what a universe

Here you see a view from training back in August '06:
Trainer Paul shows us that life and the universe are only scary if we decide to be scared. Hold that scorpion tight and we just might find peace, love, and knowledge...

Making skin lotion in village

Here you can see the closing moments of a training on how to make skin lotion out of peanut oil, candles, and perfume. Instead of sending their money to Nigeria by buying Nigerian made skin lotion, women can make it with local products. It turned out to be a successful training, but part way through I wasn't so sure.

All the women of the village were assembled and we began to purify the oil by heating it. But as the oil began to smoke and then burn, I sat petrified by the prospect of losing all credibility with the village women. What was shaping up as a nail in the coffin of my village work turned out a great success.

The lotion began to cool and coalesce, one woman dipped her finger in and tried rubbing the lotion into her arm, and suddenly women from all over the village were running to find small containers in which to put the lotion. An argument even erupted over who had the right to the lotion, and it was decided that only those who contributed to buy the materials, would have the right to apply the newest village beauty product.

Barber Adébayor

Barber Adébayor
Originally uploaded by parisdelhi.

After talking a bit about the frustrations of village work, I had to come back with a more inspiring story. The Barber nicknamed 'Adébayor' is that story.

Waiting for a bush taxi back to village I decided to get a haircut. Fortunately for me, I was taken to 'Adébayor,' a barber located adjacent to the taxi station.

As the locks fell away, Adébayor began to tell of himself, that he had just returned from the ECOWAS games for the handicapped, held in Mauritania, where he won 3rd place in West Africa in the discipline of Weight Lifting.

His strength is not to be contested. Many told him that suffering from Polio, he would not be able to run a barber shop. But after pleading in Churches and Mosques up and down Togo, he put together enough funds to launch the business that you can see behind him in the photo.

Adébayor's mother left at an early age to Niger and his father was killed in a taxi accident in which he was also injured. Adébayor made it through to 9th grade before deciding that he needed to learn a trade in order to get by.

He told me how he cried the first time he met White handicapped athletes in Nigeria. That experience caused him to feel a solidarity with the whole of humanity. As he clipped away at my hair I certainly could feel that he saw me not as another rich White man, but as a fellow human being.

Today's project and yesterday's

*Entry updated* Though all is well, I cannot hide the fact that frustrations exist and the following is an example of one. In this photo you see two projects: in the foreground a tree planting project for which we are filling sacks with soil and in the background the project of a Peace Corps volunteer that preceded me almost 10 years ago and was based in a nearby village. What you can see of the project of the former volunteer are two latrine pits with cement floors and raised foot holds for the user to place his or her feet. These two latrines were paid for with funds from the US. The village's contribution to the project was to build walls, either with mud, branches, and or thatch, around the latrines so that they could be used in privacy. But to this day, to my knowledge, only one of the 15 or so latrines has been regularly used, only one has had walls built around it.

Possible reasonings behind the abandonment of the latrines include:

-The idea that it isn't our actions or efforts that make us sick or rich or poor but God's will. So following this logic, whether you have good hygiene or not has no bearing on your health, either God will make you sick or he will make you healthy.

-"If I do something my neighbors aren't doing, people might think ill of me." As I stated in an earlier post, if your fellow villagers see you developing beyond their level, they might accuse you of something, judge you, or even try to kill you. According to a good source, the university students that come back to village, of which there is now only one, are under threat of verbal and or physical abuse from jealous fellow villagers. Trying to get ahead is not necessarily a good idea in village. It is the same jealousy that blocks personal initiative in village and that reveals my primary job: to make development, or personal initiative (or village initiative etc.), socially acceptable or socially popular. If you are working with the white guy, people are less likely to "sabotage" you (psychologically or physically) as they might if you, as an African, were doing it alone.

-These are just a couple possibilities that might explain why the latrines have gone unused, there are surely many more possible explanations...

More about the latrine story, added 03/14/2007:

As I had long hesitated before writing an entry with negative content, I need to complete my entry about the failed latrine project. My first entry on the subject was not complete and I have done more research:

First off, I should have included in my original entry the fact that a number of months after the completion of my predecessor's project, a non-governmental organization (NGO) came to village and offered to build latrines. So for reasons that I will not speculate about, the NGO built full latrines with cement walls and roofs in many cases right next to my predecessor's latrines. So as I walk around village, I see cement walled and roofed latrines standing right next to my fellow volunteer's unused latrines. This is quite a sight. But in a village of 3,000 the NGO latrines do not suffice, so the mystery of why the others have been abandoned remains.

There are a number of the unused latrines, such as the two in the photo accomanying this entry, that did not have full NGO latrines built next to them. So in those cases, the adjacent families have no usable latrine because they have not built enlcosures around the ones built in collaboration with my colleague. I did more research on why.

According to my best source in village, the lack of will to build enclosures around the unused latrines is not due to the reasons that I proposed in my first entry, though the source did confirm the presence of the phenomena that I had sited as possible explanations. According to him, there are 3 main reasons why the latrines have gone unused:

1)time orientation; many in village just want to eat today, and think less about the future. As long as they are able to put a bit of food in the stomach, they are contented. Thus, given that the latrines necessitate that a bit more importance be placed on the future, they are less considered.

2)lack of schooling; according to my source, many problems in village find their cause in the lack of "ABCs," as he terms schooling. Following this logic, without schooling a villager is less likely to fully understand the importance of latrines.

3)difficulty of collaboration in village; according to the same source, the village has trouble collaborating. For instance, a few people will break their backs digging the latrine hole while other villagers will just walk by and say "good work, good work." Then when it comes to using the latrines, all the folks that did not pitch-in will want to use the latrines that they did not help build. Thus the family that builds a latrine has to clean-up after everyone, or put a padlock on the door as many have done. So if enclosures were built around the unused latrines everyone would come use the latrine at your place...

...and the first two reasons probably result in a lack of motivation to overcome this third reason.

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