Another long one…you all know I love to talk, I can even do it from 3000 miles away :)
FECECAV grows a little bit more every day…not to be unoriginal or clichéd in saying something like that, but really they do. Since I have been here the office has modernized and progressed before my wide eyes. There are fans in every office now, hanging from the ceiling that is. They were installed in 4 or 5 offices on my first few days here. This makes a huge difference, for who can work well in this heat…The “IT guy” is here every other day, installing cd-roms and usb ports on various computers. For the past 3 days there has been a carpenter here building a closet in Daniel’s office, where his files are randomly clumped in a corner. Daniel says that in the coming weeks they are going to install a “permanent” internet connection on a few computers here, still dial-up of course, but they will pay a bill each month instead of having to call Illico and cross their fingers each time they want to post a business on Kiva. This is real growth, and it is so invigorating to be a witness. I’ve been lucky to have worked with a lot of small NGOs and community organizations, so this kind of humble progress isn’t completely foreign to me, but having come from IPA, I feel like I have been re-stimulated. Nothing is stagnant anymore, evolution is palpable and advancement is precious.
Since last week I have really focused my work here on Kiva, as I do know that if I can teach them how to use it efficiently, it will benefit them in the end. However, with little or no guidance from Kiva, I am taking the initiative to do it in a way that fits with FECECAV’s existing program, and am continuing to help with whatever tasks they need done urgently…when I told my Kiva “boss,” who is based in Paris and doesn’t feel the need to talk again until the end of next week, that I wasn’t as gung-ho about Kiva anymore and about my observations since arriving, her reply was a curt “I’m sorry to hear that.” I have made a schedule for the next three weeks and everyone seems to be happy with it…I think it is targeting exactly the right people, with the right tasks, and the right information to make it as easy and effective as possible. I am creating all kinds of working documents for them to use to create business descriptions and journals more easily because of my concerns that I do not want them to be taken away from their work to be doing this…but if they do, they get more free money…here is the dichotomy…
I am going to train at least 4 people in the office on all of this, to build their capacity so that any particular person is not overwhelmed with it and so that they can continue to do their other work. So far it is going really well! I have been working with Athanase and Olivier for the past 2 days on new business descriptions for the clients whose photos we took in Aventonou last week. We write them together in French, while I make sure they understand what needs to be included and what is effective, and then transfer them to my computer (with the USB port that I gave them!!) where I am translate them into English for the site. Throughout the process, I am capturing frequently used phrases about the town and certain professions, skills, foods, etc. and collecting them in a document which I will leave here for them. Then we post them on the Kiva site to be funded, which always happens by the next morning, if not sooner.
However, my American, particularly New York, work ethic is starting to clash a little bit with my FECECAV co-workers…sometimes they move sooo sloowwwlllyyy and I’m like COME ON PEOPLE we have WORK to do. I am generally a fairly high energy and efficient person, but I don’t think it’s that out of the ordinary. But most here at this office think I am insane. They think I am asking them for the freaking moon.
Between having to wait for the internet to load pages for 5 minutes and constant interruptions, irrelevant questions and digressions, I sometimes feel like I am about to lose it. So I take a little break, count to 10 and remember that this is not normal here…I have become incredibly patient with the internet and the electricity, which goes off a few times per day, sometimes taking your last hour’s work with it. The internet is bought on a card, and when your time runs out it just shuts off, no matter what it was that you were working on – au revoir. Hard to believe, that I, of all impatient people, could become accustomed to this, but it is so. However, I don’t have that kind of patience with things that I think I can control. After being here a week and seeing exactly how things run and where my focus should be, etc. I want to DO it now! And I am trying so hard, a little too hard I think…I need to be a bit more aware of the fact that my colleagues aren’t “things that I can control,” and that this is not why I am here…I need to work with them, at their pace (although really, this means that I should be here for a year…) I’m already behind schedule!!!!
This is mostly due to the fact that before we can really get started I have to teach efficiency…I have to show people how to copy and paste instead of re-typing things. I have to show how to use a USB port, and most of the time there is some problem with the computer or the cable (if the electricity hasn’t been cut, that is) and we have to do it three times to get it right. Not to mention just a lack of capacity…the fact that we have to carry the printer around from office to office each time we need it doesn’t help…
However, after most of the first week observing, in three days I’ve managed to train two people fully on business descriptions and posting on the site (including the creation of the working documents to make this all easier) and posted all of the journals that I wrote for the clients I’ve visited since I’ve been here. I have no more patience left, haha, but I’m so happy I got some stuff done. For the rest of the week and next I will do the same with more people in the office, but I can only do about 3 businesses with each one if I want any space left to be on the site…which is not really enough for them to truly understand it, but as I have already said, Kiva is totally out of touch with what’s going on here…
I did a presentation this morning for 30 loan officers, comprised from Kpalimé’s office and an office on a farm nearby that does not have electricity. I was really nervous actually, which never happens to me with public speaking, or in general for the most part…however, I guess it was understandable considering it was about Kiva, a subject I’m truly not that comfortable being seen as the sole authority on, and that it was in Togolese French, in front of a lot of strangers that are much older than I. I also had a rough assignment…try to explain a peer-to-peer internet microfinance lending platform to a group of people who have never been online before…
After my presentation, something magnificent occurred. It was Africa…where else would a highly organized group of professionals impulsively break out into song in thanks to a yovo for coming here and trying to help them. All of a sudden people were swaying their hips, clapping and singing, some with their eyes closed and hands raised, thanking g-d in Ewe for bringing me here and for this beautiful day. I was enchanted and blown away.
Most evenings I return from FECECAV tuckered out from the heat and exhausted from the strain of speaking African French and using all of my patience, both of which are getting much much better! Mensah and Akbene are always waiting for me when I get back, ready to prepare my dinner and chat. Akbene has become a bit like my mother. She is very caring and loves the female company that I bring to la Petit Suisse. She has told me that it is hard for her to be the only woman around, as very few come to the hotel. Some of her friends come by every now and then, but mostly it is she and I, as it’s not really safe to go out much after dark. She now insists on calling me “ma fille” (my daughter.) Women have it pretty rough here, I must say, but more on that kettle o’ worms another time…
Last night dinner was a huge pile of dry, plain spaghetti (but spaghetti nonetheless) with an equally large and equally dry pile of ground beef on top…I scraped off most of the beef and woofed the rest of it down. Mensah now sits beside me while we it, noisily munching on his dinner, every five minutes slamming on his glass with his knife and a stern “FelIZE!” (his apprentice.) Akbene sits close by squealing like a child at the stupidly dramatic French soap opera that comes on every night at this time. She LOVES it, it is so funny. If Felize, the poor thing, doesn’t come running by the time Mensah has finished chewing he starts rapping on his glass again, more testily this time, until Felize bursts through the door in a fluster with an annoyed yet worried look on his face. It is pretty hilarious, he is around 17 I think, and just wants to be lazy, but Mensah will not leave the poor kid alone for a second. He runs a tight ship, but I see right through him
Before dinner, Akbene took me to her friend Veronique’s house across the street, which is similar to most in the region – more like a compound, a community center …a few shacks with curtains for doors and windows (for some reason there is no glass here…it is probably expensive, hard to transport and easily smashed) surrounding a courtyard where there was a fire for cooking and some palm leaves for shelter from the weather. Chickens and a scraggly cat milled about, continually, desperately searching for scraps. Veronique and her two children (I think, it is always hard to tell who are actually the children around here, as so many people are orphaned or transferred to another family member, etc. Everyone is everyone else’s grand-soeur ou petit-frére…thus the massive community. It’s really a beautiful thing) were just beginning to make Fufu. It was really interesting to see the process from start to finish. And I helped! I used the huge wooden mallets (they are about my height) to pound those yams from a starchy-potato-like mixture into a thick, sticky paste. They all thought me pounding fufu was damned near the most hilarious thing they had ever seen. I always enjoy being the object of a good laugh. Seriously.
I then watched Veronique take the smoked fish off the fire and pick off the bad parts, the eyes, the gills and, throwing those towards the cat’s gleaming eyes and twitching whiskers, dumped the rest into the boiling pot of tomatoes, onions and jalepenos (all of which was rinsed in the semi-clean-looking water next to it, I guess it’s fine if you’re boiling it but….) Then Akbene thought it would be funny to take a picture of me holding the smoked rat (which was sitting nearby for tomorrow’s fufu lunch) over the pot. I made a semi-disgusted, semi-confused face in the photo, which is pretty much how I felt, and one of Akbene’s friends, not Veronique, but the one who lives across the courtyard and comes frequently to la Petit Suisse to visit, almost lost it. She is this stunningly beautiful woman, huge and soft, with the most perfect features and shining, mischievous eyes. Ewe tumbles out of her mouth like candy and I love to listen to her speak to Akbene in that boisterous and immeasureable African-woman language to which no one but themselves can truly be privy. I must find out her name because she also has a laugh that rivals Rogier’s (my colleague at FECECAV who has, hands down, the best laugh I have ever heard in my life) and an appetite that rivals my brother’s.
It’s funny how things are already becoming familiar here…I don’t wake up in the middle of the night and need to blink a few times in the pitch black to remember where I am…I am starting to expect the lights and fans to quietly cease a few times a day, and anticipate the grumble of my air conditioner every morning as the power is cut just before 6am…I am getting used to certain smells...I don’t recoil as much at the intoxicating odor of smoked mackerel being prepared for fufu, and it doesn’t faze me anymore when thick smoke fills the afternoon air, always managing to find it’s way into the FECECAV office and my hotel room, with that all-too-recognizable (and which I initially thought I would never get used to) aroma of burning garbage and charcoal…that smell is Togo to me, more than any other. It’s weird how it has become almost comforting…
I am also becoming accustomed to particular sounds…the beepbeep and high-pitched motors of scooters driving far too quickly and haphazardly on Kpalimé’s crumbling roads. The rhythmic, computer-generated jingle of the Channel24 (the French news channel that is often the only one that comes in during the day, or at all…) topographic map that scans the entire globe and reports local temperatures at lightning speed…that crazy insect that sounds like a broken fax machine and comes out just as dusk begins to fall…and the Ewe, that at first made me feel so isolated, but now brings a beam to my face every time I hear its mutterings dance through curtains and open doors. Those doors that are always open.
But it is still hot as hell, and I continue to drink tons of water, which is obviously rare among the Togolese…everyone here at FECECAV laughs when I go to buy more and calls me, good-naturedly of course, a thirsty yovo. And I still really want a Caesar salad…
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