Site Visit in Kongoussi

September 15, 2005

Greetings from Kongoussi! This place is pretty damn cool, and the longer I’m here, the more excited I become about the next two years. But first, here are two stories for you that, hopefully, will give you a bit of a taste of what development work is like here in Burkina, and what challenges I’m going to be facing:
1) When I originally found out (or suspected) I’d be coming to Kongoussi, I found it on a map, and was pleased to discover that one of the three paved roads coming north out of Ouaga went directly to Kongoussi. Thus, I was a bit surprised when the 100km bus ride up here took over three hours because it was along a sandy, dirt road, littered with holes, bumps, and puddles. This lack of concrete didn’t quite meet my definition of paved. After arriving, I found out why the road isn’t paved. Apparently, they’ve been planning on paving the road since the early 1990s. The government tried to get funding from various places, and after awhile the Chinese government (or some Chinese NGO – I’m not sure which) agreed to finance the whole construction. The Burkinabé government then made the brilliant discovery that they could save a lot of money by only changing the maps, instead of actually paving the road. So that’s what they did. On the plus side, there are rumors that they’ll begin paving the road for real in October. And they might actually follow through on it this time, if for no other reason than the fact that there’s a presidential election in November.
2) The current volunteer here in Kongoussi is a guy named Mike. Among the projects he’s worked on here was helping to secure a very large loan (2.5 million CFA, I believe – about $5,000) for a women’s group. The group was supposed to (assuming I have my details right – I might be confusing them with another women’s group) start a savonnerie – a soap making operation. The woman who received the money just pocketed the money, and never made any effort to start the savonnerie. She ignored and blew off both Mike and the bank. After this happened, Mike learned from the bank that this woman had taken out a loan from them before, which she also defaulted on. Needless to say, he was a bit flabbergasted about that, especially the fact that no one at the bank had either (1) thought to inform him of this woman’s credit history, and (2) that they made a second loan to her after she hadn’t been able to pay back the first one. And then yesterday, Mike and I were talking to André (my counterpart at the bank – more about him shortly), and learned that the woman had actually taken out a third loan, too, which (surprise!) she hadn’t paid back. This is the bank that I’m going to be working with.
Anyways, moving on. Although I’ve only seen one other site (Ouahigouya) where a volunteer is posted, I think I must have the sweetest post in this country (the only person I know of who can compete is Steve, who has a similar post to mine, although Giorgio / Lars in Ouahigouya also have things pretty nice). I’m going to talk a bit about Kongoussi first, and then backtrack and talk about the past few days in Ouaga.
Kongoussi is one of the few cities in Burkina that’s actually growing. There are a lot that are shrinking, and most of the rest are pretty stagnant. Wherever you go in Kongoussi, however, there’s construction – and not the kind of mud-brick-building-that-naturally-weathers-away-every-ten-years-so-you-have-to-rebuild-it construction, but concrete buildings. Mike says that if they actually do pave the road, the city is going to explode. And it’s a pretty nice city. The bus ride up here, especially the last third of it, reminded me a lot of southern Utah – the same shade of red sand, and the small, isolated hills and rock formations all over the place – it’s really pretty beautiful. Kongoussi itself is built along the southern end of Lac Bam, the largest natural lake in Burkina. The lake is great, since it means that (1) this place is much less desolate during the dry season than most other areas in the north, and (2) there is a much wider food and vegetable selection here. Green beans are huge here – Kongoussi exports many of their beans to Europe. At the moment, the market has things like tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers that were also available in Gourcy. But it has several things – watermelon, bananas, oranges (which are green, for some reason) – which you can’t find in Gourcy right now, even though Gourcy is about the same latitude as Kongoussi, maybe 70km to the west. I’m no longer at all concerned about being able to find enough to eat in this country – Kongoussi will have plenty. And with Ouaga only a three-hour bus ride away, I can head down there fairly regularly to stock up on the items that aren’t available anywhere else in the country. Kongoussi’s market is pretty big – bigger than Gourcy’s. And although technically the market is every three days, the market area is pretty bustling every day, so it’s never really a problem finding things.
As I said, I’m replacing a volunteer from Mike who’s COSing in November. He’s a nice guy, and has been very helpful getting me oriented, showing me some cool hidden places in Kongoussi (like the guy who makes pizza and quiche, but only for Mike), and answering my endless questions. I’m staying in Mike’s house, and this is where I’ll be staying for my two years here. The house is pretty nice – way, way, way better than my little hut in Minima. First of all, there’s electricity. This means I’ll have to pay an electric bill (Mike’s is about 2,000-3,000 CFA a month – with my computer and other accessories, I’m sure mine’ll be higher), but I’m cool with that. Second, the place is pretty big. The front room is probably about 16x10 feet, with two windows and a door (even a screen door – no one in this country has screen doors, except PCVs, since PC requires screens). There are two smaller rooms off the back – each is probably about 8x10. The whole place is easily about three to four times my place in Minima, which never seemed all that small (probably because it didn’t have anything in it). Also, the roof of this house is nice – it’s metal on top, then some space, and then a wood ceiling – this is a very expensive roofing style (wood is pricey here), but provides the best insulation, as well as reducing the noise when it rains. The roof and windows, combined with the fan, mean that the place is actually fairly cool. With the fan, Mike says it’s usually pretty comfortable inside. During the warm season, when it’s 110-115 degrees during the day, he often sleeps outside at night – the electricity is out between about 2am and 7am, just like in Gourcy, and he says that during the hot season he wakes up the instant the fan goes off.
However, if I get really hot, there’s an air-conditioned room at the bank I’m working at. And, wouldn’t you know it, that happens to be one of the two rooms at the bank with a computer. I have a feeling someone’s going to have a lot of computer problems during the hot season, problems for which that they’ll need help from their friendly computer nerd Peace Corps volunteer. Actually, I don’t think I’ll need to resort to computer sabotage to get into the A/C room – Mike says he often just takes a book in there and reads, and no one asks any questions.
A bit more about the bank. First of all, my official counterpart (every PCV has a designated counterpart) is a guy named André. He’s the Chef des Services Credit at the bank – one of the top guys. The bank has four main branches – one in Kongoussi, one in Djibo, and two in smaller villages nearby – but their headquarters is here in Kongoussi. Mike’s original counterpart when he started here two years ago was one of the branch managers. This was problematic for a number of reasons, which I’ll get to later. After awhile, Mike sort of gave up on his official counterpart and started working more with André, who’s been pretty helpful so far. Since I think some of the work I’ll be doing is going to be fairly different from what Mike did, I’m not sure how much I’ll end up working with André.
When Mike began working with the bank, it was fairly unclear what he was supposed to do. The bank also has communication problems. And Mike’s counterpart, as a manager of one of the branches outside of Kongoussi, was often not around. And when he was, he tended to ignore Mike or not help him out very much. So it took him awhile to find his place and figure out how things worked. Much of the information he’s passed on to me has been in the form of “you should avoid this…” or “be careful about this…” rather than things I should do. In the end, it sounds like he ended up working with people who were failing to make their loan payments, and trying to get to the root of their problem. This is what Rose had in mind for me to do, and it sounds pretty interesting. André, however, has been very excited by the fact that I’m an informaticien – a computer guy. When Mike arrived, they did a little bit of bookkeeping electronically, but it was sort of half-assed, and all done in Word. For some bizarre reason, the university in Ouaga only teaches people how to use Word, not Excel or any spreadsheet software, for accounting. So Mike has taught them some of the basics of Excel, but it sounds like they’d like to learn more. André’s already told me one thing he’d like to get done on the computer – a credit balance sheet, where every time someone takes out a loan or makes a payment, they have to recalculate a whole bunch of things. He’d like to have the computer do all the math for him – that shouldn’t be too hard. Mike’s also been mentioning some other potential ICT projects in Kongoussi, including working at one of the three cybercafés in town – the guy who runs the place apparently has no idea what he’s doing, and every time something breaks, he has to have someone come up from Ouaga to fix it. A little training might be able to go a long ways.
So André seems to think that a lot of the work I’ll be doing at the bank is computer-related, which is fine with me. I’m still interested in doing the credit stuff, and hope I get to. There’s only been one PCV in Burkina who’s focused primarily on ICT – Ryan, who worked with a cybercafé in Dori, but apparently things didn’t work out too well. Ryan’s COSing this year, and no one from last year’s or my stage has done any major ICT stuff. So PC Burkina has yet to have a successful ICT project – I’m hoping to break the mold on that. Of course, it’s easy to be optimistic and idealistic now – we’ll see what I think about this in another year or two. But I’m definitely interested in seeing how ICT stuff works in this country, and in trying to work with it here in Kongoussi, and am hopeful that a lot of the work I do here will be in this field.
All in all, Kongoussi is pretty sweet. I’m really looking forward to the end of October, when I’ll actually move in here and start working. The first thing I’m going to do is work on the house. Although it’s a nice house, Mike is not big on furnishing, decorating, or cleaning. Inside the front room of the house, there’s currently a large bookcase, a large table, five chairs, and a fan. The kitchen has one table, which has the stove on it. And the bedroom has a mattress on the floor, and no furniture. Everything is covered in dust / sand / dirt, and there are piles of books, clothes, and assorted other items all over the place. The walls are bare. Mike says he’s going to have the whole place cleaned by one if his women’s groups before he leaves. I’m already starting to visualize where I’m going to put things – I think I’ll try and get a dresser or armoire or something for the bedroom to put clothes in, as well as a small table, and possibly a bed frame or metal cot. The kitchen needs another table – there’s no usable counter space at the moment – and some shelves to store food on. The front room is furnished okay, but needs a bit more pizzazz – I’ll probably try and pick up a rug or mat (or maybe several) for the floor, and some pagnes or something else for the walls. Each room has one fluorescent light – although I’m not a big fan of fluorescent light, I don’t think there’s any good alternative.
I should have plenty of time for this decorating. During my first three months in Kongoussi, so November through January, I’m not supposed to leave the city. I’m sure I will, but I’m supposed to spend the whole time getting to know my way around the community, and working on my etude du milieu – a giant study of the community and my bank. The etude is where I’ll figure out what things are needed most in Kongoussi, and try to figure out what I’ll try and work on over the next two years.
So far, I’ve discovered only two weak points about Kongoussi. First, the lake makes it a bit more humid – than elsewhere in the north. Second, there aren’t many other PCVs around. The only person who Mike regularly sees is Kara, a new education volunteer (she just finished her etude, so she’s been at site for three months) who’s about 40km north of Kongoussi. There are a few other volunteers a little farther out, but it sounds like transport to Kongoussi is tough. There are three volunteers from my stage that are all within about 50km or so. There’s also some up in and around Djibo, due north on the main road. But the lack of nearby volunteers is made up for by the ease of travel (and in Mike’s case, frequency of travel) to Ouaga.
Speaking of Ouaga, here’s a quick narrative of my few days in Ouaga. We arrived on Sunday, and settled in at CACS – it’s a nice hotel over on the east side of the city, the same place we stayed during our first night in Burkina. There’s a brand new, very fast cybercafé just down the street, charging the wonderful price of 300CFA/hour (the cybercafés in Kongoussi range from 1,000 to 2,000 CFA for an hour, and are nowhere near as fast). So we all spent a bit of time over there, and then headed to the Embassy. Actually, we didn’t go to the Embassy itself, but the American Rec Center right next door. The Rec Center is a popular hangout for PCVs and ex-pats. It has a pool, a restaurant, a video library, and a few other amenities. After about two hours in the pool, I went inside and got a chocolate milkshake – delicious. A bunch of us then went inside and watched football. There were a lot of Bears, Redskins, and Steelers fans there, so we kept switching back and forth between the Bears-Redskins game and the Steelers-Titans game. We watched the games on Armed Forces Network, which is an interesting amalgamation of American programming and military propaganda – the commercial breaks during the football game, instead of advertising beer, were reminders of how important it is to follow orders, not rumors, on the front lines. Not what I’m used to. I had a bacon cheeseburger during the game – also delicious. By 8pm, the first round of football games was over. I wanted to stay and watch the Packers-Lions game, but everyone else was ready to leave at that point – from what I hear about the game, I didn’t miss much.
Most of Monday was spent in the Counterpart Workshop. This is when I first met André. The workshop had some useful parts, but a lot of it centered on themes like “the Peace Corps approach to development,” which while useful for the counterparts to hear, was a topic the stagiaires have been over several times. But late Monday afternoon, when we were done, I headed with a group of people to Marina Market. Marina Market is hard to describe. It’s a grocery store, and is the one place in Burkina where you can buy such novelties as parmesan, oregano, olive oil, Frosted Flakes, M&Ms, and a slew of other foods imported from Europe and the U.S. The stuff is expensive – some of it even pricier in Ouaga than it is in America. They also sell some electronics – I spent a bunch of time checking out the three refrigerators they had for sale. The electronics department seems to lie somewhere between a Wal-Mart and a Goodwill. While luxurious by Burkinabé standards, much of the merchandise would be considered fairly low quality in the U.S. A lot of the appliances appeared slightly used, and were no longer in any sort of packaging. Still, the food selection was amazing, and I will definitely be frequenting this place whenever I’m in Ouaga. Marina Market is in the Centre Ville, where all the nicer, more expensive places in the city are. We went to an Italian restaurant. I ordered a pizza for myself, and ate the whole thing (it was about a 12-inch pizza). And then I had ice cream for dessert. Eating non-Burkinabé food was a nice change of pace – worth the exorbitant 5,000CFA I paid for it.
Tuesday was more counterpart workshop. Afterwards, I went back to Centre Ville and looked around a bit more, then went with a few other people, including some COSing volunteers, to a restaurant called the Desert Rose. It wasn’t so much one restaurant, as a bunch of tables outside with assorted vendors nearby. I found a shish-kabob guy, and ended up eating 10 chicken and onion brochettes. They were quite tasty.
Wednesday, I met André at 5:150 in the morning (yuck), and then got to bike all the way across town (probably close to 10km), while André rode his moped in front of me – silly Peace Corps rules prohibit me from riding on his moped. By a little after 6:00am, we were at the STAF bus station, where we sat around for an hour and a half. The bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until 7:30, and I wondered to myself why we had left so early. At the gare, I talked to Ami and Andy – they were heading back to Djibo. Ami’s from my stage; Andy is the guy who’s blog I read before coming (andyburkina.com) who’s COSing in a month and a half. And, apparently, we look a lot alike. So much so that one of the people at CACS came up to me, thinking I was Andy, and started talking about something he had previously had a conversation with Andy about. It took me a minute or two to explain that I, personally, was not Andy. I don’t think the man believed me. At any rate, we were on the road by about 7:30am, and I soon discovered how Burkina had managed to swindle the Chinese, as explained above.
André and I arrived in Kongoussi sometime around 11:00, and Mike met us at the station. I then spent the rest of the day with Mike – getting a tour of Kongoussi, seeing the house, and just asking a lot of questions. Today was fairly similar, except we went to the bank this morning (and again this afternoon), where I got to meet everyone and talk to André a bit about the bank and my etude. Things move on a pretty relaxed schedule here. Yesterday, we told André we’d meet him at the bank at 8:00am. We actually walked in around 8:45am, and then sat around for about an hour (in the air-conditioned room, of course), before going around and making introductions. The introductions lasted maybe 15 minutes, and then we were done – free until our 3:00 meeting with André, when he went over a bit of organizational stuff with me. I have a lot of questions about the bank and how things work – André is making copies of several documents for me, including the Plan d’Affaires and Politiques de Financement et Credit for the bank – Mike cautions me that while these will be useful to see, there’s a huge difference between the way the bank operates on paper and in practice. It sounds like they have a fairly set way of doing things, but that to get funding from NGOs (or a Peace Corps volunteer) they have to make it look like things are run a different way. One of the big reasons the bank likes having a PC volunteer is because having a white person work there is great for business – not the most encouraging bit of information to hear. And although I still don’t know exactly what work I’ll be doing, I am starting to get a feel for the organization – and will get much more of a sense of this during my etude.
On a lighter note, today was the first time I’ve ever been hit by a turkey that was trying to back away from the monkey that was attacking it. While touring Kongoussi, Mike saw a monkey in a tree – not a common sight around here. We went over, and discovered that the thing was pretty hungry, so we bought some peanuts and started feeding it (it was a pet monkey, not a wild one). As we were watching the monkey eat the peanuts (surprisingly entertaining), some wild turkeys came over and started trying to eat the peanuts on the ground. The monkey didn’t like this, and lunged at the turkeys, one of whom ran into me while trying to flee. That’s something that never happened to me in the U.S.
I think I’ve written enough tonight that by this point, no one’s actually bothering to read what I’m writing, so I’m going to call it a night.