March 24 - Official Meetings

Lucky me! I got to participate as if I belonged to the group and could contribute. Like I had a job! And like being in school. So good!

I’ve always thought since I took a course in San Francisco over 20 years ago called ‘Africa in Global Perspective’ that scholars and students from Africa are incredibly articulate and have a certain way of expressing themselves that is very formal and professional. Now I was in a conference auditorium room with very well educated NGO workers who were sharing their thoughts in their areas of expertise – human rights, HIV/AIDS, agriculture, Relief and Food Security. The meetings ran so elegantly with great sharing of ideas all expressed in that way which is so unfamiliar to me. (I am accustomed to opening my mouth and letting it fly – no planning involved – I did, however, during my village speeches work on this because I could only say about 10 words in a row before stopping for the translation, forcing myself to at least hear what had just come out of my mouth and think about what to say next. I enjoyed that opportunity and being forced to get my act together.)

The first day was all about DCA and the HAP project. The second day was for field visits to some of the partners’ projects. There were 5 different partner organizations attending the meetings. A group was going to visit ‘my’ area and look specifically at the dam project and HAP. Wow! I was so excited to hear what they had to say about it. I got to go to another city called Zomba and meet with a group of religious leaders who are working together to come up with the faith based response to HIV/AIDS that doesn’t sharply contradict one another. These were Muslim and Christian leaders, men and women. It’s a great initiative but from what our group saw, it’s very much at the beginning stages and has a lot left to discuss. Different agendas and politics playing a large role as usual. For example, they expressed a need for training on HIV/AIDS and claimed to not have knowledge in this area. It turns out what they’re after is a training weekend including transportation, lodging food and Fanta. You’d be surprised how much you hear about Fanta. …I know it sounds trivial, but it’s important to them to get these training workshops – it’s their motivation so needs to be understood.

Back at our fancy hotel with Fanta, it was presentation day. Time to hear about ‘my’ project area. The visit was beautifully presented like one of our school presentations …..only a bit better! They saw the hunger and all the various projects being implemented such as bee keeping, goat rearing, tree planting, vegetable gardens, irrigation schemes, etc and they looked for evidence for the HAP project. They agreed it was a complicated problem area. I sat in my seat trying to plan what I would say including a little intro, my interest and motivation – it was going to be good. I listened to a beautiful woman present what they heard from the group of village women who they interviewed for over 2 hours regarding HAP and the projects. She reported that the women were afraid to file a complaint – a very important component of HAP and they had never even heard of HAP!

Oh my god! My ears filled up with clouds and I got sweaty. It was my turn to speak. I was totally confused and said so. No lovely introduction. Probably not even a complete sentence. But I had my tape recorder with me and played a recorded song the women had sung for me – THOSE VERY SAME WOMEN. The song was about HAP – all about HAP, details about HAP, what it meant and how it was going to bring change. I didn’t mean to be rude to the presenter but I was just genuinely, totally confused. Who had been taken for a ride – me or the women conducting the discussion?

In retrospect, it was an appropriate summation of what goes on in the village. Politics politics and politics. They play a lot of games down there in that particular little area. I don’t know why. I don’t know what motivated those women to lie to the NGO. What did they want from them? (What did they want from me?) They’re professionals at working the system – they’ve been at it for decades. The local field worker later told me that those particular people don’t seem to want to change. There is another group of displaced people where they’re also implementing the HAP standard and they’ve seen a great improvement. The other group has no one particular player with his own agenda – which my friend Zimba plainly calls sabotage.

After I played the recording everything got kind of quiet. What was going on? They then recalled how the secretary from HAP who was at the discussion kept saying to the women, ’Come on, you know HAP. We’ve just been talking about it. Don’t you remember?’ and they all denied it. WHY????? (in case you’re wondering, Krisi was never one of the women in these groups, nor was she at the going away party. They lived in another village - a stones throw away but outside the NGOs area. And Spencer wouldn’t allow her to join us.)

Later at lunch many people commented on the recording and thought it was pretty great. It showed the complexity of issues and problems one faces when working in the villages. There’s no simple solution but I do still think the HAP and its focus on accountability is an excellent place to start. And shame on those women for lying….or shame on the men for telling the women to lie…..or what?? I think I could spend a year there and still not get the politics.

I hope you're all well and happy!!!! :-)