Step By Step

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Well, I think the rainy season is trying to start. Everyone says that it’s really not until June, and Anna swears she did not see a drop of water fall from the sky during this time last year. But it is now raining for the forth time this year in Kérou. And there have been many, many days where there have been very threatening clouds, but the rain has only fallen in towns south or west of us.

I will curse the rain every time I travel; the roads will be even worse than they are now. But hopefully I won’t be doing too much of that. Otherwise it’s great, mostly because I can start using rainwater. At the moment the water that comes off my roof is still a little too dirty for general use; but I soak my dirty pots in it to make them easier to clean, and stuff like that. During the rainy season, Anna says she will even drink the rain water, because the roofs have water fall on them almost every day, so there is no time for them to get dirty!

In general, the rain feels wonderful. It beats against my metal roof with this awesome rhythm; I can go out back of my house and just let it wash over my hot body; and in general it cools everything down. So yay rain. Except when I’m not already in my house. I really wonder what kind of work I’ll get done during the rainy season. I remember during post visit, I didn’t end up doing half the things Hubert and I scheduled due to the rain. On the other hand, one time I got stuck with Amina at her shop, and were it not for the fact that my Giardia decided to kick in at that moment (yay fever and running through the rain to the latrine), I’m sure we would have had a lovely time just sitting around talking over the pounding rain.

Anyway, Sunday I met again with the vet, Romeo, who is helping me with the chicken project. Apparently I misunderstood his plan the last time, and in fact there is only going to be two groups of chickens that rotate. And they’ll only overlap for 6 months: this is the 6 months of chicks growing to adults, when they have yet to lay eggs. Then, once the 6 months is up, he wants me just to kill all the old chickens at once (New movie idea: The Chicken Massacre) and store them in a freezer somewhere. This is so we don’t have to keep feeding them, etc, while waiting for people to buy them one by one. Oh, because he assumed, obviously, I’d be renting a boutique in Kérou, equipped with a huge freezer, and probably a generator so the chickens don’t go bad when the electricity is cut. WHY DOES THIS MAN KEEP GROWING MY PROJECT OUT OF CONTROL???

Monday I went to Kongorou, and met with the group there again. I told them about the 500 chickens and they seemed on board with it. Though, they were a little worried about the costs this will incur, and where they will get the money. Yesterday I found out that the Food Security grants only go up to $2,500, sometimes more for larger projects (the other chicken-raising project cost $4,000). My building alone would cost $5,000. Plus, the thing is, for grants the community must contribute at least 25% of the total costs of the project. Now, that can be “in-kind” donations, such as if they mayor just gives away the land, instead of making us pay for it. Or if a mason and/or carpenter does some of the job for free. Or, if instead of making this with cement which costs about 40 cents (per brick) to buy then have someone make them into bricks, I build it essentially with mud bricks, which cost 5 cents each, already made. Or I could just make it less chickens, but that wouldn’t really address the problem I want to. I’m also thinking of maybe taking the smaller grant, and building the smaller project, but with the goal to take most of the profits to expand the project. The problem with that, however, is that it seems that at this point, a lot of the Food Security funds are used up, so I may not be able to get it until December, which would not leave me enough time then to help them expand. So, the point is I have a lot of reflection and maneuvering and searching to do right now. What to do, what to do? In the mean time, however, the group has decided to start collecting weekly savings towards this project and their input. I want to set up a system to encourage everyone to actually contribute, which would essentially make it like they are buying shares. I’ll have to figure out how that will work, but at least at this point we have plenty of time to smooth out the details before we start, since I have to wait. And regardless of funding, if we are using mud bricks, then that means I have to wait until the dry season (it’s almost over now), around November.

Monday evening I went with Hubert to Fétékou. There is this NGO—FAFA—that has apparently given a lot of money to Fétékou and Gouginnou to help with their gardens. Now they want to use these groups to do a “test-run” of a tool they developed. It is essentially a notebook that records every input and output these women have, even including if they had a family member work for free. But they also want really accurate measurements to come by. So we have to do things like measure how much it is when they say “a pile” or “a basin”, etc. Hubert was there to measure out the exact size of the land of a particular woman’s plot. The NGO had given him a GPS thing, but of course technology never actually works in this country, and especially in the hands of someone who doesn’t even understand the concept of email. So it was unsuccessful. I did promise to try to figure out the tool, but we’ll see.

This is how women water their gardens

Sunset

Tuesday I went to Fétékou again, this time with Pierre, to start collecting savings for the women. Of course, no one is prepared for us, so we go to the main area first to talk to the women. Some of them bring out their savings right then, and we continue on to the garden where some of the other women are. The unfortunate thing, however, is that Hubert informed me just the night before that I had to go and meet with a guy at the mayor’s office about Pierre’s salary and my electricity. This guy is leaving in the afternoon, so we are really rushed and didn’t get to do anything like I planned. I wanted to give a little presentation, etc. But instead we just went around to each woman individually and asked if they had something they wanted to contribute at that moment. Then we rushed back to Kérou. We met with Florent, the guy in charge of financial things at the mayor’s office, who said he would send a check right over to the CLCAM, which is the closest thing to a bank that we have. Then he told me that he had never in his life heard about this thing that Hubert has worked out with my landlord for my electricity. And then I almost went to Natitangou, found Hubert, and strangled him. I hate how he just LIES SO MUCH and I really don’t know what’s actually going on with my life there, etc. Sigh. One day. One day I everything will work out for me.

Today I just did a bunch of house things, including going and getting water. Always such work! But as it has been raining the past few days, there were actually a lot less people at the pump, so it meant much less waiting. I was very happy about that! Did some cleaning, cooking, etc. Hung out with my neighbors. And so on. Not too busy of a day, it’s good to have those.

Monday, 15 April 2013

So I am currently in Porto-Novo for my second In-Service Training. These never seem too productive, but hopefully this one will be, as we have more choices in the sessions we go to, and thus will hopefully be more applicable and worthwhile.

The past week or so was pretty good as well. Maria and I hung out Thursday and had a nice homemade dinner together. I cook a lot here, but it’s never as much fun to cook for just myself. She brought some eggplant and avocados from Nati, so we made a sort of guacamole-ish thing (but without limes, because we couldn’t find those). Then we made stuffed eggplant in my dutch oven, which was incredible. Ground meet isn’t a thing here, but instead we used Soy Cheese. It’s basically like tofu, and a huge thing here. Traditionally the Peul, who mainly heard cattle make this cheese called Wagasi, which I hate. It’s made with some sort of bamboo-ish plant that makes the milk stick together, and I think it tastes like rubber. But a cheaper (and healthier!) version is with soy. I, personally, also think it tastes tons better. Although, most of the time it’s fried, so I don’t know if that takes away a lot from the health bonus. But we crumbled it up, and it made a nice substitute for the ground meet part. We were pretty impressed with ourselves, and spent the rest of the night just chilling, listening to music, drinking, and so on. We planned to go to this dance place that is right beside my house. It is supposed to be open on market days, but apparently not this day. Oh well.

Friday morning I went again to Ben Club, where everyone there just spent a lot of time yelling at each other. Of course, I didn’t actually know what was going on, and everyone was too busy yelling to translate for me. I guess I shall have to go around and get everyone’s side of the story later. I did go to one person’s shop afterwards; he is the one that has been appointed to fill out the new accounting booklet I have made for them. When I explained it thoroughly to him, he was actually really impressed, saying, “Wow, you really thought of everything!” I think, per usual, my ability really lies in the one-on-one times. Nobody seems to want to ask for my advice—or listen to it—in a big group, but when I have the chance to sit down and talk things out, I manage to do a lot better of a job communicating what I know and how I can help.

Sunday night was interesting. I had my meeting with the Masons, and Maria had offered to come and do a health training. She has a team called “Amour et Vie” (Love and Life), which is a Populations Services International (PSI) project that they do with Peace Corps. Essentially, each health volunteer picks two students in their local high school, who then went to a training. Then they go out into the community and teach people about different health issues. For the masons, they did a training on Sexually Transmitted Diseases. It was kind of awkward when they had this flip book which contains some up-close images of basically infected penises and vaginas. But the masons did participate, respond to questions, help demonstrate the proper way to put a condom on (using a wooden penis prop), and asked questions of their own. But still; awkwardness!

Monday we went again to Kérou-Wirou to meet with the gardening group. These things always take so long; but in the end we were able to collect the weekly cotisations, plus conclude that the notebook we’ve been keeping had the same amount that the treasurer was keeping as the group’s fund, so that was good! We were supposed to go to Gouignou, but Hubert calls and informs us that instead we have to come to the mayor’s office NOW so that we can meet with Florent and finally, officially get the money to pay Pierre’s second part of his salary. It was such a long ordeal, having to go and deposit the money in one account, then write out this long official paper saying how much we were taking out and why. Then, of course, we are not on time to do all of this, and the CLCAM has to close, so we have to wait until after lunch. There was also this ordeal that the amount written on the paper was wrong, so we had to re-write it.

Pierre started hypothesizing that Hubert actually wrote the wrong amount on purpose, so that he could just pocket the difference. I thought this was a little too conspiracy-theory. However, later Anna and I found out that some of women who are the leadership in the Gardening Group Union believe that Hubert has embezzled over $1,400. I don’t know how or why, but they were going to the Mayor herself that evening to talk to her about it.

I really don’t like Hubert. It’s amazing, he is such a smooth talker. When he talks to you, he makes you feel like you’re his best friend and that he is going to move mountains to get what you want. The problem is, however, that he is a pathological liar, and I hate liars. He is someone that if you asked him what color the sky is, he would tell you green, just because he can’t NOT lie. Anna said she has also heard that he once told women that received free wells from the mayor that they actually had to collect together $90, and then hypothetically pocketed the money. I have no way of knowing if this is actually true, but at this point, I could absolutely believe it. Unfortunately, I don’t actually speak the language, and so most of information comes from one source, Pierre. But I really doubt he would make things up, no matter how much he hates Pierre. Plus I really judge people by what others think of them. And even my neighbor used to work for Hubert mentioned to me how much of a liar he is, and how terrible of a person he is. If anyone who has ever worked intimately with him (at least in an inferior position) hates him, I’m pretty sure that makes him a bad person. Because you can ass-kiss your bosses and equals, but what makes you a decent human being is treating the people under you well. But the problem is at this point the mayor seems absolutely blind to his faults, plus he always acts like her little pet, running errands for her, etc. So I really doubt that she will take any serious action. Even though as a politician she should probably distance herself from a person accused of stealing money from some of the poorest people in this entire country (the gardening women).

On another note, I have learned that Kérou is actually where they send people as punishment. For example, one person working in Maria’s health center used to work in Nati, but stole mosquito nets and sold them on the DL. His punishment was not getting fired, not being sent to jail, but being sent to Kerou. And so now Anna and I have this theory, knowing that Hubert used to work at this really good job in a big city, Djougou. He always makes it sound like he moved back to Kerou to be with his family, but we kind of believe now that he was probably caught stealing, and was thus punished by being sent here.

It just makes me hope that I wasn’t sent here as punishment! Haha. But I keep telling myself that Peace Corps thought I could handle the hardship, and that’s why they gave me this assignment. Yeah, I’ll stick with that.

Anyway, Tuesday I went to Fetekou to do the savings thing again. This time we went later, and were less rushed. I was really excited, because I prepared this presentation for the women. I used the “accounting for illiterates” symbols, which are different colored squares & circles to represent each piece of money. Then I showed them how much they would have in total if they saved different amounts per week. I also showed them expenses that are incurred when taking out credit, such as the interest, the cost of taking a Zemi every month to the CLCAM, the cost of a late payment, etc. So I concluded by saying that I really recommend that they SAVE SAVE SAVE rather than planning to take out loans. But I tried to really emphasize that I am not telling them what to do exactly. I’m just giving them information, my recommendations, and they can make their own decisions based on their own personal needs. I hope it was useful to them.

I then spent a lot of time explaining the notebook that the NGO FAFA wants them to do. Honestly, this should have been a process that took multiple days/sessions/weeks, whatever, but because they gave it to us so far into the gardening season, and wanted us to start immediately, we had to cram it all in to one time. I’m not sure if two of the women actually got it (there are 3 total doing it), but we tried. This notebook is just for the women to make notes and help them remember, and we will come back every week to fill in a notebook that is actually literate. Their book will just have drawings/symbols, tallies, and Anna and I’s money system. So yeah. This will be an interesting experiment.

Friday I went to Ben Club and made them listen to me. I showed them the accounting book I set up, then I had a big poster where I explained basically their totals (for weekly savings, expenses, loans, etc), explained how they were running on a deficit, and so on. I hope they were disturbed by that fact, but we’ll have to see where we go from there. After that, I sat down again with the person who will be in charge of the accounting, and had him enter in all of the savings as people paid this week.

Luckily I was paying attention, because when one person came up, I saw that their numbers didn’t match up. When I questioned him, he told me that he had paid for something out of his own pocket for the group, so instead of Ben Club reimbursing him, they just counted four weeks of his savings paid. I sighed, and patiently explained that you can’t just do that, then showed the treasurer how to go through and enter his extra savings, then go to the expenses section, and enter the amount there as well. He says something in Bariba containing the French word for “accounting”, and I laughed because even though I can’t understand Bariba, I knew exactly what he was saying, which was “Wow, accounting is really complicated!”

After this I jumped in a ride, and headed to Nati, then to Porto, where I am now.

View from Hotel in Songhai

Friday, 3 May 2013

Okay, so not really much to report on. I had my Peace Corps training in Porto Novo. Pierre was there as my counterpart, and was really excited about everything. This time it was a little better because we got to choose more of our own activities. I also got out of one of my sector’s sessions to go and sit in with the sector talking about animal-raising, specifically chickens. I learned a little bit more; still trying to piece this together. I went to Cotonou the weekend after, for a little partying time (I had been in my post for almost 2 whole consecutive months). Of course, after bragging about my lengthy stay in post, I get sick again, so I ended up having to stay an extra week in Cotonou. But I think that is a record, getting out in only one week!!! Now I am in Nati, and trying to do some research on my chicken-raising project still. I went around looking at prices of supplies. Then I also went to talk to someone at the agricultural school here. They showed me their own chicken-raising operation, but I found that I will basically still have to get almost everything in Cotonou, such as the chicks, the feeders and water-holders, any pre-mixed feed, etc. But the one professor promised to write out a whole form detailing the space I should build for the chickens, the vaccinations, the exact feed ratios, etc. So I am really, really excited about that. Now I am just waiting for him to finish that, and doing some more research, then finally heading back to Kérou.