February 12th

I know it’s been a week since my last blog but ...


Another week - more challenges and some interesting stuff.

Let me start with the challenges to finish off with the interesting stuff.

First of all I hired a young woman (Rose who is 23 and studies at night to complete her high school) as a helper around the house. The process in doing so was quite interesting as I met with her mother and a neighbour and herself - they were interviewing me as much as I was interviewing them. When it came down to asking how much it would cost for Rose to work for me 3 mornings a week at approx. 3hours a day - I never got a price. Rose did not say a word during the whole time and the mother repeatedly said that Rose was not her child even though she gave her birth - but was also my child as we are all children of God - and since I needed help then Rose was just happy to help me even for free if that was the will of God. So I never got a price. After some fact finding I was told to pay her 10 000F CFA a month since she was working but 30% of the time for me and a helper gets approx. 30 000F CFA a month. $25/month for somebody to clean the house (albeit a small house) - do my laundry and maybe even some cooking. I feel I am exploiting the system but then I was told that if I gave her more than others would feel bad or jealous or whatever and that I should respect the going price.

Then there is work - I will not mention the organization's name in my blog because I do not want my blog to pop up when people search the net for the name of the organization. But as most of you know they give post graduate courses and some short term training courses - but the problem is that they do not have any customers i.e. students - they are broke and are not paying their staff (since 2004) except for a token something a month (the difference accounted for as debt) - they are in debt over their ears (I have never seen red like this on a balance sheet) and have no one to finance them. Their parent co is in Cameroun and the Board of Directors have been trying to get some financing since 2006 with no success. They have asked the founder to come back to help them in this endeavour but he is over 80 years old by now and I have a feeling his network has retired some time ago. the average age of the support staff is 54 and the average age of the "management/coordinators" staff is 62. They have not had new blood in the place for ever. They themselves have very little competencies and they hire university professors to give the course material. In 1994 the CFA was devalued in half so the management of the time decided to double the salaries - so now they are stuck with salaries that make absolutely no sense for this environment and would even be considered generous by North American standards. They have been declining in enrolment since 1990 and have not done an awful lot to renew their course offering - which evidently is not interesting too many people. Their campus is absolutely decrepid - made out of mud for all purposes and suffering every rainy season (which is coming up). Did I mention they have no money - they have 4 students and the course finishes in October - but although the students have paid in full their tuition there is nothing left to pay the university professors to give the courses. Their General Manager is very autocratic and demeaning so the staff do not want to work for him - the atmosphere is the pits. And they think I am going to make a difference... to which I repeatedly tell them I am no miracle worker. They still think I can pull a rabbit out of a hat with millions of US$ attached to its ears. This is one challenge that I think will be my Waterloo and theirs. If anybody has any suggestions I would really appreciate it.

Another challenge in this wonderful city are the smells - as it gets hotter the smells get more pugnent - the pollution gets thicker and the Harmattan sands just make it yuck. I hardly pee I sweat so much and I drink a lot.

Last but not least new challenge is the security. My neighbour Thérèse and I went out last night and even though we came home early (8h30 pm) we got attacked by 2 young men on their motorcycle trying to steal our handbags. Thérèse got the worst of it as she was knocked to the ground and got 2 nice bumps - one on the head and the other on the arm - everything here is dirt roads with rocks and garbage so when you hit the ground you it hard. I only got a few scrapes - when they charged at us a second time since the first time they got nothing - but they eventually fleed with nothing - The sad part of it was that we were about 100 yards from home and it happened just in front of the Mosque - there was a guard sitting on the stairs of the Mosque and he did nothing - absolutely nothing. I guess the lesson learned is that we cannot go out at night with handbags at least - but maybe not at all. But we are fine and we will be much more vigilent in the future. I will be hiring a night watchman hopefully this coming week - my priority for the week.

The interesting stuff is that we went to the CCF (Centre Culturel Français) and there is an exposition of art from recycled materials and gigantic puppets - I will send pictures separately as my connection is too slow right now - but it was really nice. As I was taking pictures some guy told me I owed him 200F CFA per picture - they will try anything.

Tomorrow I am off to Boromo where there is a national park with wild elephants - so my next blog will be about that.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everybody.