bottom of the human development
index; with a nasty, if simmering, civil war; a massively
interventionist and incompetent government; but also a place
with no easily pillaged natural resources; a tradition of
social inclusiveness and tolerance; and a fondness for debate.
Five missions—Egypt, Ghana, Peru, Columbia, and Nigeria—went
live with Phoenix, the new financial management system, August 10.
The transition was smooth, said Lisa Fiely, USAID's chief financial officer,
because of the efforts of the missions' financial management staff, who had to
"learn a new system while still meeting daily job responsibilities, and working
long hours that at times included weekends."
Phoenix has been supporting accounting transactions at USAID's headquarters
since 2000. Now that the first five missions are using the system successfully,
the Agency plans to roll out Phoenix to approximately 50 missions next year.
Phoenix, unlike the current overseas Mission Accounting and Control System it replaces, is compliant with federal regulations. Financial transactions on Phoenix are posted immediately to a general ledger.
"We are taking the lessons learned from the pilot phase of the project and anticipate making some changes—especially in the areas of training and user support," said Steve Crabtree, USAID's financial systems integration program manager.
Deploying Phoenix overseas is part of the Business Systems Modernization initiative,
a key component of USAID's Business Transformation Plan. Again, USAID
has been the right place for me.
I moved from the railroad project I was hired for to demobilization
and demining during the 1992-94 peace process; and then to programs
that generate growth, such as trade policy, the business environment,
and some key sectors with good prospects.
Things have changed dramatically since we first arrived in Maputo, and
mostly for the better. There are now more than two stores and one restaurant.
We have traffic jams. Kruger Park is an hour and 15 minutes away by
private toll road.
We have settled in. I joined the South African cycling scene in a fairly
serious way. Our oldest son is at the University of Cape Town, our 8-year-old
daughter, Margaret, has followed her two brothers to the now much bigger
École Française de Maputo, and our middle son is reconstructing
a ruin in northern Mozambique. Julie has spent the last two years as
the head of USAID's HIV/AIDS office.
So here I have stayed—15 years on—guaranteeing
that my children, like me 30 years ago, wonder where they
ought to spend their lives.
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