Last Few Months (continued)

The Office Quote With No Context

"So you know who turned out to be kind of a creep? Ben Franklin. And Elizabeth, the stripper, gave me great advice, which rhymed.  Really makes you wonder how Ben Franklin can become president but someone like Elizabeth can't."
    - Michael Scott


Last Few Months, continued

So I left off with a list of a couple of things that outgoing PCVs have to do, whether or not you're being replaced and the post book, and I have a couple more to add:

Description of Service

The Description of Service (DOS) is a short document (two pages maximum is recommended) each volunteer has to write that details all of the work that they've done the last two years.  In addition to the work, there are some legalistic paragraphs we have to include.  To quote the bestselling COS Handbook 2008, the DOS "is a non-evaluative statement describing your service in Peace Corps."   Furthermore, if a potential employer contacts PC Washington, the DOS "is the only official statement Peace Corps will make concerning your experience."  So, in other words, write in third person and make it good ("As a secondary project, Mr. Fisher discovered a cure for malaria and HIV/AIDS during his first month of service.").  (Peace Corps doesn't give any advice about potential employers coming across incriminating blog entries, especially if they happen to be in charge of selecting cabinet members for the McCain administration.)

Work

Besides paperwork for Yaoundé and Washington, there actually is work to be done these last three months.  As I'm not being replaced, the timing is awkward for finding things to do: we're not supposed to start new projects (no problem there) and I'm supposed to be shutting down anything I have going on (no problem there, aussi).  Malgré all that, I do have some things in the offing:

*** Girls' Education Soiree – This is a project I'm doing ensemble avec Harvard in Ngong.  It was originally planned for, um, last week, but thankfully it was postponed for the end of October/early November because of planning difficulties, mainly because myself, Harvard, and Michele in Bamé weren't in the same place at the same time for the two months leading up to the original date.  Michele has had to drop out of the project for scheduling conflicts, so it just leaves Harvard and me.

The project's goal is to stress the importance of girls' education to male authority figures.  It'll be two afternoons, one in Lagdo and one in Ngong, and will be discussion-based and will try to convince all these dudes that an educated daughter or wife isn't necessarily a bad thing.  (I'll personally try to avoid mentioning that women in Southern Cameroon are more educated than nordistes because those Southerners got some 'tude, which would upset the men's delicate egos.)

Besides schedule problems, there were problems with Peace Corps Partnership, which is how this project will be funded, but those seem to be resolved.  So, full steam ahead.

*** ACMS – Remember way back when, last November, when I went around Lagdo's "aire de santé" with an NGO, Yotti, and a couple other folks from Lagdo?  Probably not, but ACMS, the NGO, is finally back to follow up… ten months later

The thing at the end of 2007 was the start of ACMS's "stratégie de base communitaire" or something like that (I'm not sure if "communitaire" is an actual French word), which is basically a grassroots initiative that has the NGO working through local, already established community groups.  Not exactly an original or trailblazing idea (Peace Corps' been doing that for 45 years now), but it is a good one.

During the original activities last November, we went to around to several villages and presented ACMS's products, which are all health-related, including condoms, mosquito nets, and oral rehydration salts.  All good stuff, and with the ACMS plan, the community groups would sell the products, make a little profit, and be able to buy more products to sell from ACMS.  The project is basically an income-generating activity where the product is supplied by an NGO instead of resources the community has.  So, the one crucial link in this supply chain is the NGO.

The follow-up on the project, which was promised, has been slow in coming.  The results/report of the activities by ACMS-Garoua to its leadership/donors happened six months after the original tour around Lagdo, and then they didn't come back to Lagdo for another few months.  This isn't completely the fault of the Garoua office; they have to wait on their bosses before doing anything, and they're really understaffed, especially given the amount of area they cover.  It's just another example of good intentions and big ambitions in Yaoundé that's hard to realize in the field.

When ACMS finally came back a few weeks ago to Lagdo, it wasn't without hiccups.  They were of course late, and while they were hoping to meet Yotti, they got there during the standard "siesta" (if you want to call it that) between the afternoon prayers at 13h30 and 15h30, so he wasn't at his boutique and the Cameroonian chauffeur didn't want to bother him at his house, which I offered to do.  (It's l'Afrique, show up at someone's door whenever you want.)  So I chatted with a new Cameroonian woman that works for them that I think will be replacing Viktoria, the German lady who works with ACMS (She plays a Peace Corps-like role with ACMS, except she's a qualified professional with a nice salary.) whenever her contract ends, while the chauffeur drove Viktoria to the Lagon Bleu to get a room for herself.  (The other two were staying at a seedier auberge in town.)

I said screw it – it was only two in the afternoon, with another two hours to go before Yotti would be around, they were late, Viktoria is going to the white man hotel, and they weren't being clear at all about why they were there.  It was also a little disconcerting speaking to the new woman, Dominique, because she didn't have the strong personality that the other ACMS employees have and the work she'll be expected to do is to make sales pitches for their products.  It was just frustrating because I was expecting them to show up and tell Yotti and I what their plan was for the next couple of months, when it just seemed like they were wasting time, and their hard-to-come-by money, on hanging out in Lagdo.  They decided to shut-'er-down for the day and do things in the morning, but I was going to Garoua for the day, so I just talked to Yotti when I got back, and he said the same things that I was thinking: he was waiting for them all day the day before, as well, and all they ended up doing was doing protocol with some officials; they didn't even bring products with them so Yotti could restock, kind of shocking when ACMS has "marketing" in its name.

To sum up: bureaucratic hassles, lack of follow-up, and poor rendezvous etiquette.  However, I still have to figure out what's up because ACMS's presence, no matter the difficulties, is still important, even though they have to get their act together.

(I think what was most ticking me off about the ACMS visit is that they seem to be relying too much on local counterparts, myself included.  Instead of worrying about what Yotti's doing, they need to be setting up a better reseau of sellers of their products.  Theoretically, ACMS is supposed to be supplying their stuff to a couple wholesalers, and these wholesalers are supposed to supply the rest of the chain all the way down the line.  So, a wholesaler in Garoua sells their stuff to a guy in Ngong, then Yotti in Lagdo goes to the guy in Ngong, then the community groups around Lagdo go to Yotti – or whomever.  These suppliers haven't been developed enough.  The different sellers of the products don't know each other, so Yotti, when he wants to restock ACMS stuff, goes to the ACMS office in Garoua or waits on ACMS to come to Lagdo instead of going through a hypothetical commerçant ACMS works with.  ACMS has even asked me a couple times to be a middleman, which I refused, because it's not sustainable for me to be involved and I can't be involved with commercial activities as a PCV.)