I’m finally getting some work done in my village. Now that my three-month PC probation period is over I’m really trying to get my hands dirty, literally. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty pleased with myself so far.
So in the last two weeks I’ve bought my first two chickens (named Fried and Finger Linkin’) and finished planting stage 1 of my garden, permagarden style. Permagardening is also called the lazy-man gardening style. You plant an area of garden as densely as possible and interplant vegetables that help each other grow. It’s designed in such a way as to make the most efficient use of the least amount of water and work. I don’t know if I did it right, since I’ve never done this noise before. But so far my tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, spinach, and sweet potatoes have germinated. Cross your fingers I don’t kill them. My neighbors are very skeptical. One of them even offered to come over this weekend and help me plant stage 2 of my garden in the neat single-planted row style that they use in their gardens to see which type of garden is more effective. I’m psyched! I’ll plant stage 3 and 3.5 sometime in September using two different types of fertilizer to demonstrate to my community that (hopefully!!!) relying on the government (not-so)-subsidized fertilizer is unnecessary and avoidable. I’ll explain the fertilizer problem below.
I’ve also been unbelievably busy with village meetings I’ve scheduled with the 5 closest villages in my catchment area and having one-on-one meetings with all my health center staff. I’ve been learning so much! And turns out, I’m in high demand! But honestly, I wouldn’t know what I’d have done without the other Azungu in my village, who not only set the bar for involvement high, but also showed me how to go about doing grassroots development work in a country that doesn’t speak my language. Lesson 1: don’t use a health worker (HSAs, no idea what it stands for) as a translator in village meetings. HSAs already have elevated status in the village because they’re not from here and they’re educated, employed, and have a steady-ish income (when the government actually pays them). So showing up in the village with them associates you with a higher status and during interviews you receive practiced, not necessarily truthful answers regarding health and whatnot. Better to use a person from their village or someone they know from a nearby village who speaks English decently to get better, more honest answers out of them. Because really, they’re mostly speaking to the translator, a friend, and not you, since you’re blabbing away in a language they don’t understand and you’re funny to look at anyway and your dog is distracting you because he’s shamelessly chasing everyone’s chickens. I’ve been using this kid, Samuel, who just wrote his secondary school exit exams. He’s something like 20-years-old, speaks English beautifully, uses his noggin, and wants to go into public administration if his test scores are high enough. He’s all about what I’m doing, which is great, and has a knack for simplifying my questions to get the answers I’m looking for. Man, I should bake that guy a cake or something. Oh! And he keeps time! It’s amazing and unheard of! When I say we have a meeting at 2pm, he’s at my door at 1:45. What?! I thought we were on Africa time.
In my first meeting in Mjutu, where I got Doug the Destroyer (he’s out of control), only about 10 people came, but it was enough. From that meeting I learned that besides water availability their major concern is how expensive the government synthetic fertilizer is and that they are worried about how reliant they are on it. The same issue has been brought up at almost every subsequent meeting I’ve had since Mjutu. This got me thinking about the nice man who comes to my door every morning with a bucket of fresh milk he sells for 30 kwatcha a cup. (P.S. this has dramatically increased my delicious food intake. Crepes, creamy potato soup and pasta with cream sauce! Zo my gods.) Anyway, after a little digging I’ve learned that most of the cow owners in the area just wash their cow manure away. Not while I’m here! I talked to my nice milkman guy, who is one of the few who composts his manure, and next week we’re going to try to get all the cow owners together to form a group to collect their manure and sell it cheaply to the community as fertilizer. This way, they can make more money, buy more cows, produce more manure, and pamana pamana (slowly slowly), our community can end our reliance on the expensive government synthetic fertilizer. Everybody wins! Cross your fingers that this one works. I’m all about it. Jesus, I’m all about cow poop now.
My next meeting was with Chivute, the village I live in. I started out with what I thought was just a silly, oversimplified Peace Corps sanctioned activity, called Community Mapping. It’s one of the tools we’re given to learn about what a community thinks is truly important. I did it by the book and split the group (of 40!!!) into men and women and had them draw a map of Chivute to see the differences in what the genders deemed important in their village. The men drew the village boarders, marketplace, and soccer pitch really big compared to everything else while the women included the names of the families that lived in each compound, which they drew as spatially accurate as they could. Gender! Interesting stuff. Anyway, the discussion part of the meeting reveled that besides fertilizer, they also felt strongly about the lack of transport, the dire need to have an ambulance (on it!), and the lack of an accessible CBO (Community Based Organization, or Town Council). The nearest CBO is in Chaula, which really is too far to be an effective organization for Chikwina. I asked them why the area doesn’t just form their own unofficial CBO, and the responded, “Wednesday, you come back Wednesday and we’ll start one.” So I came back Wednesday, they held elections (really they just informed each other who would fill which roles) and decided that their first order of business would be to start a community garden to benefit the village orphans, vulnerable children, and widows. Groundbreaking is on Monday. Just like that! They’re supplying the labor and the manure and I’m donating my leftover seeds from garden stage 1. They seem really motivated to get this mini CBO off the ground. The Secretary keeps coming up to me to inform me of the progress. He gave me a list of all the members so that I can call roll at the next meeting to shame everyone into showing up and tomorrow we’re having a pre-groundbreaking meeting to come up with the rules of the group and a long-term garden/business plan. Double cross your fingers for this one!!!
Third meeting was in Wadenya. Samuel and I did another PC activity and had the men and women write out their daily schedules, hour by hour. The pretense was so that I could understand what daily life was like in the village, but really it was so we could have a heated discussion on gender issues. After each group presented their schedules I asked, “So who has the most free time? Who works harder?” Everyone agreed it was the women and that it was a cultural tradition. But once the women were talking above the men and not letting them speak and clapping their hands, the men agreed that there might be some areas in which they could help out their wives, especially when they are pregnant. Then an old lady asked, “How can the older people in the village make money?” And thus gave birth to my favorite group so far, the Agogo Groupo (grandparents group). When I came back the next day to discuss the group in detail I actually found a bunch of old women and young women and men. Turns out they all wanted to do it. I’m still gonna call it the Agogo Groupo in my head. They don’t seem as motivated, though, as Chivute. It seemed they just wanted me to give them all the answers and loan them the money to start their own garden. Nope. I’m starting to worry that every group I start will want to plant a garden. I’ve decided that the next group to say they want a garden I’m going to say no, you have to come up with something unique that the area doesn’t already have. That means bread and jam are out of the question (the other two most popular IGAs, or income generating activities, in the area). Anyway, Wadenya is insistent on using fertilizer and not manure so I told them that if they need money to do this they’re going to have to write a proposal and I’ll help them find a microloan or grant, I’m not just gonna hand them the money. They need to show some initiative.
After meeting with the health staff, it turns out my health center is pretty dysfunctional. They’re pretty much never open, and when they are they only have one nurse and no other curative health staff. The HSAs are meant as field workers in the villages and do mostly preventative work. I’ve been hearing complaints from the villagers that there is no privacy at the health center and patient confidentiality isn’t guaranteed because of it. They don’t feel comfortable telling the nurse their ailments for fear that other people will overhear, so they don’t. That’s gotta go immediately, so I’ll be talking to my In-Charge ASAP. The first grant I plan on writing will be to procure an ambulance-like vehicle for Chikwina, if it is at all possible. I talked to the DHO (District Health Officer) who said that if I could get a vehicle, the district would provide the driver and the petrol when it’s available. I think that’s a pretty good deal, actually. But then I was talking to someone, I forget who, who said that a similar thing happened in another health center and after the volunteer left, the District took the ambulance back and gave it to another area until the government got involved and mandated that the ambulance be returned. Whatever, lets worry about that after I’ve secured a vehicle. Any reliable vehicle will do, really. Four-wheel drive preferable. Might be able to get one cheap off a soon-to-be-evacuated Canadian volunteer…hmmm.
There have been other meetings but I won’t bore you with the details until something uniquely interesting comes out of them. It’s really great to be working finally. But it has been literally nonstop for two weeks. So for this week I’m taking a breather in Tikombo at Robert’s site to have a 3-month-jailbreak slash Christian’s birthday beach-camping Tonga party with the crew. Ditching the Four-Legged Terror with the Pastor. Just about time to get the little bugger fixed. Maybe then he’ll stop running away at night and hunting Fried and Finger Lickin’.
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