Warm Fuzzies

Monday was an early morning and promised to be fun:  Akagera Part 2. Tumaini picked us up at 6:15 and then we headed off to the park. I was not sure it was worth seeing again, but O was it! Take two was even more unbelievable than the first! We saw dozens of baboons and vervets, 2 hippos up close out of the water, a 10 foot crocodile, and a few baby giraffes and zebras- all so close this time! I could not believe how close we got to things this trip. Even the warthogs were out playing in the mud and running around at the sight of us (we saw at least ten of them!)It was so fun to meet Natasha’s mom and spend the time with Sophia and Aileen as well. We bounced around a lot, saw some fabulous birds, and other than the elephant, saw just about everything! After reading the whole way there, the way back involved snacking on cheese and bread, a few Ankole cow traffic jams, and a really nice nap!

Yes the Hippo was that close!

 

Monday evening I needed to get back up to Musanze, because I had a Tuesday morning meeting at Nyarwondo for baseline surveys. The trip up felt fast as ever with people hurling quietly in their cloths, and stopping for brochettes and potatoes. Then about 2/3rds of the way to Musanze, our bus pulled over relatively unexpectedly as a police car went flying (and I’m talking-go off a cliff style flying- not literally, but still so fast!). I thought well that’s a the first police car I have seen and people weren’t looking backwards (toward were the car was going), but in instead were talking quickly and looking at where it came from- sure enough around the bend came another 3 or for police suvs, and then a string of suvs and another police car or two. My first thought was, who famous is visiting, and why are they driving so freaking fast?? Then I thought, Kagame would want to move pretty quickly if he was travelling around the country. I wouldn’t have thought going that fast was any safer than risking driving a bit slower, but apparently they know what is best…so after we started moving again I asked Aloys (who happened to be on the same bus with me, Sarah, Emily and Sasha). He said that certainly was “his excellency” zooming back to Kigali after an afternoon in Musanze. As for me, I was glad to be back in Musanze after such an intense weekend in Kigali!

Tuesday’s visits went very well! I began the morning with Aime and Isugi at Nyarwondo. This community has chosen a potato project since they lack the means to buy more land, this grant will help them rent land from others in order to make enough earnings to continually rent and farm as a community. They a very poor community, but there were also a few people within the group that were trying to talk down their own wealth even more than it already was. Aime and I caught one man in a blatant lie, and while I am not sure if a surveyor technically should be correcting, bad information doesn’t do anyone any good. The man said he had a bicycle, but no mattress and no radio. This might seem plausible, but usually the items purchased go in the other order. Rarely does one have the foresight buy a bike prior to owning a mattress. The bicycle can be used to help you earn income, but because of the price differential, often a mattress is more practical in the short-term. When Aime asked why he had answered untruthfully, he said something to the effect of, “you know with NGOs, they are more generous the needier you are.” Now this wouldn’t have been a surprising answer except that the communities we work with aren’t supposed to have had any past experience with NGOs! How did this man from a relatively rural area have it already in his mind how to game the system prior to ever being involved in it?

Bit disheartening, no? Especially because the model that Sasha and Eamon are developing is one they hope will attempt to avoid aid dependency, but if it is already engrained prior to our arrival, then can we truly come in with the expectations that communities will see our actions as such? Additionally, it means that they know how to bias our survey results and are purposefully going to be doing so- with or without us noticing. In that way, I am not sure the surveys that Dennis and I have been working on this summer will actually provide any value to donors or to Spark itself. I hope that I am wrong, but also believe that this probably has played into the way that most of our post-surveys have been answered. For our question of would you change the project you chose, many said yes, not because they didn’t like it, but because they would have asked for more. Many say the funding wasn’t sufficient to complete their project (even though they all got exactly what they asked for in their proposals), and it was successful- no it didn’t end their poverty overall, but it did make change in their lives. They have animals they couldn’t have afforded, protective structures for the animals, latrines they needed for sanitation purposes, and even some of them now can pay for medicines, school clothes, and health insurance that before was an unlikely, distant hope. The most significant change stories that Natasha has been collecting are definitely more useful ways of determining whether or not our work is- working. It is much easier to lie to a survey collector, but much harder to avoid detection when you are collecting stories to be read to the whole community for verification, and also because it is harder to maintain a storyline and details from an imaginary tale. I hope that there will be more success coming out of that part of our intern work.

I recognize the importance of numbers to donors; it gives them a way to narrow down the millions of causes and projects they see, but the problem is it forces NGOs to waste time and money collecting relatively useless information. And the numbers they see are then passed on the very bias of the communities knowing donors see the numbers. If it looks bad they won’t help, if it looks good then it’s a finished project- no more money needed there. The largest of NGOs get to avoid specific project rates and percentages in a way that foundation funded small NGOs have a hard time over coming. The pressure foundations place on numbers is understandable, but again, not necessarily telling of the work actually being done on the ground. Hopefully, time will show a better system for analyzing the successes and failures of aid work, and while I don’t expect it too soon, I also think everyone should be cautious of overly successful projects.

Seeing Nuggets hat I couldn't help but be silly and get a picture!

Clearly, I digress…after the morning site visit, I went back to Musanze for lunch to then turn around and meet Aloys at Gahunga. It was the busiest ‘China bus’ I have been on since I arrived in Kigali. I had begun to worry that no bus would come as I waited by the side of the road, and it sounded like some of the others waiting had been there for a solid 15 minutes (generally that would mean one was about to turn the corner, but it didn’t. I waited… again patience is the most important thing to pack in visiting Africa… and finally one came with a familiar faced conductor (the money 

collector). I told him I was headed to GS 

Rugarama, hoped on and paid the 400 franc fair (inflated because of the lack of buses). As we drove along the bus became more and more crowded until there was literally no way to open the side doors without them hurting someone- which then meant everyone on the bus had to shuffle about when one person from the back needed to get off. This bus was worse than the Bethesda Ride On busses in rush hour, and yet it kept chugging along. We pasted a few schools and turn-offs to other communities before I hopped off- at the wrong spot. I got lucky in that I caught my mistake and ran back to the bus before it took off, and the sympathetic conductor (who now knows me by name – and possibly the muzngu who almost got left behind) chatted with me in French before we actually reached the right spot for me to hop out. Due to all the shuffling and the lateness of the bus I was shocked that I was only 5 minutes behind schedule when I got off and met Aloys! What an adventure almost gone wrong! If I’d have missed that bus, I wouldn’t have been able to get to Aloys (with my bag full of surveys) for at least another 15 minutes (by moto, since busses were MIA), and he is so good about being timely that I hate to be the one on ‘African time’ for meetings.

Pretty gift in hand with ladies of Nyarwondo

Turned out, the community was on Africa time (not too surprising), but Aloys and I made it just fine. The community was excited to see me again, and after we finished our surveys and were walking home, one of the community members said that she wanted to give me a gift. I hate to take what little a community has from it, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer, brought me into her home and gave be a wall hanging flat basket. It is beautiful with the words GRAND MERCI woven into the pattern. I took a picture, and need to get it printed before I return to Musanze so that I can deliver it to her (perhaps with another basket thanking her for her own generosity with no expectation of repayment.

Eamon, Sarah, Aloys and Claude preparing the surprise!

Tuesday was also a special day, because it was Isugi’s birthday! So the evening was set for celebrating. The interns were planning to make dinner for Isugi, but we decided pretty late in the day what we would actually make! Since one intern has a gluten allergy and another is vegetarian, it makes for a challenge being a chef- just about everything I know how to make includes one or the other of those elements. We settled on a veggie curry on rice dish. It smelled so good, when Eamon called and said that there would be a pre-dinner event at the facilitator house. There is apparently a tradition of surprising birthday girls (and boys) by dumping buckets of water on them! Easier said than done when you haven’t had water all week, and the only way to heat some is to boil it in tea kettle- making it too warm to toss on someone! So after splashing back and forth between two buckets for a while to cool it down, the surprise was set, we were all staged in the dark awaiting with the bucket and cameras at the ready. It was such a great success! She had no idea and while I would have smacked anyone attempting to dump a bucket of water on me, she was doing nothing but hugging everyone as soon as she got strength back in her knees! We all went back to our house to eat dinner after we had danced from about an hour, and it was just a really wonderful evening, ending a somewhat stressful morning with a happy ending!

Isugi post splash with Claude and Ernest

After yoga with Sophia and Petra

The next morning after getting tea, my focus became survey data entry, and I actually got through a full community before breaking for some brainstorming on how to teach logic models to our facilitators with Eamon. It’s been cool to be a sounding board for so many things- from curriculum development, monitoring and evaluation and now starting-up in Uganda. The mini meeting lasted until I had to dash out with Aileen to make it to our afternoon yoga session. With free classes and welcoming Rwandans, who could ever justify not attending the classes? Not me! It is also something that Aileen can do for the next 6 months that she is here and become good friends with the seamstresses of the cooperative. The sessions really are lovely, and I was so lucky to be able to go both Wednesday and Thursday of this week. I am definitely excited to see how it goes, and for her after we all leave, and it will be nice to see things grow through her ‘on the ground’ eyes and ears.

The fabulous girls and guys of Ubushobozi!

After the Thursday yoga, I was going to head back to Kampala late afternoon, but since the yoga ended-up going until 4, and I had a Skype call at 4:15, I decided the evening bus was probably my better bet. Was reasonable, but a bit worrisome when I arrived in Kigali at Nyabagogo to find the Kampala Coach ticket offices closed. The buses to Kampala from Kigali leave pretty early in the morning- 5:30 to be exact, so having a ticket the night before is somewhat of a necessity. It worked out alright, because a sweet stranger seeing my hopeless walk toward the entrance to the clearly closed Kampala Coach office took pity and showed me to the Jaguar offices which had remained open! What luck and what a nice man for pointing me in the right direction rather than me getting up at 4 am only to find the bus had been sold out. I bought my ticket feeling a bit more warm and fuzzy about the world (and not because my bag was so heavy that I was sweating, but due to the help he offered when he had no real incentive to get up and walk me to the Jaguar offices. Feeling really relieved, I hoped a moto back to Kimihurura and Hotel X to get a half night’s sleep before venturing back to Kampala on my own.