Recruitment Continues

I am still in the process of recruiting participants in the workshops that will be teaching people how to develop community development projects. I am about half-way done. I think that by the end of next week I will have visited over half the houses in Zone F. I've never conducted surveys before. It's quite the repetitive process. It's a bit hard to focus sometimes when I am repeating myself for the 40th time. I start to forget to say some things or say them slightly differently every time.

 

But it's also interesting, because I am able to see common responses of people. At the end, when I am finished explaining what PACE is all about and they are finished telling me who they think would be good participants, I always ask if they have any questions or concerns about the project. Before I ask them that, they are almost always ready to say goodbye, which would seem to indicate that they don't have any questions. But so far almost every person has had at least one question or concern. Some have many... "People cultivate in the morning, so you should hold the workshops in the evening. What is the content of the workshops? What will the participants do when the workshops are finished? What kinds of projects will the create? What if the people we choose don't want to be in the workshops? Can only educated people participate?"

 

I'm always glad when they have concerns and questions, because that means they care about how the workshops turn out and are expecting something. It seems like a lot of what I am doing is raising people's expectations for PACE, but I think that's important. If the community doesn't expect real results from PACE, then who will put pressure on the participants to do a good job?

 

It makes me nervous too. If it fails or doesn't meet their expectations, they may lose a lot of faith in FORGE, me, the participants, and PACE. And they'll all be disappointed. But a lot of people have put a lot of thought into PACE, and dozens of heads are better than one, so it's hard to imagine that it would completely flop. It's also great to hear people's concerns and questions, because most of them have been repeated several times, and there are rarely new ones, which makes me think that we have all the bases covered.

 

Yesterday, I taped three of the interviews. I hope to videotape all the parts of the project so that people who contributed to PACE can see exactly what the project looked like. You'll have to wait to see the final project, but these interviews generally take place in the shade of people's mud brick huts on little stools, logs, buckets, and chairs. I always get the nicest chair, which feels weird every time but I always accept gratefully. Children usually congregate and are soon shooed away by the adults. Pigs and goats wander around in the shade. I sometimes wonder on a scale of 1 to 10 exactly how out of place I look. I'm guessing maybe an 8.

Finally Starting

The past few weeks have been a blur. My life has been completely devoted to leading the team of FORGE ambassadors to implement their projects in Meheba. The team left Meheba one week ago, and their projects have exceeded all my expectations. And I had really high expectations for them. In fact, in the past two months, the people I taught to design, implement, and manage community development projects have been teaching me just as much as I taught them. Watching their five projects develop from just ideas to buildings, workshops, employees, programs, and smiles has made me very proud to be their leader. I can't wait to see what happens to their projects throughout the next 4 months that I will be in Meheba. I wish I could bring you all to Meheba to see the projects and the people they have empowered.

 

A few days before we left Meheba, we had a going away party, to which we invited every single person that we had worked with over the past two months. There were a total of about 80 people there. Many of the people hadn't even met each other. But we brought out a guitar and a couple drums, and soon enough everyone was on their feet, dancing and singing together. It was inspiring to see how many people in the community had gotten involved in our projects in such a short time. I tried to imagine what the people there would be doing if FORGE hadn't come. I tried to imagine what we would be doing if they hadn't been in Meheba to work with. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you bring people's complementary resources together; they had knowledge of the community and relationships in the community, while we had information, money, and relative power. Without this combination, the projects wouldn't have worked. I had to give a speech in between dinner and the dancing, and while I spoke I found myself overcome with pride and sadness. I was sad that the relationship between the ambassadors and the refugees was about to end. It's amazing what tight bonds can form between people when they are working passionately towards the same goals.

Quiet Meheba

I returned to Meheba yesterday. I am not often sentimental, but when I arrived at the place I had been living with sixteen people for the past few weeks - normally bustling with project conversations, singing of Disney songs, and announcements of having lost something - I was alarmed by the stillness and the silence. All I saw were leaves on the ground and closed doors. The place felt empty - empty in the way that one looks at something that was formerly over-filled.

 

So I spent a few hours this morning cleaning up and rearranging the place with Cody, the FORGE project manager who will be here for the next few months with me. It's funny how a space is difficult to live in until you have made it feel like home. I'm not sure what parts of what I did made this feel like home, but when I woke up this morning, this didn't feel like home, and now it does. I have a desk to type on. I have a drawer to dump all the little things that don't belong anywhere else in. And I have a clean floor that I can take my shoes off on without getting little pebbles stuck to the bottom.

 

Once I created my home, I began planning the first moves I will make for PACE. I can see it more clearly than I have ever been able to before. I know who I will be talking to, what I will be asking them, and what I hope to get from the meetings. Being prepared makes me feel confident, calm, and excited. I can't think of anything I've ever prepared for as much as I have prepared for this. I'm sure there will be unexpected challenges along the way - the unknown unknowns, as Rumsfeld would say - but I'm hoping they will add excitement and be manageable.

First Day

I am surprised at how quickly things got off to a start with PACE. There's a man named Jean who I wanted to go talk to this morning who lives in Zone F (where I am implementing PACE). I was just getting ready to go find him, when he arrived at road 26 (the place I live). I told him I wanted to meet with the community leaders sometime soon to inform them about PACE and respond to any questions or concerns they had. I expected this meeting to happen in a couple days, but Jean was able to gather all the community leaders by 2:30 in the afternoon, so I had the meeting just a couple hours later.

 

What I like about explaining PACE is that, generally, the more people understand what the project is about, the more attentive and excited they get, which I always take a good sign. It's even better when someone is translating for you because you can really focus on their reactions to what you are saying because you aren't actually speaking when they are listening to the translation of what you just said. They weren't overly emotional. But I definitely noticed some widening eyes and grins as they started to get the gist of the project.

 

The only hard part was explaining to them that I was only informing them about the project - not inviting them to participate in the project. I think they were disappointed that they wouldn't all be able to participate in the project. In the end I think they thought that the method I will be using to recruit the participants - by asking people in the community who they trust and who they think has the capacity and interest in creating a community development project - was a good way to go about it.

 

Tomorrow I will be finding a translator and going around to people in the community to find out who they think would be suitable participants. I am a bit nervous. Finding the right people is key. If the people aren't committed, or aren't people who really care about the community, or don't have people's trust then the project will fail.