Failure with No Consequences

Since my last blog post I can only describe the time that’s passed as...peaceful. I’ve been in village almost exclusively over the past month and a half. I fill my days with farming, work meetings, hanging with my neighbors and reading. I enjoy long mornings since there aren’t any pressing issues that need attention. The influx of mosquitos is annoying but manageable. Twice a week my work group organizes to meet or take care of some tasks at our garden space. Even though there are only 6 months left there is still much work to be done post-harvest – and I want us to use our time as efficiently as possible. 

 Celebrating Tabaski in village with my Muslim Neighbors. Everybody buys new clothes and feasts the entire day to celebrate.

Peaceful has been nice, but I wasn’t anticipating a relaxing rainy season. Instead, my health clinic staff and I were supposed to be conducting a large-scale, door-to-door malaria campaign to reduce the rates of malaria in Ramsa (called PECADOM+). We’ve been officially planning this project since February and all previous signs showed that it was going to succeed. The Head Nurse and participating workers were motivated to combat against the rampant rates of malaria that infect near 70% of our villagers during the summer months. We conducted a successful test-run in May to experiment with the project model and let the workers learn the ropes.

Unfortunately, when it came time to get to work in July things stalled. I had been away on vacation and upon my return nothing was happening. I approached the Head Nurse and he told me that the Health Clinic was overwhelmed with other rainy season campaigns, which was completely true. They had to distribute mosquito nets to the entire village, as well as implement a government program and give anti-malaria pills to children under the age of 5. As for the health workers who would be doing the door-to-door sweeps, they were busy with their farm work and they lacked motivation since this project was on a volunteer basis.

I brainstormed with my counterpart to find a solution to save the project. Finally, we discovered that a project model where the volunteer workers would front the necessary funds to buy the medicine (at cost) and then make respectable profits while conducting the project and selling the medicine would provide enough financial incentive. Not all volunteer workers could afford to do this and the Head Nurse refused to help in this respect. I saw his reasoning, because in the past volunteer workers have pocketed money that was rightly owed to the Health Clinic. I still encouraged those who could afford to front the medicine costs to do so, because they would still make some extra income while doing a great service to the community. 

With the heavy rains this season our Moringa trees have been abuntantly producing. Once or twice each month we harvest the leaves to turn into powder. We are almost ready to start consistently selling our nutritious powder to the community and hopefully soon in our regional capital!

Some of our health workers had money in hand ready to buy their own medicine, when we ran into ultimately our final roadblock. Our Head Nurse was no longer willing to train our health workers on how to properly dispense and sell malaria medicine because of a larger political issue occurring with his superiors.  Even though our project model had been approved all the way from the Minister of Health in the Capitol, our Head Nurse didn’t feel comfortable giving the training until a “later” date.

Here we are in the month of September still waiting on that training, while the most important period of the year to conduct malaria work passes by. I feel frustrated because it feels as if he flaked, even though I probably don’t know the entire story.

I knew conducting a large-scale project like this was going to be hard from the start. We got started early and implicated all necessary actors (even in at the ministry level) and I thought we had the green light. However, like many development projects, we ran into one too many issues that ultimately kept the project from lift-off. Or in other words, we failed our first major project.

Personally, I felt discouraged because I knew this project would have a direct positive impact on my community if carried through. We were close, but not close enough.

I updated my Health Boss on having cancelled this project and in response I got a “congratulations for trying” – kind of like the consolation ribbon one gets in elementary school for effort.

After digesting this experience I realized that, overall, Peace Corps Community Projects cannot be classified as “high-stakes”. I know that I am here to work and accomplish large and small development projects with my community, but if something fails it’s not unusual. But that’s the price we pay when a majority of our projects are without any funding and stem from our community’s needs and motivation.

Overall, I’m still very proud of our work accomplishments in Ramsa. We’ve been able to achieve more that I originally anticipated due to the hard work of my counterpart and community members.

A great example of this willingness to work is our most recent undertaking – perma-gardening. I was able to observe a quick perma-garden training by chance while helping train the new group of Peace Corps Volunteers who just arrived in June. I immediately realized that this model of gardening – small, low-cost, permanent, bio-intensive household gardens specifically to improve nutrition – is the perfect tool that I’ve been searching for to make improved nutrition feasible in my village. 

Observing a perma-garden training with the new group of PCVs. We infuse the soil with local compost, charcoal and ash to improve the soil throughout the following year.

2 weeks later, our first perma-garden in Ramsa was under way with one of my neighbors. To promote water retention, we built the garden next to his roof to trap all falling water. The four holes at the corners of the garden, along with the 4 exterior berms, will ensure that our garden space stays humid long into the dry season.

Our finished product. Tomato saplings just transplanted and local herbs/trees planted along the edges to protect the garden's interior.

Water retention in the perma-garden.

So, in the place of PECADOM+ we are now transitioning to perma-gardening during the remaining months of rainy season. I’ve already constructed two with my neighbor and counterpart, and the concept is growing in popularity. This gardening technique is modern and new, however it’s not so foreign that it scares away potential users. I hope that my villagers latch-on and start their garden construction ASAP.

In other news, my schedule for the next 6 months is wide open. I know the time is going to pass too fast, but I’m doing to do my best to make the most of it. I’ll try and travel some inside the country but for the most part I’ll be in village, relishing my last months living in a small African Village. 

Until next time,

MB