How to do a Project in Cape Verde

So as I said before, over the past month or so I, along with my local association, have been planning an event for World AIDS Day (December 1st...mark your calendars!) in my town, and I thought I’d try to write a little bit about what that entails and why it’s nearly impossible to get anything accomplished in this country. Now this is a long and complicated process, and thus a longer story than normal, so for those (two or three) interested persons, I’ll break it up into several entries over several days.
In a nutshell, what we’re doing is to invite all four towns in my ribeira to all-day soccer/basketball tournament here in Txangreja, during which we’ll play soccer/basketball, talk about AIDS awareness and prevention, paint some anti-AIDS slogans on the walls of the polivalent (miniature concrete soccer field), distribute condoms and T-shirts and trophies, and wrap the whole thing up with food and juice and a dance.

Now, at the beginning, I thought of the project as “difficult but doable.” I have since come to think of it as “overambitious” to say the least, and probably requiring divine intervention. There are a multitude of challenges every step of the way, and if I had any hair on my head I’d be pulling it out by now. What I’ve learned over the past several weeks is that in Cape Verde, you have to go back and reinvent not just the wheel, but the lever, the fulcrum, and several of Newton’s Laws for each and every step involved in getting anything done. But I’ll get to that.


Now obviously I didn’t have any particular qualifications in community development or “event planning” before I came here (unless you count my annual Halloween Pumpkin Carving Parties, or the 1st Annual South Austin Rock-Paper-Scissors Pro-Am Invitational Open that we had at my house a couple years back). However, at our last two group training events in Praia, Peace Corps gave us a crash course in project planning and development, including how to secure funding and write grant proposals. As it turns out, there are quite a lot of American and international funds available for AIDS education and awareness programs in Africa. Its not just free money...there are many stipulations (the maximum amount that can be requested, what types of projects can be funded, what the funds can be used to purchase, and other restrictions on how the money can be spent). The particular grant I had in mind demands a minimum community and/or third party contribution of 25% of the total project cost. Cognizant of all these restrictions, I set out to get Txangreja some of that money.


During our Peace Corps training, we learned that there are many important steps involved in planning a community project. The “African Development Model” currently in favor (although there are a lot to choose from), says that before you can even decide what it is you’re going to do, you gotta do a ton of other stuff first. Ergo, we had several “experts” come and talk to us about Resource Procurement, Asset and Community Mapping, Feasibility Studies, Appreciative Inquiries, Community Leader Identification, Resource Management, Community Contribution and the Development of Local Agendas. So for brevity’s sake, lets just say that all of that stuff is what I’ve been doing for the last year and a half in Txangreja.


So, step one of the “Development Plan” specifies that any successful project requires the endorsement and participation of the community, and community leaders in particular, in the planning, preparing and implementation stages. So a couple a months ago I met with the dirreçao (leadership) of my Association, told them about the AIDS money and the formaçao (training) I’d just had and it was decided that we should try to do a World AIDS Day activity in town. So now we’ve arrived at the part where I actually get to sit down with my community to solicit ideas and suggestions, form a plan for the activity itself, delegate volunteers to come up with a orçament (budget) and press for some form of community contribution to meet the 25% minimum contribution. Well, as it happens, just the “sitting down with my community part” of all of that was a challenge in and of itself.


Having identified the leaders and powerbrokers in Txangreja (who’s participation is prescribed in the “Development Model” and who, in the case of Txangreja, turn out to be the teachers, the nurse, the owners of the hiaces, the guy who owns the giant speakers and CD player, and the ladies who run the local rathskellers), Pedro (the President of my association) and I set out to have a meeting. That’s all. Just to have a meeting. Nine people in the same room at the same time, for half an hour, to talk about how we can get some practically free money (we’re talking thousands of dollars!) to do a worthwhile project in town. It took ten days.


You would think that the mere suggestion of thousands of American dollars being spent by Txangrejans for Txangrejans in service to the education and betterment of Txangrejans would have them lining up at the doors. Not so. Keep in mind that the unemployment rate in my town is hovering at around, say, 97%. There are only one and a half television channels available here. We are often without power. The kids are in school for most of the day. There is currently no farming or harvesting to be done, and the town has been devoid of decks of playing cards for some time. The beaches are underwater and boats can’t go our for fish because mar e brop (the sea is too rough). There is, to say the least, not much to do around here right now. So Pedro and I thoughtfully tava t’marka hora (set the time) of the meeting for 12PM. (After the drivers’ work day is done, but before the kids home from school and during a break in the telenovela (soap opera) schedule. Pedro went door to door to invite our 9 guests three days in advance. On the day of the meeting I showed up ten minutes early...and waited 2 hours for the first person to show up. By 3PM there were three people. The rate of one person per hour made me insane and we decided to try it again the following day. No excuses or elaborate stories were offered by those who failed to attend. In a Cape Verdian cultural phenomenon I hope to employ when I return to the States, Cape Verdians almost almost always prefer to just say something like…

”Oh yeah...that meeting? Yeah, I didn’t go.”

“You couldn’t make it or you forgot about it?”

“No, I just didn’t go.”

Its like that. Anyway, we had better success on Saturday, as at various points throughout the afternoon we had as many as 4 people in the room at the same time, but inevitably one would tire of waiting for the others and he’d leave, another would enter, and so on and so on. So I consulted with Pedro and he decided that printed invitations were what we really needed. That was sure to fix the problem. Which brings me to reinventing the wheel.


To get some printed invitations required the use of the Association’s computer (it exploded last week...literally...exploded), the printer (out of very expensive ink), paper (also expensive and unavailable here in Txangreja) and electricity (hit or miss these days). I suggested hand-writing them but Pedro shot that down. So I used my own money to get back and forth to Povoçon, and bought the expensive ink and the expensive paper and had our Txangrejan printer sent on the hour car ride to Garça (where they have a functioning computer but no printer, and waited three hours for the power to come on there and did, finally, manage to make up some elegantly worded invitations for nine people, who I see each and every day several times a day, to come to the school that they walk past several times a day. Pedro then distributed these invitation and true to his word, it worked. On the appointed day, and only one hour late, we had five people. That made a quorum, so I said fuck it let’s just get on with it and we started. Eventually the other four showed up and I didn’t have to re-explain everything too many times.

So during that meeting we came up with the plan, which will, hopefully go as follows:
1. Four teams in the tourney boys and girls, for a total of 8 teams
2. Food for 300 people
3. T-shirts for 250 people
4. Two Trophies
5. Five hundred condoms
6. Music and a dance
7. Balloons and red ribbons
8. Painted slogans on the walls
9. Kids poster contest
10. Transportation provided for visiting teams
11. Four 20 minute “sessions” on AIDS awareness and prevention given by local community leaders
12. Basketball goals and nets installed in the polivalent

So that was a while ago and we’ve made (not without difficulty) a lot of progress since then, but I’ll write more about that later.
In the meantime, here are some newer pics!