The Translator

The Translator is Daoud Hari’s story of individuals who risked everything to get the truth of Darfur out to the world. His principal character is the place, Darfur, a desert area of Sudan that is home to indigenous farming and herding peoples who are being systematically wiped out because they occupy oil-rich lands. There are spaces in Darfur where: “Mirages make birds sitting on distant dunes – birds no bigger than your fist – look like camels. Mirages make dry flatlands look like distant lakes … make the bones of a single human skeleton look like the buildings of a city far ahead.”

For Hari, his older brother Ahmed epitomizes the Zaghawa tribesmen of Darfur. As a teenager, the author planned to go fight with a charismatic commander in Chad. Ahmed found his younger brother and told him to use his brain, not a gun, to make life better. “Shooting people doesn’t make you a man, Daoud,” he said. “Doing the right thing for who you are makes you a man.” Hari returned to school where he learned English, a skill that would later afford him a means to assist his tribesmen.

After years of working abroad to support his family in Sudan, Hari returned home. He arrived as Ahmed was preparing their village to escape an anticipated attack by the Janjaweed. Moments before the assault villagers began walking to Chad. For the next three months, Hari and six of his friends scouted ahead on camels to find water for their desperate tribesmen. The seven men brought food from Chad; helped people find one another and safe routes; and buried men, women, and children who could not finish the trip.

Seeing the flood of refugees pouring into Chad, Hari began serving as a translator, leading dangerous forays back into Darfur. While accompanying Paul Salopek from National Geographic, the two men and their driver were captured, imprisoned, and tortured. Salopek gives a journalist’s report of that ordeal in the March 2008 issue of National Geographic. In The Translator you will receive a more graphic and gripping picture through the storytelling voice of Daoud Hari.

The Translator is a character-driven narrative. Into this ancient land of familial alliances come strange new characters: cell phones that save lives, friendships that survive under torture, and international journalism as a vehicle of truth. The characters exist in a surreal environment: “All trails are erased with each wind. … mountains are not to be trusted … the crunching sound under your camel’s hooves are usually human bones, hidden and revealed as the wind pleases.”

I highly recommend that you read this book, even though it will break your heart. Maybe your broken heart will lead you to participate in stopping the genocide in Darfur.

Sticky Ideas

What do "Where's the beef?" and "It's the economy, stupid!" have in common? They have both passed Chip and Dan Heath's test for ideas that stick. The two brothers credit Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, with giving them the concept of stickiness.

If you're like me, you've generated a lot of ideas that haven't gone beyond your best friend's, "Hey that's a great idea!" Yet other persons with "less great" ideas get published, splashed all over the news and celebrated in major galleries. Have you ever fretted about this injustice? If so, then, I recommend that you read Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die.

The Heath formula for a "sticky" idea is SUCCESs: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories. I hope my summary below intrigues you to read the book.

Simple means getting to the campact core of the idea. Similar to the militray term, Commander's Intent, it means determining the single most important thing. An example from Southwest Airline: We are THE low-fare airline.

Unexpected means using the surprise factor to get people's attention. It requires creating a mystery to hold their attention. Nora Ephron tells about her first journalism class. The instructor gave them all sorts of information about a conference teachers would be attending and then had the students write "the lead" for the story. After he'd seen their drafts, he said, "The lead is: There will be no school next Thursday." Ephron says that she suddenly realized journalism wasn't about information; it was about getting underneath the facts to their importance. And for the rest of the year, every assignment had a secret - a hidden point the students had to figure out to produce a good story.

Concrete means using people and specifics that help others understand and remember your idea. James Grant, a former director of UNICEF, always carried a packet that contained one teaspoon of salt and eight teaspoons of sugar. When added to a liter of water, these ingredients constitute Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT). As he met with ministers of developing countries, he would pull out his packet and say, "Do you know that this costs less than a cup of tea and it can save hundreds of thousands of children's lives in your country?" Very few people would forget this encounter with ORT.

Credible means helping people believe in the idea. This can be through offering authority (or antiauthority) and/or passing the Frank Sinatra test: "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere." During a mandatory orientation session for basketball rookies, several players went to the hotel bar on the first night. They were pleased that some female fans paid them a lot of attention and made plans to meet up with them later. The next day these female fans were in the front of the classroom. Each introduced herself. "Hi, I'm Donna and I'm HIV positive." "Hi, I'm Sheila and I'm HIV positive." Suddenly all the talk about AIDS was concrete. And the antiauthority of Donna and Sheila made it credible. The rookies became believers in safe sex.

Emotional means making people care about your idea. Mother Teresa said that if she looked at the mass of human suffering, she felt paralyzed; but, if she looked at one person, she was moved to act. Anyone who has ever made a charitable donation knows that the story of one woman whose life was improved by receiving a cow or chicken has caused them to feel generous while tales of mass genocide in Darfur have left them immobilized. We care about the individual because we can identify with him or her. We may also get people to care about our idea by associating it with persons with whom they identify.

Stories mean moving people to act. Jared was a 425 pound college student who lost over 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches. Does that get your attention? Does that pique interest in your local Subway shop? It seems that when we hear a story we simulate it in our own life. Anyone who has ever done visualizations about success in a particular area of life, will be fascinated by the research done on event simulations. I'll give away the punch line: Visualizing how a problem arose, going over in detail the incidents that occurred step by step and the actions you took, what you said, the environment, who was there, etc. is more effective than visualizing the outcome you want and the feelings you will have when you achieve it.

May you have many sticky ideas!