Reflections

Right now I am stuck in Natitingou. I am on my way back from COS medical, in which the doctors basically check up on me to make sure I have any and all issues dealt with before they release me into the states. I was worried about money, since If I don’t get it now, I have to come back once again to Natitingou. So I was delighted Friday night to receive a text saying that the money was deposited into my account. But, I arrive at the bank, and the doors are shut. I ask the guard, and he tells me it is Korite, or the end of Ramadan. “But that’s not until Monday,” I point out.

“Yes, Monday is a holiday. But the bank isn’t open today either.”

I inform the guard that I feel this is ridiculous (though he obviously had no part in the decision-making and can do even less about it), and walk away. I then decide just to go back to Kerou in these fancy new taxi they have, which is a daily ride, and much more comfortable than other taxis and especially zems. So I call up the taxi, to make a reservation. “Oh, I’m not traveling tomorrow,” he says. “It’s a holiday on Monday, so I just want to rest tomorrow (Sunday)” Sigh. I know, yes people should have breaks. But the bank already has the weekends off every week, unlike most people in Benin, and perhaps the taxi company should also have more than one driver doing a daily route? Just a thought.

Anyway, I wanted to take the time to reflect a little on my Peace Corps Service. Now that it is officially ending in about a month, I wanted to look back on my successes, failures, lessons learned, etc.

To start with successes: hands down, my biggest success was the creation of a Village Savings and Loans Association, and the creation of an extensive accounting system for them. I spent hours upon hours working on, modifying, improving, etc the spreadsheets. Originally hand-drawing line after line into a paper notebook, I realized this was a not sustainable practices; the artisans would never take the time to do this all themselves! So I created a printed version, where the groups can keep blank sheets to copy every year for their accounting book. I have updated this version multiple times as we’ve run into newer problems, and I’ve changed the sheets to make them clearer and more user-friendly. Most recently I created a spreadsheet where they can verify all the totals on a regular basis, and ultimately calculate the amount to be shared.

Credit is such an important part of the modern economy. No one can really grow and evolve without it. But on the other hand, it can have high interest rates and fees, which can be crippling to small-time farmers and entrepreneurs. This is why I love the VSLAs so much. Yes, the loans require fees, but at the end of the year, ideally each person gets this money back, provided they’ve also saved money at the same rate as other group members.

I’ve had quite a number of failures. The most disappointing one for me was the chicken-raising operation never getting off the ground. Even if they mayor’s office hadn’t come in and steam-rollered those plans (then pretended like they were back on board for a few days, and then never brought it up again), I’m just not sure it would have worked. It required a huge investment from local farmers, who don’t necessarily have that money. Even if they did hand over the cash as soon as they sold some of their cash crops, that might mean that their family goes hungry for a bit somewhere later down the line. I think, maybe if I had more time and more structural support, it would have been a huge, wonderful, project which allowed twenty individuals to increase their incomes dramatically as well as increase the protein available in the whole community.

I sometimes wonder if it might have been better never to have done the irrigation project. I had this magnificent plan where I quickly put out this irrigation project, turned in the completion report, and immediately submitted the chicken-raising grant. But the irrigation project was delayed. By me being stuck in Cotonou, by the government shutdown, by Hubert’s lack of cooperation, my own inadequacies, and so forth. And in the end, this project…well I’d say it’s not been an entire failure, but it got pretty darn close.

So what if I had just skipped all that, and already gotten the grant for the chicken-raising before the mayor’s office came in to stomp on my plans? What if, inspired by the appearance of actual funds, the group members manage to scrounge up their own contributions, and the project takes off? Who knows, maybe this project would have been amazing. Maybe it would have hit more snags than anything else, and failed more miserably than any other thing I tried (and an expensive failure at that!)

Perhaps it’s stupid to think about the “what-ifs”. I still am glad that I did the irrigation project on some levels. I think I made a huge mistake by designing it around the idea that it would hook up to a water tower. In retrospect, of course that was a terrible idea! No farmer even in the states would hook up to the town water supply. Everyone has their own wells. I just wasn’t thinking logically. In my mind, I guess it made sense because there was no other water supply available. There is no stream or lake nearby this new location, and the water line ran right through it! When I think of wells that could work with irrigation, I think of American-style wells, and the only ones here are the traditional hole-in-the-ground, pull-up-a-bucket kinds. I also had no one here tell me it was a bad idea, even my community partners who are supposed to be experts on agriculture. Everyone just did what occurred to me. I think it’s part of the culture, to never disagree with someone—especially someone giving you money—so Hubert made promises that he would totally make sure the mayor’s office had a deal with the women, etc. While at the same time, (looking back, I realize this) working with the mayor’s office to get a well in the exact same spot. I’m betting he even planned on hooking up the well to my irrigation system the whole time, using a gas-powered pump. But why couldn’t he had just said that from the beginning?

I know I was in a rush to get this project done. Not only because of the second Food Security project I wanted to do, but also because of the small window of time in which the ground is actually okay to dig and lay these systems. If I had just taken a second to breathe, maybe the well-idea would have been suggested. I would have realized that was a way better option than having to pay for town water. I probably would have had to make sure the mayor’s office (or another NGO) would contribute the well, because there was not enough left in the budget for a well also. But it could have gone so much smoother.

In conclusion COMMUNICATION. Sure, I can blame it on the culture here, that telling people “no” isn’t a thing. But also, I’m sure it has a lot to do with NGOs that come in and have certain goals, and specific technologies/practices they want to impose, and thus are not always willing to listen to local suggestions. So maybe at some point locals just learned to shut up and do whatever the people handing out the money said was the best based on their INFALLIBLE LOGIC. Maybe I shouldn’t have brushed aside so easily my doubts about the feasibility of hooking up to the water tower. Asked Hubert, or other partners more questions, looked for other possible solutions, etc.

At least I have plenty of lessons learned. I have the irrigation project, which I tried to throw haphazardly together, alongside my slow and plodding (but ultimately very successful) progress with my Savings and Loans Association. Then, of course, there is the School Improvement program. I have been way less involved in its implementation, but I think it is one of the better things I’ve done. It was entirely community-driven, organized mostly by a very motivated individual. It helps very rural, very poor children, and is sustainable (hypothetically).

The most important lessons I have learned is consistency and dedication. I have tried to throw together some projects, but had them broken up by my absences or lack of interpreter or simply the rain. Getting people motivated the first time is hard. The second, third, whatever times are even harder. I have found this when I tried to start a literacy or financial class, but would have to take a two week break. Getting people to come back after the two weeks was always difficult. Furthermore, it’s harder for people to remember when there is too much time in between. One small endeavor I undertook with Anna was accounting for illiterates. It might have worked out much better if I had been able to go to the groups every single week and teach them, but I wasn’t. I had Peace Corps trainings to go to, or the interpreter was only allowed to visit groups once a month.  On days that I was able to show up (with the interpreter begrudgingly supplied by the mayor’s office), many of the women weren’t there. It had been too long since the previous lesson, so they had forgotten, or maybe they weren’t even at the previous lesson. I wish I had more time, less illness, and more support. But don’t we all?

In the end, I’m proud of what I’ve done. There are opportunities that were missed for a plethora of reasons. But I’m hoping that my next step in life will lead me to make use of these lessons that I’ve learned and apply this to my future work in aiding developing communities.