Saturday, June 13, 2009
Aicha
It is said that volunteering is a life changing experience and benefits the volunteers more than the people they are trying to help. While this can be a bit trite, in my case there is a lot of truth in it. Shortly after arriving in Cameroon I formed a friendship with Aicha and we have become very close over the past 14 months. It has made a huge difference to my life here and some time ago we decided to get married. We were married in Maroua on Saturday 6th June. If this comes as a sudden revelation, please accept my apologies. As events developed they seemed too personal for my blog but as I am travelling to Ireland for three months I have to tell people at this stage. We had originally planned that Aicha would come with me but her visa application was rejected and although she has submitted an appeal she has been told that this will not be heard until late July. Hopefully she will be able to join me for part of the three months after which we will return to Cameroon.
Aicha lives in Maroua and up to a few weeks ago she worked as a nurse, specialising in HIV/AIDS counselling and awareness. She was based in a hospital in Mindif which is about 25 kilometers from Maroua. A few weeks ago she received a letter from the Minister for Health saying that the programme on which she works has been suspended indefinitely due to lack of funds. International donors have stopped funding the programme because of corruption. While this is bad news for Cameroon it is timely for Aicha. She had not been paid for nine months and although she had negotiated leave of absence to come to Ireland in any case, life had become too difficult for her since she also runs a bar in Maroua.
Aicha inherited the bar from her mother who died in 2007. She used to stay up until around 2:30 most mornings, depending on the clients, and then get up at 5:30 to organise the bar for the evening and make the journey by moto on an unsurfaced road to Mindif. She kept the bar going in order to pay for the education of her two brothers who are at university in Yaounde. She and the bar are very popular with volunteers. This is also true of her cookery skills and she is frequently called on to provide food in her bar for volunteers’ celebrations.
Aicha was born to a Christian father and a Muslim mother and she is a practising Muslim. She was her mother’s first child and her father subsequently divorced her mother. Her father died nine years ago.
Aicha was brought up by her grand-mother in Foumban. I have met her grand-mother, who is a most impressive person, and her family was most welcoming and hospitable. Aicha is a member of the Bamoun tribe. The internet has quite a lot of information on the Bamoun whose king lives in a grand palace in Foumban. Foumban is recognised as the centre for Cameroonian art, and is also a clearing house for art in neighbouring countries. I visited Foumban twice and an account of the first visit may be found in my September 2008 post.
Some people have asked me whether Aicha was previously married. The answer is “no”. When Aicha was 17 her family tried to marry her to a man whom she had not met but she ran away from home and hid with friends in a neighbouring village for a few months before being accepted back into her family without having to marry. When she was 20 there was a man whom she wanted to marry and who wanted to marry her but his family vetoed it because the two tribes were hostile. She subsequently did a two-year course in HIV/AIDS care and then came to the Far North to live with her mother in Maroua and work in Mindif.
Although the Bamoun come from West Cameroon, which is like a different country from the Far North, there is an influential community of Bamoun in Maroua. Aicha is active among them and among other things is captain of a hand-ball team, of which she is the main play-maker. There were 180 at our wedding, of whom the majority were Bamoun. We also had a wedding celebration in Maga on 30th May with around 130 people at which, among other things, I was given a sheep and two cocks. These have since been égorgés for the Maroua celebration along with various livestock which we were given there.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Local Projects
Some ex-colleagues in the Bank of Ireland raised money to support my work in Cameroon. This was hugely generous of them given what was happening in the Bank and in the Irish economy at the time (December/January). It was also very encouraging for me. I had not asked them to raise funds but their contributions were very timely since my budget was inadequate and I had begun to use my own money to press ahead with my programme in the council and also to support some valuable local projects. There is great scope for supporting projects since the real worth of money transferred to the Far North of Cameroon tends to be between 5 and 50 times its value in Ireland, and sometimes much more, depending on the use to which it is put. Having these funds available also freed up my own money for meeting the immediate needs of the people around me.
In my work in the Maga council I have been caught between two financial crises, one in the council and the other in VSO. The council is currently unable to collect enough taxes to pay its way and salaries are four months in arrears, there is no money for maintenance and no money for development, nor even to prepare proposals for projects which would attract funding to the area. VSO has lost some of its sources of funds and has fallen short of its financial commitments under my programme. In response to my pleas for help VSO recently found a small budget which has enabled me, among other things, to hold a workshop with the council's 38 tax collectors and to follow this up with a meeting on taxes with the council's executive. We have now completed an action plan for increasing the council's tax receipts. Hopefully these initiatives will bring about an improvement in the council's finances, but there is a mountain to be climbed.
Some of the money contributed in Ireland went directly to VSO Ireland to help them with their work in putting volunteers in the field. This is important because in the long term sustainable development will only come through programmes such as strengthening the capacities of councils and of civil society organisations. The next layer of funds contributed has gone towards furthering my work with the council, e.g. paying the costs of workshops and meetings of task groups. The rest of the money has gone towards supporting local projects.
In supporting projects I have tried to find ones where a little money will have a big effect. For example, I was asked to help prepare a proposal to attract state funds to provide "roads" to remote villages which are cut off from the main villages and from the main access routes of the county for several months each year because of the rains. The consequences of being cut off include not being able to transport produce such as rice to the markets when prices are high and not being able to get sick people to medical centres. The latter is a serious problem because villages in flooded areas are hotbeds of disease. State funds (sourced from the World Bank and other international donors) are available to support councils with improvement of local roads but in order to attract such funds one has to mount a campaign of letters and visits to a whole range of bureaucrats, including the Governor of the region, the Prefet of the district, the Sous-Prefet of the county, reprentatives of various ministries and local members of parliament. Once these people's commitment has been engaged, it is necessary to bring a team of technicians to survey the routes in question and assess the work required and its cost. This work has now been completed for three of the county's most inaccessible routes and a proposal has been prepared seeking the state funding. The amount of money required to get thus far is tiny in relation to the state funding but the council is unable to find this money at present. The prospects of getting the state funding look good.
A second project for which I have provided assistance has to do with handicapped people in the area. State funds are available to help handicapped people, e.g. by providing tricycles or crutches for them or by providing special training for them to enable them to become part of the workforce. To apply for such funds each handicapped person has to have a file containing a photo and four certificates, e.g. a certificate containing a description of the disability signed by the local doctor. At this stage we have just a photo of each handicapped person but this is no mean achievement. I paid for the rental of a moto and lent my camera to a to a man who spent a considerable amount of time and energy visiting all the villages and tracking down the handicapped people. It was arduous and dangerous given the state of the roads and the unhygienic condition of some of the villages in which he had to eat and sleep. Even getting the photos printed was a saga in itself. The main printing facility in Maroua was not working and I came to an arrangement with an individual who had the equipment. We agreed on a price but he ran out of ink with around a quarter of the photos not yet printed and I also found that his printer chopped off the heads and feet in about a third of those which had been printed. Given that the heads are needed for identification and that the feet are needed in many cases to illustrate the disability, these photos needed to be reprinted. He has not been able to get a replacement ink carton but luckily I had to visit Douala, the industrial capital of Cameroon, for other purposes and I had the remaining photos printed there. Getting the certificates will be difficult. For example, the Maga health centre's doctor has gone to Belgium for a year for training and we must await his return.
A third project which I am assisting has to do with providing birth certificates for children in the local primary school. When a child is born the parents have 30 days in which to register the birth. After that, children who need birth certificates, e.g. to continue their education or get jobs with the state, have to go before a tribunal with three witnesses and present a file with a photo and various certificates in order to become registered. It is a cumbersome and expensive process and the tribunal sits in a town which is 80 kilometers away when the direct road is useable (typically for three months each year) and 200 kilometers away when not. I was approached by a person who had assembled the files on 114 children and was asked to support an initiative to have the tribunal come to Maga to hear these cases since bringing all the children and their witnesses to the other town would be too difficult. I agreed to do this but after six months and after sending various emissaries to the chairman of the tribunal, going to see him myself and even sending him some fish from Lake Maga, we still do not have a firm date. The rains have started and the road will be impassable for the next nine months. As they say here, "il faut patienter".
These are just beginnings. If the funding is granted for the roads there are several other roads which need to be tackled. Assembling the files on the handicapped people will require a lot of work, and then they will have to be categorised and requests prepared for various kinds of assistance. Procedures are now in place to make sure that most current births are registered but there are thousands of children in the county who have not been registered in the past. And of course there many other useful projects which could be supported.
On a more personal level, I am frequently approached for money by people who cannot feed their families, cannot pay for treatment and medicines when ill, whose children have been sent home from school because small fees and levies have not been paid, etc. I am also asked to provide capital for individuals' money making enterprises, e.g. to rent land to grow rice, to buy fertilisers, to buy nets for fishing. Many ask for loans but my experience of repayment is bad, I have to be prepared for non-repayment and I have become hard-nosed about only providing funds in cases of need. While my main focus is on long-term sustainable development, I cannot ignore the immediate needs of those around me. For example, the son of a colleague in the council was knocked down by a moto and had a broken leg. He could not pay to have the leg set until the next pay day, which could be up to three months away. A small donation in such circumstances is clearly immensely valuable. Judgement of whether people are really in need can be difficult. However the consequences of refusing to help those genuinely in need vastly outweigh any embarrassment of being misled by those who are not in need. In any case, I do not use funds contributed from Ireland to meet such immediate needs but use them only to support development projects such as those discussed above.
September 2009:
When I was in Ireland on holidays many friends donated generously. I will give updates here from time to time on how these funds are being used.
One initiative which has already taken place has to do with children who are HIV positive. Aicha works with many such children on Cameroon's HIV/AIDS programme. These children are entitled to free drugs but must first undergo an examination. 30 of these children have up to now been unable to pay for this examination but this week she brought them to Maroua and we paid for the examinations out of the fund. Or so we thought at the time! Aicha asked for a receipted invoice for the examinations and was told that this would take some time. She kept asking and eventually the director of the hospital rang her to say that the examinations are free for children and he returned the money that she had paid. None of Aicha's colleagues knew that the examinations are free for children and one can surmise what would have happened the money she had paid had she not insisted on a receipt.
October 2009:
A survey has shown that more than 200 new deep wells are needed in the county. We paid for a delegate from the appropriate ministry to come and inspect 10 proposed sites and we have prepared demands with his help. He also helped us to prepare demands for extending the electricity grid to a number of villages. Both these projects will be funded by the state, if successful, but without our financial support and guidance the local people would not be able to raise the demands. We clearly need to do much more, particularly in relation to wells since dirty drinking water is undoubtedly a cause of illness and deaths, and we are talking to organisations which could help us with this.
In my work in the Maga council I have been caught between two financial crises, one in the council and the other in VSO. The council is currently unable to collect enough taxes to pay its way and salaries are four months in arrears, there is no money for maintenance and no money for development, nor even to prepare proposals for projects which would attract funding to the area. VSO has lost some of its sources of funds and has fallen short of its financial commitments under my programme. In response to my pleas for help VSO recently found a small budget which has enabled me, among other things, to hold a workshop with the council's 38 tax collectors and to follow this up with a meeting on taxes with the council's executive. We have now completed an action plan for increasing the council's tax receipts. Hopefully these initiatives will bring about an improvement in the council's finances, but there is a mountain to be climbed.
Some of the money contributed in Ireland went directly to VSO Ireland to help them with their work in putting volunteers in the field. This is important because in the long term sustainable development will only come through programmes such as strengthening the capacities of councils and of civil society organisations. The next layer of funds contributed has gone towards furthering my work with the council, e.g. paying the costs of workshops and meetings of task groups. The rest of the money has gone towards supporting local projects.
In supporting projects I have tried to find ones where a little money will have a big effect. For example, I was asked to help prepare a proposal to attract state funds to provide "roads" to remote villages which are cut off from the main villages and from the main access routes of the county for several months each year because of the rains. The consequences of being cut off include not being able to transport produce such as rice to the markets when prices are high and not being able to get sick people to medical centres. The latter is a serious problem because villages in flooded areas are hotbeds of disease. State funds (sourced from the World Bank and other international donors) are available to support councils with improvement of local roads but in order to attract such funds one has to mount a campaign of letters and visits to a whole range of bureaucrats, including the Governor of the region, the Prefet of the district, the Sous-Prefet of the county, reprentatives of various ministries and local members of parliament. Once these people's commitment has been engaged, it is necessary to bring a team of technicians to survey the routes in question and assess the work required and its cost. This work has now been completed for three of the county's most inaccessible routes and a proposal has been prepared seeking the state funding. The amount of money required to get thus far is tiny in relation to the state funding but the council is unable to find this money at present. The prospects of getting the state funding look good.
A second project for which I have provided assistance has to do with handicapped people in the area. State funds are available to help handicapped people, e.g. by providing tricycles or crutches for them or by providing special training for them to enable them to become part of the workforce. To apply for such funds each handicapped person has to have a file containing a photo and four certificates, e.g. a certificate containing a description of the disability signed by the local doctor. At this stage we have just a photo of each handicapped person but this is no mean achievement. I paid for the rental of a moto and lent my camera to a to a man who spent a considerable amount of time and energy visiting all the villages and tracking down the handicapped people. It was arduous and dangerous given the state of the roads and the unhygienic condition of some of the villages in which he had to eat and sleep. Even getting the photos printed was a saga in itself. The main printing facility in Maroua was not working and I came to an arrangement with an individual who had the equipment. We agreed on a price but he ran out of ink with around a quarter of the photos not yet printed and I also found that his printer chopped off the heads and feet in about a third of those which had been printed. Given that the heads are needed for identification and that the feet are needed in many cases to illustrate the disability, these photos needed to be reprinted. He has not been able to get a replacement ink carton but luckily I had to visit Douala, the industrial capital of Cameroon, for other purposes and I had the remaining photos printed there. Getting the certificates will be difficult. For example, the Maga health centre's doctor has gone to Belgium for a year for training and we must await his return.
A third project which I am assisting has to do with providing birth certificates for children in the local primary school. When a child is born the parents have 30 days in which to register the birth. After that, children who need birth certificates, e.g. to continue their education or get jobs with the state, have to go before a tribunal with three witnesses and present a file with a photo and various certificates in order to become registered. It is a cumbersome and expensive process and the tribunal sits in a town which is 80 kilometers away when the direct road is useable (typically for three months each year) and 200 kilometers away when not. I was approached by a person who had assembled the files on 114 children and was asked to support an initiative to have the tribunal come to Maga to hear these cases since bringing all the children and their witnesses to the other town would be too difficult. I agreed to do this but after six months and after sending various emissaries to the chairman of the tribunal, going to see him myself and even sending him some fish from Lake Maga, we still do not have a firm date. The rains have started and the road will be impassable for the next nine months. As they say here, "il faut patienter".
These are just beginnings. If the funding is granted for the roads there are several other roads which need to be tackled. Assembling the files on the handicapped people will require a lot of work, and then they will have to be categorised and requests prepared for various kinds of assistance. Procedures are now in place to make sure that most current births are registered but there are thousands of children in the county who have not been registered in the past. And of course there many other useful projects which could be supported.
On a more personal level, I am frequently approached for money by people who cannot feed their families, cannot pay for treatment and medicines when ill, whose children have been sent home from school because small fees and levies have not been paid, etc. I am also asked to provide capital for individuals' money making enterprises, e.g. to rent land to grow rice, to buy fertilisers, to buy nets for fishing. Many ask for loans but my experience of repayment is bad, I have to be prepared for non-repayment and I have become hard-nosed about only providing funds in cases of need. While my main focus is on long-term sustainable development, I cannot ignore the immediate needs of those around me. For example, the son of a colleague in the council was knocked down by a moto and had a broken leg. He could not pay to have the leg set until the next pay day, which could be up to three months away. A small donation in such circumstances is clearly immensely valuable. Judgement of whether people are really in need can be difficult. However the consequences of refusing to help those genuinely in need vastly outweigh any embarrassment of being misled by those who are not in need. In any case, I do not use funds contributed from Ireland to meet such immediate needs but use them only to support development projects such as those discussed above.
September 2009:
When I was in Ireland on holidays many friends donated generously. I will give updates here from time to time on how these funds are being used.
One initiative which has already taken place has to do with children who are HIV positive. Aicha works with many such children on Cameroon's HIV/AIDS programme. These children are entitled to free drugs but must first undergo an examination. 30 of these children have up to now been unable to pay for this examination but this week she brought them to Maroua and we paid for the examinations out of the fund. Or so we thought at the time! Aicha asked for a receipted invoice for the examinations and was told that this would take some time. She kept asking and eventually the director of the hospital rang her to say that the examinations are free for children and he returned the money that she had paid. None of Aicha's colleagues knew that the examinations are free for children and one can surmise what would have happened the money she had paid had she not insisted on a receipt.
October 2009:
A survey has shown that more than 200 new deep wells are needed in the county. We paid for a delegate from the appropriate ministry to come and inspect 10 proposed sites and we have prepared demands with his help. He also helped us to prepare demands for extending the electricity grid to a number of villages. Both these projects will be funded by the state, if successful, but without our financial support and guidance the local people would not be able to raise the demands. We clearly need to do much more, particularly in relation to wells since dirty drinking water is undoubtedly a cause of illness and deaths, and we are talking to organisations which could help us with this.
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