Out to the field!

The month is flying by!! So far I’ve been out of the office for most of it.
We have completed the installation of our first water network in the east. I have been following the activities in Sualigo (village where this is installed) along with technicians on the field. This water network has so far been one of our major costs and it’s a cost that we want to reduce to be able to install more of them in more villages with the budget that we’ve been given. Ironically, when Guillaume and I went to a party at the Canadian Ambassador’s house, I saw a very similar chateau d’eau in his yard right next his cool and fresh water pool! This was difficult to digest as I realized how easily he can have this nicely constructed chateau d’eau right there in his house while a program like ours and a village like Sualigo with a population of more than 2000 people struggles to put a similar one in place.
Another field mission and perhaps the most interesting of all for me so far was ten days spent in three villages near Dedougou (west of Burkinq) conducting EFPs (étude faisabilité participative with a group of 19 consultants…very interesting!! By the end you are to figure out lots about the village you are in like %poor,%rich,%alphabetized, perspective of women and their level of decision making, power dynamics and so many other things. Its quite an intense process and you really need to be organized but its supppppppper interesting), an eye opening experience on realities of the field. While we had these perfectly written documents in hand signed off by UN professionals on how to go about conducting a participatory study, there were many situations were we didn’t know where to look for to find solutions. So we would adjust and ask questions in different ways with a different structure to get results. An example is the venn diagrame as a method to determine different organizations and groups involved in the village activities and the closeness of each to the committee managing the plateforms. Following the steps suggested ended up in a fight where each person in the group was claiming the organization where he or she was involved with is the one with the closest relationship to the group that is to manage MFP!!! I have to admit it was quite funny to see everyone argue…

In addition to what I saw, I also heard lots of stories (don’t know if they’re true or not) from 19 other field workers that I was working with. A crazy one was this lady who once was sent to a region of animists to conduct a study (she is a mosi). Her arrival coincided with that time of the year where this ethnic group has to do a fetich for the season’s harvest. The fetich requires human blood and so each year there is a villager who is killed and his blood is used for this fetich. As she happened to be the newly arriving étranger, they decide to have her killed! Long story short, she manages to escape but ever since then she refuses to participate in any activity held in an animist village. I am not planning on conducting studies in this kinda villigaes either so don’t worry!

Regardless of the obstacles, the work continues and the field workers try to adjust and find solutions. But seeing and hearing some of these problems has made me realize the difficulty of being on the field. So now when someone tells me ‘c’est dur le travail sur le terrain’ I try to understand what they mean based on their perspective and their realities. Part of my impact plan is still to get the people in my office to get out more often; increasing frequency, duration and depth of aller sur le terrain of members in the team. Well, it ain’t gonna be as easy as I thought!

First week of juin, I am going back to one of these villages where our EFP was positive to begin the installation process of MFP. I am quite excited to follow up with the progress and the impacts afterwards. It’s really neat to observe from the beginning and witness the evolution.