This morning I asked the hotel manager to cook me a sort of sombi Senegalais which is basically a rice porridge with water and sugar. Supposed to be good for the intestines. But it took a while to be cooked so I was a half hour late at the GAAS office. When I arrived and met with the project supervisor, a mid 40's dressed just as casual as I was, he made an unhappy remark about my half hour delay. Ha! In Africa, 30 minutes delay, on a Saturday morning, and to go visit some villages. Hmmm...OK. Good start of the day. Perhaps he wanted to show off in front of his staff. I just ignored his remark.
The drive to the first village took almost two hours. It was the craziest, bumpiest, most unbelievable, and most unaccessible trail I have ever seen in my life. And so beautiful at the same time. The driver, not even breaking a sweat or stress of any kind just kept on driving as if he were on a flat paved road. So impressive. I had to congratulate him at every stop.
So for the entire two hour ride, not once the team spoke to me or tried to tell me a bit about the project or where we were going. OK. I kept to myself to see how it would evolve.
When we finally arrived at the village, wow! All the kids were running after the car screaming (auto)"mobile" as if they almost never saw cars around. So when I came out of the car, a white man was even more of a surprise and a shock. All the people not in the field were just there, standing in front of me, staring speechless.
We sat down while waiting for every village committee member to arrive (all men and all old...welcome evolution!). The project supervisor finally talked to me a bit to explain the situation. No details though, just high level stuff. OK, I will ask questions later when the village heads are not here.
For at least one hour, the whole committee and the project team debated and chatted (in a local dialect) to agree on something that had already been agreed on and formalized months ago. The dam is broken and must be repaired urgently. OK...more time wasted.
When the supervisor and his team and I were alone I took advantage to ask a few questions. It was the most surreal moment ever. As if I were talking nuclear science with a 5 year old. Though we both spoke fluent French, he didn't seem to understand any of my question, and when he tried to answer, he just kept on contradicting himself all the time. His team of subordinates just kept on laughing all the time as they themselves did seem to understand as bit more and just couldn't believe their boss was just clueless.
They are supposed to so tree planting very soon and he didn't have a clue of how many trees would be planted.
They are supposed to fence a plot of land to plant shallots during the dry season and he didn't have a clue about the impact this was supposed to have on the village.
We are right in the rainy season and they intend to repair a large dam (for water retention only) now.
This project is intended to be an emergency solution to a food crisis situation due to last years drought. The first part of the project consisted in making large donations of food to the villagers months ago. When I asked him how many people there were in this village he told me that it was not an important detail at all. Really?! A food crisis situation and you have no clue how many mouths you need to provide emergency supplies to?
Thank god the villages were beautiful and the ride incredible. Or else it would have been such a waste of time.
In one of the villages, we went to put up a big metal sign communicating the project. As the worker was digging and cementing the plaque, he !et go a big piece of blue plastic wrapper fly away in the field. I right away ran after it to grab it and not let it litter. The supervisor surprised asked me why I did such thing. Really?! I asked him if he knew what pollution was. He seemed a bit clueless yet again and just kept quiet. An NGO supervisor working on environmental protection doing this is just unacceptable and put such a big shame on the NGO, assuming no one else in the NGO behaves this way.
Oh, in that village I met the mayor. Hahaha! The biggest joke of all. First of all he looked like a clown. Then, as I was standing in front of him and chatting, I saw another big NGO sign promoting yet another similar project. So I just asked him if he could tell me the difference between that project and GAAS project. He said he didn't really know. I asked him if as the Mayor he had approved the project. He said yes. So I told him that to approve a project in his town he must know what it is about. He said yes. Then he said that anyway, that one NGO like many others, they talk a lot but don't so anything. Ha! He asked for it! So I reply right away that it was like politicians, they talk a lot and don't do anything at all other than cashing in the money. He fully agreed. Hmmm...I swear he spoke fluent French, so there was no language issue. Must be a brain issue. Lol
The whole ride back I kept quiet. I just couldn't believe how unqualified and incapable the supervisor was and how badly managed this project is.
We got back to town, I went back to the hotel. It started to rain very heavily, so that was it for the day. I just wanted to chat with Alleye to vent my frustration about the day. He came by the hotel, but I find the hotel manager to be quite suspicious and sketchy, so I kept quiet and didn't want to say to much to Alleye in front of him.
So voila, another interesting day. I just hope that monday's project visits won't be the same.
Tomorrow is Sunday, rest day and maybe town visiting. Hopefully it will be sunny.
Good night!
No comments:
Post a Comment