Reconnect

Yesterday a couple women from the soap making group came by to officially welcome me back to village. I had worked with them last year before going on vacation, but hadn't had a real meeting with them since my return. To be honest, I was sort of at a loss with them.

A challenge in this development game is finding the group you are going to work with. I imagine as a Peace Corps volunteer that experience is very different than being an NGO that is passing through. I am here for 2 years and when I am in village it is 24/7. Volunteers are desperate for motivated people. But, working with the community is a negotiation.

You have to negotiate your needs, their needs, your resources, their resources and the perceptions of all these things. I am often seen as a walking/talking dollar bill or some sort of anthropomorphic version of Mary Poppin's magic bag. I have sat down to the clinic management committee meetings and when an expensive suggestion comes up they say that I will help with it. I shouldn't be blind-sided anymore, but there reaches a point where you think you've finally established your role. The truth is that it is a cycle of understanding and misconception.

At any rate, our negotiation took us through a phase of tree planting (resulting from pressure by my botany-enthusiast/translator). The tree planting didn't work so much because I don't think the women were highly invested in it. We then did liquid soap making, which seemed to work. It met their need for income, my need to incorporate hygiene, their need for improved hygiene and a community need for affordable soap. The problem was introducing a new product to the market and then my translator decided to produce his own and compete with the soap group (causing much stress and awkwardness in my life).

The translator sort of gave up on the soap bit. I tried to help the group with marketing (without a translator). But, the group still didn't seem fully invested. I never saw them sit down on a market day and sell the soap. They put them in boutiques (local stores). They made it on their own, but the marketing seemed to be a road block. That was about the time that I got preoccupied by the gender camp I was helping with, then my vacation, Senegal and subsequently my Peace Corps funded/established obsession with malaria (Stomp Out Malaria).

So, the group came to visit (strangely enough the translator planned a meeting with the group that is associated with his family just afterward). They brought me gifts of papaya and cabbage. We chatted pleasantly and then were left with some awkward silence. Where do we go now?

Their original idea was to start a small bee farm, but I didn't feel comfortable just trying to find money for that. (It isn't really health related and I never jump straight to looking for funds or to an expensive project). So, the compromise was the soap to raise money in the meantime and gage their investment in the project. Which leads us back to where we are today.

My translator put it this way: "They want to say 'Hello' and if there are other projects to be done, then maybe we will work on them." He is invested in the structure of village politics and has frequently worked with foreign types (the hit-and-run sort of development workers). So he is prone to trying to work the negotiation out as an exchange of projects i.e. we'll do your project (that they are not invested in) if you help us do ours (primarily financially). Something I made clear was not my intention. My metaphorical Poppin's bag very much has a bottom when it comes to health-related income generating activities. I can definitely see the appeal in hit-and-run development practices or one-time workshops. Trying to affect and maintain change is often uphill. You rest for a minute the boulder starts rolling down hill. It is also very foggy in this metaphor so you are never really sure when you will hit the top and the boulder will start rolling on its own.

For instance, with my moringa group I thought for sure I was leaving the boulder to roll back down hill. But, when I checked in after vacation they had done much more than I expected. They kept pushing that boulder themselves (and the clouds parted and golden light shined down on the field as angelic voices sang accompanied by harp).

I guess I need to re-assess the situation with the soap group. Little, by little the bird makes its nest.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.