Here we go!

When I started writing this blog post, I was planning on covering the beginnings of work on my maternity house, but in the 2 weeks since we’ve started, the buildings are more than 50% done already. The amount of work and dedication I have seen from my village surprised even me.

So, here’s how it went. The CVD and I went to Sokode to buy materials. I dropped 1,000,000 CFA at one time, which made me feel like a baller, because here people talk about millionaires like we talk about millionaires in the US, but here a million is actually $2000 US. Back down to earth. Then we hired a truck and brought the stuff in to village.

In 2 days, they built the foundations for the buildings. They brought in all the bricks they made from the riverside and in the first week built half of the first building.

1st building - rooms for the pregnant women

2nd building - midwife's lodging

you can see on the left side where the maternity rooms will go and on the right there is the health clinic

halfway up already!

Week 2 they worked sun up to sun down and finished putting up the walls of the 2 buildings. There were masses of people that showed up to help, even those who were “helping,” standing around, watching and directing others (me included). The students at the middle school brought the bricks in from the riverside. The women brought in water from wells about 150 to 200m away, one bowl at a time. You can just imagine how much water is needed to mix cement for 2 buildings (a lot). They brought it all in themselves, first pulling the water from the wells by bucket and rope, then transporting it on their heads to the construction site.

the work force

the directors

(starting from the left: president CVD, Imam, Treasurer CVD, Plan Togo Volunteer)

But, wait a second, let's get a better look at that Imam's t-shirt

ha ha. i guarrantee he has no idea what that means

notice that the middle woman is pregnant and the 1st woman has a baby on her back, and they are still carring water, now that is dedication

The men were out there mixing cement and building the walls for about 30 minutes before I noticed that their wheelbarrow didn’t have any wheels. They would fill it up then have to carry the whole thing over to the side of the house. They told me they didn’t have any working wheelbarrows, the other one had no handles, and they’d been doing it like that for a while (these are masons by profession). It just looked like so much extra work, I gave them money to get their wheelbarrows fixed.

Seeing these people work so hard and long to get this done (and they were getting a lot done) made me feel really good about this project. I was expecting hitches. I was expecting the people who signed up for community contribution to have to be coaxed from their houses every morning to work. This is normally how projects go. But, I have been so far pleasantly surprised to see how committed my village is to doing this.

probably the most precarious scaffolding system I've ever seen, but no one fell

Not that there haven’t been hitches. So, before they got started on the foundation, they had planned 2 days before to start and the days came and went without any work being done. The CVD and I went to the village chief, who was in charge of rallying the workers, and talked to him. He said he would have a meeting with the workers and find out the problem. The chief comes back to me and says that the workers are sorry, because they want to do the work, but they can’t leave the work in their fields to start on this because they won’t have any food for their families, and since they are not getting paid, they wont have a way to support themselves if they leave their fields now... “What? Wait a second. What do you mean they’re not getting paid?” And the chief is like, “I know, but they said, if you can wait like 2-3 weeks til the tilling of the land should be done, they will start the construction then.” So, to back up a little bit, the way planning/organizing the work has gone for this project, after my counterparts and I flesh out a plan, we go to the chief. I talk and the CVD translates into Kotokoli for the chief, he approves our plan then communicates this to the head masons and carpenters, and they communicate this to their work teams. It’s kinda like playing telephone apparently. So, it got lost somewhere down the line, what was to be community contribution and what would be paid by the grant money. The masons, who are being paid for skilled labor, thought that all their work was going to be unpaid as community contribution, and still agreed to do the job. I correct the chief, who was very excited that I am “so generous,” and said he would meet with the masons again. They started the foundations 2 days later. 

This is the kind of hitches I’m dealing with and I’m glad personally because this might be the easiest project I’ve done in Togo. As all these people work hard on the house, I sit in the shade, yelling out words of encouragement to them and taking photos. Meanwhile, people from my village, including those working, are praising me left and right. They come up to me to thank me or bless me and tell me things like “Have courage. I know the work is hard, but God will help you” (actually said). I kinda feel like an imposter, but I do have a newfound appreciation for my village people. Now that they have completed the walls, what’s left is putting up the roofing, floors, doors and windows, then paint. It might be a lot, but at the pace they’re going at, it might only be a couple of weeks to finish. I just hope that by going on about how great my village and the work is that I didn’t jinx myself. (Knock on wood)