Devastation!

Jordan here:  So I have recently been working with a group of men I have arranged that have supposedly been caring for a tree plantation from the Forestry Department.  It’s about 10 of them and they were theoretically contracted by the Forestry Department via another supervisory company to work and care for a piece of land (10 hectares) where woodlot and fruit trees were to be planted.  They were to plow the land, measure the spacing for transplanting, weed and remove grasses to prevent fires, make a fire belt 10 meters wide around the whole farm, and send fire patrols at all times to protect the farm.  They were supposed to be paid 100 GH cedis (a respectable salary!) per month if all requirements were completed.  I was then brought up to speed hearing people’s perspectives.  They said they weren’t being paid and there was no supervisory support, and after me arranging to meet with the person who is supposed to be supervising them, he said they weren’t doing the work properly.  So I don’t know exactly who or what to believe.  But being a Peace Corps Volunteer, we are supposed to bring ideas, organization, and create connections with host country nationals, so they can help themselves out of their problems.  So essentially, I inserted myself as a 3^rd party.  This wasn’t really my project from the get-go, but I would use my skills to try to bring the workers and supervisors together to come to some agreement.  I obviously knew that when they came together, there’s usually a lot of finger-pointing, sloughing of responsibility, and name calling.  After I let them get that out of their system, I tried to look forward and generate conversation about moving forward.  A half-spirited agreement was agreed that they would finish the work like they’re supposed to and that the supervisor would make proper reports and pay them for their work like he’s supposed to.  

I went to the plantation a 2^nd time to see what work they had done.  Now I’m not trying to belittle the difficulty in doing farmwork completely by hand, but the work they’d done since the meeting was far from finished.  They seemed to think that they were deserving of pay now.  I said that the place could easily still burn and if that happens, they would have no bargaining chips with the Forestry.  I instructed them of this and that they needed fire patrols.  It sounded like they understood.  I had planned to travel to Tumu on business things, one being meeting with Forestry people at the District Office to see if something could move forward now that they’d been working.  I arranged another meeting in Tarsor (not an easy task).  Eventually we all were sitting together and the few words I could hear the workers talking about was “U bi jima re”, or “he doesn’t know”, referring to me.  So I asked what it was that I didn’t know.  Turns out the farm burned to the ground the night before I left for Tumu.  DEVASTATED!  We had nothing to hold against the supervisor now and I had no weight to throw against him to get them paid.  Talk about disappointed.  

Looking forward, since you can expect it was a meeting full of “I told you so” and “if you would have done this” and “no, if you would have done that”, we are hoping they’ll give our community another chance.  Hopefully they will buy seedlings from our garden area, and then replant in Tarsor.  Then I would have a much more administrative role in the process from the start.  Who knows, maybe its all in vain since I won’t see the end of the project, and all it takes is one day when no one’s watching the farm for it to fail.  But hey, we gotta try.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.