There's a word that has followed me across four continents. I don't remember where I first picked it up. What I do know is that it caught on at the tribunal in Cambodia, more than a decade ago, and it survived the move to Thailand, then Belize, with stops in between. It's still alive today, in the Netherlands, where people who've never set foot in the Caribbean know exactly what I mean when I say it.

The word is bandulu.

It's Jamaican patois, with roots that trace back even further, to Kongo. Loosely, it means a swindle, a crooked dealing, somebody running game on you. Or just shady, sneaky, not quite right. I started using it the way you use any good word: for the meeting that went sideways, the vendor who tried something, the excuse that didn't add up. "That's bandulu." People caught the tone before they ever got the definition.

In Cambodia, my national staff started saying it back to me. In meetings. In front of my boss.

He called me into his office and told me to stop teaching the staff bad words. I tried explaining it wasn't a bad word; it was a useful one. He wasn't in the mood for the linguistics lesson.

It didn't stop there. It turned up in Bangkok, tucked into English sentences from people who'd never been within a thousand miles of the Caribbean. And it made itself completely at home in Belize, where it barely needed an introduction; Belizean Kriol and Jamaican Patois are close cousins, both born from the same West African-influenced Caribbean creole roots.

Years later, it's still alive. My partner uses it now, and my family knows what I mean when I say it. A friend who worked beside me in Cambodia took it home to the Netherlands, where her husband uses it, her kids (15 and 8) use it, and so do their friends, who have no idea it started at a war crimes tribunal. A radio announcer in Fiji once called friends and me in Thailand, on air, the Bandulu Queens from Thailand.

Institutions build culture on purpose, with values statements and onboarding decks. The real culture moves the other way. It's one word, said enough times in enough rooms, that outlives the job that first taught it to you, and ends up somewhere you never took it yourself.

#25YearsIn #OrganizationalCulture #Language