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.