Meetings And More

Only a week into the job, and I have already had a bunch of rewarding meetings. My work here more or less started out with a meeting. Every week we have a board meeting in Masanga. Present will be the manager of the hospital (Mr. Fortune), managers of the local businesses (Jasper and Abibu), and managers of the education department (Hinduja and myself). It is more than anything else a coordinating meeting, where ideas can be exchanged and everybody can be updated on, what is new in Masanga. We were warned that Mr. Fortune doesn’t always understand the concept of separation of the three branches, and like to be in control of everything. And he did talk quite a lot at the meeting – commenting on everything. But his comments were actually quite clever and thought through so no problem there. The trick is probably to let him think, he is in control of everything.

Next meeting was with Mr. Bah, who is District Education Officer (DEO) and as such the highest ranking ministry representative in the district – in other words an important man for our work. Previous to the meeting I was a little anxious. Was this to be my first meeting with the inefficient and corrupt statesman emptying the states finances into his own pockets instead of enriching those he is supposed to serve? Such an administrative system as is described in much africanist literature such as the classic ‘Politics of the Belly’ by J.F. Bayart written back in the late 1980s but still mandatory reading for any student of African societies.
Quite the opposite turned out to be the reality that confronted me at my first real working day in Africa. The man that sad before me was neither fat nor arrogant. Instead he seemed genuinely committed to the cause of bettering the districts level of education, and talked a lot about the immense obstacles confronting this mission. It was a pleasure to acknowledge many of his opinions as truly knowledgeable and clever.
I regard to us he gave us a lot of great stuff to use at the Education Centre, including new books (A book project financed by the World Bank had actually reached rural Sierra Leone to my great pleasure and astonishment), new school-related materials from UNICEF and volleyball net with two balls. The latter was explained with the following phrase “when people see all these things, they will be attracted, and they will come”. I hadn’t quite expected a give-away party of this calibre.
He also promised that if we were able to put together a decent adult education programme, he would be able to certify it, meaning that the “student” would be allowed access to the various technical schools in other towns. If this is to become reality, it could indeed make a different for the huge number of people, who because of the war never had the chance to learn a trade.
Lastly he promised me, that he would show me the grave of Sankoh (the former leader of the rebel movement RUF), which we be accident came to talk about. A really interesting opportunity to see a fascinating site and learn to know Mr. Bah better.

The day ended with a (very comprehensive) tour of Masanga, where we got to meet so many people, that my head was spinning at the end. But it had been an amazing day.

The next day offered a meeting with Jim from IBIS regarding a future collaboration regarding the teachers training programme. It was really promising, and there are indications that the first steps of our common work may start in may (now with word-games). We also accepted Jim’s proposal to go to Koidu in the east of Sierra Leone to see their training programme in the start of March. But more about that later.