Work was (perhaps naturally) slow when we came back and we got a bit frustrated, which again served to reaffirm the extreme healing power of meetings! Yesterday we planned our way out of a hole by discussing priorities for our time and budget and setting a deadline for the final decision, which will involve another meeting on Friday. Nice! Also, in some over zealous preperation, I even put together a time vs. money spent graph with a volunteer happiness curve thrown in. It forecasts some accelerated spending, increased happiness, volunteer productivity and better all round results. I think it had the desired effect at the (hopefully temporary) expense of some respect.
A couple of times during the meeting, guys from the NGO stuck their heads in the door, just enough for us to see their looks of bewilderment induced by our exported British bureaucracy in full flow, with suitable amounts of paper, files, water bottles, happiness graphs and such.
The result of all these meetings has gladly been a plan of how best to spend our remaining money and time. I notice I might have been a bit light on the details of the project, so here's what we're actually doing out here. In previous years volunteers have spent the majority of their fund on the daaras in Dakar. This year we have continued to do this, while appreciating that this aspect addresses only the symptoms of the problem. With that in mind, we've set aside a very large part of the budget on projects which address the causes, by either preventing the daaras from appearing in Dakar in the first place, or returning them to their original rural locations.
Some explanation needed there I guess. Basically, a daara is a Koranic school which parents are obliged by religion to send their children to, nearly all villages in Senegal have them. The holy man responsible is called a marabout. Sometimes due to rural poverty, for example the parents not being able to pay for the education, or in the worst cases owing to simple greed, the Marabout will take the kids to Dakar that they might beg of the relatively wealthy people there, to obtain money for their education. Many marabouts take their religious duty seriously and are driven by desperation, others exploit their village's children for personal gain. Each marabout seemingly holds such an esteemed position in rural society that he does as he wishes. At the extreme end, there are 'high up' marabouts who have vast networks of beggars and are personally wealthy and powerful. These men often command more religious respect and, with their following, genuinely sway elections at a whim.
All of which is both fascinating and infuriating. Fascinating because, why read about centralisation of power through religion in Medieval Europe when a similar example confronts me as I stroll through the sandy streets, institutionally more secular but practically, just as influential. The infuriating aspect is obvious.
Here's the UNICEF angle on it, which has been influential with us. And underneath, a picture of l'Assemblee National.
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/senegal_34961.html
Our work in Dakar has been about relieving the children's difficult situation in the daaras here, where possible with well intentioned marabouts. Elsewhere, we've made a few trips out of town to assess potential preventative and returning projects, which we've now begun work on also. So that's how the project stands right now. I'll let you all know how it all finishes up.
After all this I could do with a holiday, so planning on my trip around West Africa with my family and girlfriend begins in earnest tomorrow, I smell an adventure.....
I'll leave you with a typical Senegalese street scene, complete with sand road, and man walking with foam mattresses on his head.
No comments:
Post a Comment