Recipe for disaster Part 2

Thinking about civil society in the Middle East and North Africa, I had an idea this morning and discussed it with my wife. I told her I wanted to host a big lunch and invite 50 of our friends and acquaintances. The twist was, we’d tell them they would bring whatever ingredients they would see fit, without any guidance from us, and we would cook whatever they would get.

Under these circumstances, we might find some buy rice and no meat, some may buy aubergines and no bread, some may bring us fish and no vegetables etc. Or they could all come with the same item, who knows?! It’s possible. After all, they have no idea if we originally wanted to cook lasagne, chicken curry, fish and chips, kebab etc. as we didn’t communicate with them.

My wife was bewildered. She asked: “If we don’t know what the people will bring, then how do we know what to cook?”

I answered: “I don’t know. It will create a mess and chaos in the kitchen.”

In my view, uncoordinated efforts are a recipe for disaster, whether in the kitchen, or in a nation’s “internal kitchen”. I believe we have to decide first what we want to eat, as a nation, and what we want our future to be. The chef responsible for the kitchen must cook what the nation wants, sticking to the recipe for success and avoiding the non-coordination recipe for disaster.