Mosquito Net-WORKING!

My neck feels extremely sore today. This isn’t just from my French bed which lacks pillows, but from my surreal encounter with Michael Jackson’s thriller dance last night. 

Roomie "commuting" to work

After work, we met our coworker in the local village to join her dance group’s weekly rehearsal for the annual “Thrill the world” launched in 2007, a simultaneous worldwide outbreak of MJ’s famous zombie thriller dance. Last year 22,923 participants, set a new world record showcasing this epic dance in more than 250 cities worldwide. 

Our new roomie & 3 course meal!

My roommate and I jumped at the opportunity to work off our overdose on delicious baguettes, cheese, chocolate, fantastic cheap local wine we have consumed. Our exercise intake has been restricted to our one MINUTE commute across the lawn to our office. In two weeks we'll be part of this historical synchronized dance moment taking place in our local world heritage site of Carcassone. 

Cité de Carcassonne

This week, we happily toured our new house mate all around our now familiar local spots including the fortified hilltop French walled city of Carcassone. She was delighted to enjoy the amazing sights of the city, not to mention the clean hot running showers and luxuries such as fresh bread and diary after being in the field for 6 months working on malaria prevention in Central African Republic. 





The Cité de Carcassonne is made up of steep narrow cobbled streets inside the breathtaking castle walls. The “Medieval Disneyland” was overflowing with British tourists, bistros and gift shops. I even bumped into some medieval characters to find that they were French locals enjoying a spontaneous day out. Carcassone’s impressive history is well known from the novel Labyrinth by Kate Mosse but was also caught on camera as the set of the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. To my surprise, amongst all the hustle and bustle, the fortress was actually an authentic town with 120 residents currently living their daily life with one school, post office, hotel etc.

Our first dance rehearsal was a bizarre but enjoyable evening. I experienced my first glimpse into a real rural French community, being greeted with two kisses by 10 or so women smoking outside that did not speak English. They later took turns to direct each thriller move to the 15 wild kids running around acting as zombies. I was amazed at  how much I learnt without understanding a word and even found myself bursting into laughter with the women as we caught each others eyes, acknowledging the ridiculousness of mastering a twitch in your neck and unnecessary hip thrusts.

This fascination and rise in popularity of flash-mobs and synchronized movements in public areas are generally pointless ways to have fun and gain attention right? Yes, but there has got to be more to it. Even during the rehearsal among grandmothers, mothers, teenagers and children I felt a sense of connectedness to something bigger than ourselves.

This week I’ve been reaching out to other relief organizations in the hope of expanding support in a practical way to reinforce the capacity of Non-governmental Organizations, the UN and national partners working in emergencies that are dealing with Malaria control. Ultimately this is in the effort to strengthen an effective Malaria control network. 

This got me thinking. What does it look like for a humanitarian organization to have an “effective network?” Surely, by giving our “jack of all trades” competitors free expertise and support in Malaria would be harmful to us? 

Perhaps we do it because of the nature of the humanitarian mission for social value rather than organizational value. Maybe we say “we’re all in the same boat  here and we need this boat to go where we are going, so any one who’s interested grab a paddle.”


According to an old HBS article this would not be effective in furthering our social mission. Research showed it was not the growth or size of a network that produces greater social value. Effective networks are created from strategical alliances that involve deep synchronization and mesh of mission and values and relies heavily on trust to accomplish their work forming an integrative investment.

Therefore, my organization's former competitors for funding, are doing the same malaria relief work that we are doing. So instead in competing with them, we invest in them. Because after all, effective networks are crucial to the issues these organizations are trying to solve are huge and complex problems that cant be addressed by any single entity and the way we approach them need to be unified.

On October 23rd at 11am, I will be connected to hundreds of French locals from all walks of life as we stand together as zombies. Similarly, I’ve learnt there’s something larger humanitarian organizations should stand for and that is an effective network.

Rather than furthering our own organization, we are able to strategically think at a sector level. 

The challenge being for us humans is to take on the goal of starting a relationship thats not about you but instead is focused on connecting a divided world...and of course dancing together in harmony to Michael Jackson!