Double Good

Two good things happened today: I had a particularly productive meeting with GICALAN and afterwards I tried to make my first “complicated” dinner meal: fettuccine alfredo with vegetables.
The meeting with GICALAN was scheduled for 13h00. I went by Veronique’s (the president of this GIC) house after my 6:30 AM run to remind her, but she wasn’t there. Fortunately, I ran into her on my way home. It’s a good thing too, because she thought the meeting was at 15h00. I asked if that was alright, if she thought people would come at 13h00 if she told them the change just hours before the meeting. She assured me that they would. I was doubtful.
Imagine my surprise when, in fact, everyone had shown up by about 13h35. This is practically a record for timeliness – most of my previous meetings have involved people showing up as much as an hour and thirty minutes late, with the first arrivals usually around 15 or 30 minutes late.
So in addition to the relative timeliness (maybe I should change all of my meeting times at the last minute), I feel the meeting was relatively productive. We were doing a problem analysis – the ultimate goal of which is to (1) narrow down how we want to tackle the problem and (2) develop a plan to do so. Their identified problem was “poverty.” This is frustrating because everyone here seems to think that the white person will come and bring money. A significant part of my initial work thus involves educating people that I bring my brainpower, energy, and ideas, but (probably) no money. This exercise turned out to be very helpful, because we were looking at causes of and results of poverty, in order to try to come up with some potential solutions to solve those problems.
There have been times in the past in working with this group of women when I’ve felt like nothing was really accomplished, when I felt like the group didn’t quite understand what the hell we were doing (hell, I didn’t totally understand…), but this time, people seemed to get it, and I felt like I finally clicked with my role as facilitator. There was even a moment when I stopped myself speaking mid-sentence to internally acknowledge that I had spoken a French sentence grammatically correct without having to think about it, when previously I would have had to pause and think about how to phrase it correctly. The group appeared to understand what I was saying, the objective of our meeting and (maybe it’s too much to hope for) the future direction of our work. I think this because they came up with great ideas for how to address the problem of poverty.
There is one woman in particular who I’ve noticed is really smart. She pointed out that one cause of poverty is the huge family size (lots of mouths to feed) and that a potential solution could be more information about family planning. This is a fairly insightful idea and requires an ability to see and analyze the “bigger picture.” Usually, I’d have to plant an idea like this in the women’s mind to get them to think about, but she came up with it without any prodding from me. I’ve noticed that she often has insightful ideas like this in our meetings and often understands better than others what I’m asking or saying. I have a vague sense that I want to find a way to work closely with this woman. A woman this sharp in a small village like this is a gem.
Anyway, the work and the meeting was a total high. And it pretty much made up for the fact that no one showed up to my next meeting even after I waited for an hour (best advice I can give anyone doing work in Cameroon: always, ALWAYS have a book with you. You never know when you’ll have to wait for an indeterminate amount of time for one reason or another. There have been so many times already when I have kicked myself for not bringing a book with me.)
Anyway when I got home, I decided without much planning to finally try some “real” cooking. My power was unexpectedly working last night, so I thought it would be on again tonight. It wasn’t but that didn’t stop me from making a solid-first-effort-quality fettuccine alfredo with vegetables. Though it didn’t quite taste like any alfredo sauce I’ve enjoyed in the States, the consistency and taste were surprisingly close, considering that I was working with a hyper-processed cheese (slightly past its expiration date, no less) that doesn’t require refrigeration and powdered milk. Leftovers re-chauffed tomorrow will be sublime.