Sometime this July one of my
PCV friends emailed me. She said a guy
from an international NGO had asked about me and wanted to talk to me about a project
and she wanted my permission before forwarding him my contacts. I gave her the go ahead curious what this
project was.
This NGO is a well known
organization in Lesotho. It’s American
funded and concentrates on helping OVC (orphaned and vulnerable children) and
others affected by HIV/AIDS. They used to have a presence in my area but I had heard that they had stopped
soon after I had arrived. Needless to
say, I was six months away from leaving Lesotho and I wasn’t very interested in
getting involved with a large project but I figured I’d stay minimally
involved.
A few days later my contact came to see me in the village to talk about the details of the
project. He told me that the
organization had some money (actually a lot of money) to do an agricultural
project in this community and it had to benefit OVCs especially those affected
by HIV/AIDS.
Now, I have very limited
contact with my community and have never even attempted to do a project with
them. I have my reasons; one, I’m always
busy at school. Two, the community doesn’t really seem to need anything that I
could help them with (they want electricity, a community center, and a clinic
in the village). But above all I have no
interest working with the chief who is a drunk or the elected official in the
area who I have heard is also good for nothing.
So when World Vision wanted to do a project with the community I told
him straight up that I had very little idea what was possible in this community
but I could tell him anything he wanted about the school. After telling him what the school was doing
he decided to work with them.
School started in a few weeks
and he came by to speak with the teachers on what projects we could do. When I spoke to him in July he was thinking
about a chicken projects (which we already do at the school as a practical
project but he wanted to expand it), a piggery (which the school had but was
having problems with so we slaughtered the pigs), and an orchard (which at that
time I was working with Ministry of Forestry to get one at my school already so
he suggested we just add more trees). I
also suggested getting rabbits (which one of my teachers had told me about and
seemed like a good project). When he
came to the school and spoke to the teachers he insisted on doing a chicken
project which the school was not interested in expanding. Raising chickens takes a lot of work and they
preferred a piggery where the NGO could help them build a proper home
(which we did not have funds to do) and help us buy new pigs to start off
with. Pigs take much less work to take
care of but since World Vision insisted on chickens the school reluctantly
agreed; they weren’t going to argue on something that was coming for free.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM0faYTRgBg6rBIO0pGseliBJx1DACU2kUUk2499nwwzjZvXRniaWrjI__sehz-Cs85k0XGgLVNJ2W6gYEP1LjIjbgZQn2uPOXWvsq-OHx-0xLiDQAwpR1RT6LjbL30m_LsufAOi6LB-PV/s200/IMG_3993.JPG) |
The old and new chicken houses |
And so my contact submitted
his business plan for approval, hired locals to build a new chicken house, and
started working on acquiring the chickens.
When he was planning the project he told me that to make a real profit
the school needs to be able to raise 500 chickens at a time and our chicken
house could only handle 100. So I was
under the impression that the new building would be very large yet at the end
it was around the same size as the previous.
A few weeks later, on a
Thursday, he came by to check on the progress.
On that day we were having our farewell for our Form E’s (saying good
bye) but I left to see him to get an idea what was going on. He told me that he would bring the chicken
food on Friday and the chickens would be coming soon. I warned him that on Friday the school ended
at 1pm and the next week we had vacation.
He nodded his head as if it wasn’t a problem and I reported to the rest
of my co-workers.
He didn’t come on Friday, he
ended up coming on Saturday which, by chance, some students and teachers were
there to go to a competition so we were able to store the food away before
leaving. Later that week, when we had no
school, he came to drop off the chickens.
Since there was no one there to take care of them he took them to town
to the deputy principal’s house to take care of them until school began.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqMnTc4RokpgGRkLTGXI8SZ70yb_Vc3tfSDSMCSiVjfpO2T0ccgGSoTH_X5fog0vPTipVojFHTU-b-A0LERAsoqanDAso-KxyOQ-POiTYFpujVSf5J7NKu2pga1fFfT3Il6ayVObQ985uD/s200/IMG_3994.JPG) |
The chickens with small feeders and drinkers |
On Monday the chickens were
transported to school and the next week I asked my co-worker minding the
chickens when we were going to get them (no one had told me that they had
already come). It was only then she told
me the story and mentioned that ever since they were delivered to my deputy,
one chick had been dying each day.
Hoping it was due to shock from the transport they were waiting to see
what would happen.
That Friday, since the
chickens were still dying, they bought medicine and put it in their water
hoping to stop the problem and my co-workers told me the whole story. The new house was not built properly; it
leaked and had no ventilation so they had to leave the door open which allowed
animals, rats, and other unwanted animals to enter. On top of that, since they had no warning
when the chicks were arriving, they had no time to clean the house and there
might be some mold or bacteria that could be making the chickens sick. So that weekend my co-workers, with the help
of some students, cleaned the old chicken house and moved the chickens in there
hoping to see a change. There was none.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH7jWgF9294lk2hros81WEHrrPuhI7JPQh77JfjV3p6BSl8zsxc_OYMjeRVWp8m7fBly_CS8s1-zVNPmJqpnqs6SSRSiMU2-yQQD1L4W5PB1rCyHVawGCKPLX7gKVCrkXD_mCMgGWESwse/s200/IMG_4036.JPG) |
The traditional medicine |
A few days later, seeing that
the medicine didn’t work, my co-workers did an autopsy on one of the dead
chicks. They saw that the liver was
enlarged and there was a yellow coat around it.
They decided to try a traditional Basotho medicine to help the
chickens. They found the plant in the
village and squeezed its juices in to the water.
There have been other
problems with the project. This project
is supposed to benefit certain students yet World Vision has not spoken to us
on how they would like us to identify these students or how it should help
them. While the school is more than
capable of figuring this out ourselves a good project manager would make sure
we have a process for this project to continue in to the longer term. And we have no idea if and when he will bring
the rest of the chickens he promised.
I spoke to some of my
volunteer friends about this since I had expected this project to go more
smoothly and be better managed. They
said they weren’t surprised. When I was
discussing this project with him, he said he wanted this project to be
finished by September and I understand that he needed it to be done by the end
of the fiscal year. And I suspect that
when reporting on the number of children helped by this project he will report
“200” the size of my school, not the number of OVCs here since he never asked
for such a report from us. But I have
heard that this is typical of NGOs here.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLWGTv2r0HS2mYxJaAWTz3kKtAssM8f3-jehMv0gbzJNlDZoPXghheKSLydRZ9eSRiJSk5-WsaIhTUZ3fEb47FKlhkg9iFNb1-ALeZY1Tk9Cs8nIm3787W-R5n2A9bsI-4gznLOSgalr0x/s200/IMG_4197.JPG) |
With adult feeders and drinkers |
When I first spoke with the NGO I was told about the various projects he did in my village and how they
all failed but now I can see why. With
such poor communication, no regard for what the actual needs of the
organization are, and no plan for the future, it’s obvious to see how the
results are all the same. It makes me
wonder if these organizations lack the skills and knowledge to understand this
or they simply don’t want to put in the time.
I’ve spoken to many people who work for NGO’s and I’ve
realized that for them this is just a job.
It’s been a few weeks since
my colleagues administered the traditional medicine to the chickens and they
are all doing very well now. We started
out with a hundred chickens and fourteen have died. Still, for the school this round is almost a
hundred percent profit since we didn’t put any money in. Though things were not going well with this
project for some time my colleagues are excited by this income generating
project and the ways they can develop the school using the funds generated from
this project. So all in all I think the
project will have a happy ending.