Douse

After the day’s sessions we gathered on the beach in front of the hotel as a small birthday celebration for Ernest, one of our drivers. We sang happy birthday in Swahili, chucked water all over him and presented a rustic-looking cake quickly rustled up by the hotel where we are having our meeting.

I sloped off to the side as a kids’ playground occupied an idyllic square of the beach adjacent to where Ernest was getting doused in water. These women were supervising and had plonked down in front of the calm ocean view. A more tranquil location for a kids’ play area you’d be hard pressed to find.

Apart from the birthday fun, it’s official, risk management is officially the most dull topic in any workplace, and directly incompatible with the natural workings of the human brain. It exists solely to enrich and humour insurance brokers, jobsworths, bureaucrats, profit-mongers, chancers, middlemen and ambulance-chasers. Yet we all have to devote significant time to it in every stage of project management.