Schools In

It would appear that the school our project team is building has slipped under the radar on my BLOG so I thought I’d give an update : Consisting of three buildings (6 classrooms, library and staff room plus a latrine block) for 164 primary school students the school will replace a temporary structure that has six rooms where they jam pack the kids in and the youngest class studies under the palm leaf patio (see picture above). The school project has taken centre stage this week. After a slow start to work in July (the school project had been stopped for security reasons for about three months) it has become apparent that the timeframe for the school project is extremely tight. As such I have spent much of the last week looking at programming of activities and in consultation with Yudha and Jean-Francois about how we can accelerate the program. The supervisors working on the school have come to the fore too, there has been a noticeable step up in energy on site (see photos below). With some reasonable weather this will be completed in October.

Money Talks

I had a difficult conversation with my brother on Sunday. I was frustrated and impatient and he was hungover and not listening. I ended up hanging up on him. I sent an apology email vowing not to call on a Sunday morning again as it was only likely to end in tears. He replied saying he understood and not to worry because “it's an incredible thing you're doing.” I’m in my second last week here in Moro’o and I definitely don’t feel like what I’m doing is incredible.

I feel this for two reasons.

The first is that to give up our comfortable little (and at times we need to realise how little) western lives for a short period of time is not impossible (contrary to popular belief) and the opportunities are out there (those who say they are not have not looked hard enough). In the same email my brother mentioned that this will be a blip on the radar and he’s right. Be not afraid people, a year not paying off the mortgage or not gunning for the next promotion will not result in an unhappy or unfulfilled life.

The second is how much I have been surprised by the number of people who see humanitarian work as an opportunity to make money. Yes they have been brave enough to step away from the comfortable life (see point one) but when their motive does no change it seems an hollow choice. Often salaries are mediocre but because one’s expenses are almost nothing many people look for NGO work to save a lot of money. No question this has a grander purpose than marketing junk food to children (or many of our inane jobs in the west) but when money is a significant reason why people are here it loses its incredibility.

Please Sir . . .

Having spent some time working out what stage we think we will be at by the end of September (10km of the 13km finished) and how much it will cost to return after the wet season to complete the road we headed to a meeting with our Donor. This meeting had two purposes, one was to explain the situation as it stands (that we won’t finish the road by October) and the other was to ask them for more money to fund the completion of the road. In reality the response of the people we met with was pragmatic. They understand how difficult things can be with the local community (they work in Moro’o also) and they have seen the challenges we’ve had in the wet. They also don’t sign the cheques so the response (not surprisingly) was “we’ll have to get back to you on this.” I couldn’t help but walk out of the meeting hoping the person with the chequebook would say no. Not because the community don’t deserve the last 3km but instead that we should be punished for not doing development well. It would make the project a “failure” and so questions would be asked , improvements made and promises in the future would be much more realistic. The alternative is the money is agreed to, the project is finished poorly (with contractors instead of workers from the community, without proper maintenance training and to a poorer standard due to the rush) and everyone walks away patting themselves on the back and happy to wildly overpromise and under-deliver on the next project.