28 June 2024 - Who is your caretaker?
By Peter Lawrence, Director
Who is your Caretaker? It could be you!
Trish, a good friend from church, shared an extract from a book by Lenna Lidstone that highlighted the work of the Kapiji.
Blocks of flats in Ankara each has a person who is called the Kapiji, or literally the door keeper. A caretaker of sorts, who served the building usually living in a tiny one room accommodation in the basement. They arrived with their families, often from a village outside the big city, and being of lower class were never fully accepted by the folk in the building. The Kapiji has three basic jobs to do each day.
- Firstly, to fire the communal central heating boiler situated in the basement. Few people realise how cold Ankara can be in winter.
- Secondly, the Kapiji would visit the local bakery and buy enough fresh bread for the whole apartment block, which would be sold to the residents.
- Finally, the Kapiji would visit every apartment daily to collect and dispose of the rubbish ensuring what could be, was recycled.
Three basic tasks that ensured the community could function.
As I thought about the work of the Kapiji I started to think that surely every organisation, business, community needs a Kapiji, one who take care of the basic tasks.
As a senior manager, my office was on the top floor, with a large desk, conference table and adjoining office for my PA, yet I never felt so remote from people as I did then.
So here is my question, does every human system, organisation, business, community, need a Kapiji?
Someone who will
- Ensure the culture is warm, welcoming and inviting.
- Enable people to be nourished with the “bread” of what they need,
- Sweep up the toxic rubbish of hierarchy, gossip, and hypocrisy, regularly.
Does your organisation have a Kapiji?
Maybe it could be you?
