Today was another interesting day.
First GAAS picked me up an whole hour late without any apology.
I spent the whole morning with one of GAAS animators visiting a few villages by motorcycle. Beautiful villages with fantastic people. Had I not been sick and would I have been more prepared, it would have been a total adventure to spend a few nights in any of those villages. A bit like in Sanga, yet more rustic and authentic I believe. Oh well...
The project I was visiting was about social marketing campaigns and workshops on the need to build latrines in each house as well as malaria prevention campaigns.
Surprisingly almost all the houses had built their own latrines at their own cost. So big success on that end. However, none of the latrines I saw met the standard hygiene norms and should thus be totally refitted. Latrines have specific norms they must respect so that you don't pee or pooh on your feet, so that the feet or pooh stays in the retention space, so that flees do not fly in and out of the retention space, and so on...
When I mentioned that to the animator so seemed quite educated, he dared telling me that there are no such norms to build latrines and that the way GAAS proceeded was just to tell the villagers to build latrines but actually never showed them how and why such norms. Yet another scandalous project showing the absolute uselessness and inefficiency of this NGO. I couldn't believe it.
The worst part is that this project is funded by UNICEF, and so when I got back to the office, I actually managed to find the official guiding document from UNICEF for this specific project, and trust me, the standard norms of hygiene and very precise directions on how to build proper latrines were all in there. It made me wonder of organizations actually really give a damn about the project they fund in developing countries or if they just pour out money in projects just to justify the salaries of their inefficient careless staff. It is scary.
In one of the villages I bumped into this old hunter named Kaltibi. When I shook his hand he have me a little wooden frame made in China containing a passport photo of himself a few years back. I thought he wanted money for it so I tried to politely decline his offer. But he strongly insisted with the most genuine of smiles. So I accepted and gave him a passport photo of myself in exchange. He was happy.
How strange a gesture. We didn't even know each other.
When we got back to the office, I sat in the project director's office for a few hours before the supervisor showed up. He said Hello and went about his business on his computer. I asked a couple of questions about the project and also if he had any of the guiding documents for the project as well as for the workshops they periodically run in the villages. He said no. They don't have a single document in the office.
I've had it. Enough waste of my time trying to help inefficient uneducated corrupt lazy people who pretend to be and do something very far away from the reality.
I thanked him for his time and left the office. No good. He to . No one cared anyway. I felt so relieved.
I walked back to town, and sat down at my usual grocery store where I buy and sip up a cold bottle of Coke while watching the street life and chit chatting with random passerby's.
Sunset over I go eat some delicious braised chicken. A lot of it. Really hoping that my intestine will contain it and correctly digest it.
I walk back home, pack everything ready for a very early start tomorrow morning.
Sweet mosquitoless dreams...
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