| This Cooperative is Decidedly Uncooperative |
[Mar. 11th, 2006|07:05 pm] |
I almost got in a fist fight with several large African women last week.
Let me back up a bit….
Last July, I applied for and received a grant to create a small orchard of bananas, citrus, guava, and other fruits with the women’s cooperative in Agmamine. The cooperative had approached me a month or two earlier, basically guilting me into doing “something” for them. Until this project, I had only worked with them in the gardens, planted trees, learned their language, and struggled to adjust to the freakiness that is village life. Obviously, I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain. Guilt-trip successful.
Anyway, they said they wanted fruit trees, so I am helping them out. I made a couple of proposals to them of what we could do. They were required to make a 25% monetary contribution to the project, so it was somewhat dependent on what they could afford. We settled on a plan. A one-hectare plot adjacent to the current co-op garden. The budget would purchase the trees, chain-link fencing, barbed wire, fence posts, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, gardening tools, and labor for the installation of the fence. It was agreed that the new solar water pump installed by World Vision in the other garden would provide enough water for the project. They agreed to contribute 25% (154,000 UM – about $575), and I applied for the grant.
We had to wait about two months for the grant money to work its way through the Peace Corps bureaucracy. In that time, I made a few observations about the proposed project that I thought could improve it… allow us to get more out of our money. My more intense search into the best uses for this money derived from the lack of water for the project. The solar pump was not in operation, and WV was taking a long time to fix it. I wanted to see if we could find money in the budget to dig a well in the new garden, so that we wouldn’t have to depend on another organization’s maintenance plan for a technology not exactly appropriate for a small African village.
I figured we could nix the chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They are quite expensive, need to be applied regularly, and are easily replicated at no cost using organic sources. We had budgeted money to purchase cloth to create a individual windbreak for each tree. We can do the same thing with palm fronds at no cost.
The biggest change was with the location of the garden. We had budgeted for metal fencing, barbed wire, and metal fence posts. The proposed location of the orchard placed it very close to two other fenced-in gardens: the cooperative vegetable garden and the village-wide fence around the fields. If we could share some of the fencing and fence posts and create one large garden, we would free up all of the money dedicated to fence posts. There was a five meter gap between the two co-op gardens and the village fence. If we could close that gap and share fence posts, the co-op posts could be used for the extension.
If we did all this, we would have enough money to dig a well and make a basic irrigation system. We would be maximizing the potential of their available resources and gaining something extra and highly valued as a result.
I presented these ideas to all the necessary people: the President of the Women’s Co-op, the WV people working in the area, members of the community, Peace Corps. Everyone said it was great, yea, let’s do it.
We had quite a bit of money to spare. I told the President we could dig two wells if we got a good rate. I told her to find a well digger, stressing not to mention that a white person is involved. Prices magically rise (out of respect, I’m sure) whenever we walk in the door. And I didn’t know anything about wells (nor did anyone else I asked… the fees ranged from 20,000UM to 300,000UM per well). But, she’s a complete idiot and brought the well digger to me. We discussed the price, and everything was much more expensive than I anticipated. I told this to the President (hereafter indicated with the initials PBB)… that we would be able to dig one well and that’s about it. She said okay, no problem, have this guy dig it.
He dug it… it took him about three months, but he did it. His work was top notch, but he wasn’t exactly reliable. Masons/well diggers are a bit difficult to deal with in this country. They take a job, get a small advance, and then disappear for two weeks, work for two days, disappear for another couple of weeks. They aren’t just chilling at home during those absences, they are out everywhere doing the same thing to dozens of other people. They grab up every job they possibly can.. if they aren’t quick with getting the new ones, someone else will.
Everything was a pain with the well, but it was getting finished. Meanwhile, we were waiting for all of the materials to come from Nouakchott. I ordered them in October, and they didn’t show up until February. People started wondering where their money went.. why the materials hadn’t shown up yet. I held all of the money for the project… money and materials have a tendency of disappearing in the cooperative. Whenever I bought anything for the project, I always got receipts and informed PBB. I told her before and after I bought anything. Everything was stored at my house… again, things disappear at PBB’s. But that doesn’t mean that information was trickling down to the typical co-op member.
The well was finished and the materials finally came. We decided on a day to install the fence, and I talked to the men assigned to work. I had contracted ten men for four days of work. They had already worked three days in October installing the four cement corner posts for the large garden. We stared at those four corner posts for four months in anticipation of the arrival of the fencing. You couldn’t miss them. And, standing in the middle of nowhere, you couldn’t not know what they were for.
We were beginning to move the first part of the co-op vegetable garden fence when PBB stormed up.
“Don’t touch my fence!” she bellowed. “You’re going to break it… goats are going to come in and eat everything.. I said don’t touch it!”
I thought she was just joking with us.. the men did too. But she didn’t stop.
She said someone from WV came and told her that we couldn’t combine the two gardens. She said that he said they were two different projects, and “my” project had to be separate.
Funny, I had cleared the project with the person she was talking about. He, in fact, thought it was a great idea that we should definitely do.
We fought and fought. She said I promised them two wells and a pump system and that I didn’t do any of it. She said she had no idea where any of the money they gave me for the project went. She said she didn’t know anything about the proposal to combine all of the gardens together to save money on the fence posts. Point driven home by the co-op Secretary commenting in the background, “I’ve never heard of a garden without fence posts. I called them stupid cows, cussed them out in English, and left.
Decided to lock myself in my house and sleep all day… forget about the fact that all the things people were saying were completely false and exaggerated and that I couldn’t do anything about it. So I slept for five minutes. Then I could hear the distinct clamor of PBB outside and knew that I couldn’t stay around that. I packed up a bag and walked to Kankossa. Found a truck to Kiffa that evening, and the next morning found myself in the office of the WV person that PBB was quoting. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He said PBB was crazy, that her language was broken, and spent most of the meeting just shaking his head. We planned on a few meetings in the village to fix the problem, and I was on a WV car at noon heading back. The meetings never happened, and I headed down to Dakar for a completely amazing weekend being American, drinking beer, eating hot dogs, swimming/throwing people in a swimming pool, playing softball, and forgetting about PBB and the coop of chickens waiting to peck my eyes out when I got back.
I got back and had the WV person call PBB to clear up the problem. She said, alright, we’ll do whatever you want. I head back and have a meeting with the cooperative as a whole. Same stuff.. I didn’t tell them what I was doing.. blah.. blah.. headache. With the garden consolidation, they had two problems (that never surfaced when we talked about consolidating them months earlier and they agreed) 1) they wanted to leave the five meter wide path between the cooperative gardens and the village garden for animals and people to pass through and 2) some women in the cooperative didn’t buy into the fruit tree orchard, so they wanted the two cooperative gardens to be separate. The only reason we couldn’t do those things now was we didn’t have any fence posts. We used that money to dig the well. If we combined all of the gardens, we didn’t need to buy fence posts. If we created a new, independent garden, we would need to find some. And we didn’t have any money left in the budget.
Still, the cooperative decided to do what WV told them to do.. which was, to do whatever I told them to do. They want to keep WV happy; they give out things for free, like two wells, kilometers of fencing, and solar water pumps. We decided to install the fencing in two days.
The night before, PBB called me over to the garden. They had “found” some fence posts from a previous project, and if fence posts was the only thing holding us up in doing what they wanted to do, they asked if we could just use these. I said sure… wanting it all to be over. I wanted to combine the gardens for a few reasons (namely, the responsible utilization of their resources…. Two rows of beautiful fence posts feet away from each other separating land owned by the same person is a ridiculous waste). But, I just wanted to be finished with it. So the women started pulling up fence posts to be put in the ground for the new garden. Then, somewhat casually, they said they should be paid for doing the work. I brushed it off.. told them I wouldn’t pay them for work they are doing in their own garden.
I had already contracted ten men to install the fencing on the next day. I would rather not pay anyone in the village for that kind of unskilled labor. It seems like the community should come together and get things done. Or at least the women in the cooperative could be counted on to do some work. But, as the cooperative has repeatedly proven over the last two years that they can’t be and the men wouldn’t work without being paid, I paid the men. Women in the cooperative showed up on work day and continued to pull up the posts from the other garden and bring them to the new site.. Everyone helped to install the fence. So the fence went up with minimal problems.
That evening, I gave the money to Issa (my friend/counterpart who acted as the foreman for the day) to distribute to the men. I ate more dinner than I had been lately and drifted off into a peaceful sleep.
Issa and a few other men woke me up around midnight. Issa handed me the money. PBB had been to his house demanding that the money be split up between everyone that worked to install the fence. That would amount to about five cents for a day of work per person. He said the men decided they would do the work without charge. They didn’t want a problem. I told them I would deal with it in the morning (in my best cranky, half-asleep demeanor) and slept through the knots in my stomach.
There is no reason in the world that I would pay cooperative members for work in their own garden. Is that not a ridiculous notion? I shouldn’t be paying anyone in this village for unskilled labor. But, if I have to pay anyone, it will be people that aren’t in the cooperative. Should I pay them to water their plots? To wash their clothes? It’s absurd, and I had no problem telling them that. They even thought it was ridiculous.. I could see it in PBB’s eyes when she was yelling her case. The look that she was trying to get away with something and was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be able to.
The next day, I personally delivered the money to each man that helped out. Before they worked, I told them how much money they were going to get. So, I gave them that amount. Simple. I told them if the women ask them about it and have a problem, come to me.
They found me that evening.
I was walking down the hill on the way back home when they intercepted me. They had just had a meeting to discuss their new issue, so they were appropriately fired up. One woman (karate man’s wife) started in.
“If you don’t pay us, then tomorrow, the women are going to go down to the garden and tear everything up… we’re men.. why aren’t you paying us?”
I told them it was their garden.. if they tear it up, they are tearing up their garden. And I’m not going to pay to fix it.
At that point Toutou (let’s call her Kong… she’s freaking huge and could rip my arms off and wear me as a jacket) dittoed Karate Man’s wife, grabbing my arm and pulling on my shirt to get my attention.
I backed away giggling a little bit (is this really happening?).. PBB told me I should go and another man showed up saying they were crazy and that I should go. I didn’t think it was getting too serious, but I was tired of it and headed home.
This was all happening on the hill.. everyone in the village could hear and see what was going on. Issa’s wife had started up the hill to try and diffuse the situation. At the bottom of the hill, Magou (my host mother) was watching with a big stick in her hand, ready to use it if Kong made a move.
I didn't pay them and I won't.
I won.
So that was how it happened. |
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