Q&A – Round 2 and Me and the Host Kids

I’ve gotten a few more questions via email and comments on the blog, so I thought I’d take some time to answer them. If you make it through reading this post (I know, they’ve been getting longer), there’s some pics of me and the kids from my host family at the end as a reward. 

Q: I know earlier you said you’d heard some good things about CIDA … what have you heard about other NGOs that are out there? Is there overlapping work, good or bad communication, collaboration (is there any UN or government collaboration involved)?

A: Good question! This is actually an area EWB is starting to focus on in Ghana, and we actually have a long term volunteer who just started really pushing this stuff. So I’ll give you an opinion based on what I’ve seen while working with the district assembly and what I’ve heard from others.

I know the District Assembly has collaborated pretty intimately with the World Bank, UN and CIDA. Those organizations have all expressed interest in supporting the District Assembly implement their plans. Through these actions, they’re basically saying “we think you have a better understanding of what’s going on in the district, so you show us your plans and we’ll help you implement some projects from them that fit our mandate”.

As far as I can tell, this is the best collaboration possible because they’re all funneling their money through one organization, who, given the right tools, can prioritize and implement the projects that are most effective. It greatly reduces the chances of wasted money and overlapping work. But it also creates a pretty heavy reliance on the performance of the district assembly. To try and improve their capacity, a lot of donors have been running “capacity building workshops” for the assembly staff. But there’s a definite lack of collaboration and communication here, and often different donors run workshops on the same things, and it seems like staff spend more time in workshops then doing their jobs. 

To try and get more collaboration and communication going, EWB has actually been working on improving meetings between all the major donors. On a regular basis, officials from these donors meet in Tamale (with EWB) and talk about their projects. So far, the meetings are basically just a run down of what each donor is working on. But EWB is working on improving the meetings so that they can discuss joint projects and improved collaboration between the donors.

 

Q: What did you bring back from your village stays to your work?

A: So, for me, my stay in the village was an opportunity to get confirmation on some of the things I heard at the District Assembly. From what I heard at work, officials go to the communities regularly, make sure they’re involved in the planning process and they should be able to voice their complaints through their assembly man.

When I was staying with the Assembly man for the area, I asked some questions about the assembly and how he thought it could work better. He said he had heard of the plans the district used vaguely, but hadn’t seen one. This was a pretty big shocker because, having been an assembly man for 2 years, he should have passed atleast 2 annual action plans and their associated budgets, which decide basically what the district will work on for the whole year. If you don’t see that document, you can’t possibility do your job as an assembly man. I told him how important it was, and he agreed and said he would try and have a look at it, that way he could actually hold the district responsible if something that was in the plan was not implemented.

When I was staying with the farmers, I asked them the same questions. They were actually really pleased with the assembly and their assembly man. They said they got frequent visits from district officials, were included in the planning process and got to decide what the community priority was, and the assembly man came around often to see how they were doing and hear their concerns. Basically, it was exactly what the district assembly told me I should see. I was really impressed to say the least.

This made me feel a lot better about my work, because the projects I decided to work on were based completely on what the assembly told me. If what they were saying wasn’t true, I may have tackled the completely wrong problem. I still think that other communities may not have been nearly as happy, but the seeing a community that was helped me feel more comfortable with my decisions. 

Q:  You mentioned that the farmers experienced obstacle in sales of their crops due to poor road conditions. Is there anything being done about that? 

A: The farmers said that they submitted it as their top priority to the District Assembly. They also said they petitioned the MP about it. Sadly, I don’t think it’s high up on the list of priorities for the district overall. Water, Education, Health, Sanitation and Electricity are in general given higher priority then road infrastructure. Even when looking at road infrastructure, their a lot of major highways in and around the district that are in terrible shape (the road to Tamale, the regional capital, is considered one of the worst in the country when you consider traffic volume and road condition). So yea, can’t see them getting too much help on that front. I am hopeful they will work on the situation on their own, and may even come up with an innovative solution that doesn’t involve so many resources, and if they do I’m sure they will be able to get some help from the assembly.

 

Q: How are you going to improve Computer Training with Adigun (the Planning Officer)?

A: This is something I’ve been really struggling with. He’s been really busy and away from the office a lot lately. He isn’t here this whole week. So, I’m thinking I’ll try and work out a more defined schedule for training with him when he gets back, instead of the whole “come by when your free” thing I’ve been trying so far. 

In the meantime, I’m focusing on improving budget, Wumbei, because I doubt I’ll be able to teach Adigun everything he needs in the next 3.5 weeks. Though I’m taking a bit of a risk, hoping the Wumbei will go a bit outside of his role to manage the database, create tools with Adigun, share his learnings and push the use of data, I’m feeling reasonably hopeful. This is partly because of Wumbei’s history working with an NGO whose mandate was improving government accountability, so he is passionate about the work, and also because he is a pretty strong personality who can speak his mind.

 

Q: Why don’t you want to do the classes during work hours?

A: So, it was something I was debating for some time. Part of it is the unpredictability it causes when it comes to attendance (a lot of my students are senior officers, and are barely in the office as it is). Another part is the fact that I didn’t want to take to much time off of work to teach, and wouldn’t want to miss any meetings etc. because of it.

But the main reason is because I wanted to make sure that it didn’t seem like I was taking their work hours lightly. The work environment here is pretty slack, most people who aren’t senior officers spend most of the day chilling interrupted intermittently by periods of work. People often leave for hours at a time for breaks and to run personal errands. There’s some serious lack of motivation in the workplace, which I can get into later, but yea, I didn’t want to be like “oh, well your not doing anything anyways, come learn excel”, it just seemed like the wrong message to send.

On that note, I have changed the classes up a bit, people can sign up for an hour of personal (me teaching 1 or 2 people) lessons on Sundays throughout the day. That way people can sign up when they know they’ll be free, and I don’t have to come in if no one signs up. I also don’t have to worry about having to teach a lot of people at once and can give people the help they need. It just seems a lot more effective overall in theory, I’ll tell you how it goes in practice. 

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Those were some pretty heavy questions, so I thought I’d throw in some pics of me and some of the kids playing around to lighten it up a bit. My relationship with them has gotten pretty good since I decided to show them the pictures of Canada and help them with dinner, eventually escalating to them throwing a mini-party in my room. I’m definitely the cool white guy now, especially after they found some Sean Paul on my computer. I found out that what they call me, Intha Kabrunei, actually means “our white brother”, so what I said about it being like a term of endearment was actually true literally as well. Anyways, Enjoy! And feel free to send me some more questions, comments or feedback.

Cheers,

Gajan

 

Bushira showing me how to actually stir TZ

Me stirring TZ (the kids took over again in about 30 s)

The kids posing

 

The kids partying in my room, Rashid DJing up front