August 4th, counter evolution

Today was such a crazy day in terms of shocks and proof that this country is far from being evolved.

This morning, after a one hour meeting to discuss how many days I would spend at GAAS and each department I would see each day, we went to visit a micro enterprise of an association of women who transforms manioc and other cereals and sell the outcome on the fish road, between here and Nigeria. The head of the coop, Habi, is this incredibly passionate and intelligent woman (for her social class here), I really liked her a lot.

Oh wait, before I go further, during the meeting, the supervisor of the department with whom I visited the projects on Saturday, as we were chatting about geography and Europe, asked me first if Italy and Germany were part of Europe, and second, when I told him the city where I was from, he asked me what a city was. This guy studied at one of the Harvards of Mali and is now heading a whole department implementing resilience projects funded by WFP. No way!!!???

Now back to the entrepreneurship project. The project coordinator/animator was this boring girl who had no idea of what her project was all about. I am dead serious.

The beginning of the project, months ago, was mainly about training and workshops on sexual health, gender based violence and enterprise creation. That was in October last year.

Today's association was created in march this year, though the enterprise itself has existed for already 5 years.

The NGO is supposed to give them an operating budget of about $30,000 (a huge amount here) for the enterprise to work better. To do what exactly? no one was able to tell me. How was this amount selected? No one knows. What is the profitability of the business today before receiving the budget? No one knows. Though the business has been running well for 5 years now. What will be the increased profitability once the business receives the additional budget? No one knows.

Today the business takes 3 months to liquidate the supplies it buys and transforms. It is a major tri-monthly expense and lots of cash inactive for three months when the business doesn't even have enough labour to transform the supplies faster than in three months. So why even buy three months worth of supply rather than 1.5 month (for example) and thus have extra cash to hire additional labour?

This project is managed sooooo badly! No one is even monitoring the evolution of the enterprise and guiding them on optimizing their resources to generate maximum revenue and growth.

One of the other aims of the project is gender based violence. Apparently all the stakeholders concerned by such violence received intensive trainings when the project started late last year. Even the police received training months ago. Yet today when I went to the police station to ask about my visa renewal, we somehow got to chat about gender based violence and gender equity. Every one in the police station, including the big big boss was arguing that women must be submitted to men and that when a woman does something wrong it is absolutely normal that she gets beat up.

I mentioned that gender equity being basic human rights is a key factor to evaluate the degree to which a country is developed. One of the officers got up upset and screamed that women submission and violence had absolutely nothing to do with development. I left.

Ufff!!! I am still in shock that I heard that from the police, today, in 2014. It seems that no matter how many NGOs and how much money gets poured into such country, the basics are not covered.

Another project I am supposed to see tomorrow on school and village hygiene. According to the supervisor of the project, they put latrines and water points and closely monitor their cleanliness but nowhere in the project they address littering!!!!! How can this be?! So clean your hands and don't shit in the street, but live in garbage.

As I walked back home, I passed by the police station at 5:30pm and saw that the supervisor from Saturday was there playing dames with the police officers. I guess the food crisis department must not be in such a crisis that its boss leaves before 5:30pm on a Monday. Shame! Anyhow, they asked me to join them. Hmmm...moral dilemma. Well, it could actually be interesting to see what happens and how the interaction goes with the dumb supervisor as well as the macho underdeveloped cops. I went home and showered and then joined them. We played a few games. No words were exchanged. They were way to focused on the game like their life depended on their victory. OK, the sun was down, I took off.

This is making me realize one thing, which I kind of suspected before: large NGOs who work on multiple projects trying to touch on every issue, often don't end up actually doing anything nor having any concrete impact when there is absolutely no monitoring and evaluation system in place. The small organizations working quietly yet passionately, without politics nor hierarchy are the ones making a real difference. Small scale buy manageable.

I want to help people in need, but I now know that once I am settled down, I'd much rather focus on the population of the city or region where I live and not try to save the whole world thousands of kilometers away. No way! I want to focus on where I live and what I can monitor everyday. I want to see and live the impact I have. I prefer to help less people but help them fully.

Gosh, what a day filled with emotions and frustrations. Africa is really something. I really want to get the hell out of Bandiagara ASAP. By politeness I will check out more projects tomorrow with GAAS, but tomorrow I will try and find an excuse to tell them I am leaving Wednesday morning. I don't want to waste any more of my time.