Hiking, and now I start badmouthing people that have access to the internet...
Wednesday November 12th 2003
Kate and Jed head out for a very ambitious trek across the DJA back to SanMelima, the location of her placement. They are going out with Michelle who heads up PREVERT (I’m not making that up.. with my dyslexic brain I had to read that a few times), an eco-tourism.. um.. company (its basically him). After a morning of negotiations, and preparations.. they were off. Promptly an hour after they headed out.. it started to rain. So, during their stay here, they got to know a lot of the palm wine drinking crowd. They spend a gloriously drunken evening dancing barefoot in the mud, singing, being intitiated into the ‘club’ and being very carefree. Man do I feel old.. or was I ever like that? That just has no appeal to me… the dancing in the mud sounds fun…but it goes downhill from there. The next morning, a delegate from the ‘club’ came by to hit them (and me) up for money. I pretty much killed that idea pretty quick. I’m getting good at the blank stare of death, mixed with the blunt question: Are you asking for money? That might be part of why getting drunk in the mud doesn’t appeal.. the morning after.
We met with Rolf about ROLD today (Rolf is the official head of SNV east cameroon, the dutch development organization). Patrice (the head of ROLD) and I showed up, Charly was away teaching pgymies about bookkeeping, but joined in later. So, about 5 mintutes into the meeting, I understand what is going on.. this is a meeting with a venture capitalist. Rolf is a VC…although, he takes pains to note, again, that the SNV is no longer in the business of dolling out money, but in the consulting buisness. If they buy your pitch.. you get.. an expert for a day or two. The funny thing is: the remaining SNV people are the experts. To say I have my doubts.. is an understatement. So, the presentation goes on… I start anwering questions. I mean, I try to hold my tongue, but this is a game that I know better than Rolf. I mean, again, most of this shit is watered down VC buzzword soup. Patrice doesn’t get it all, and I pick up the slack…which I guess I’m not supposed to do. Anyway, I give him the right answers, and find a hole in their new plan. I make my presentation, which is all about exploiting the flaw in their new plan: ask for a marketting and communications expert, and then hire myself on the SNV’s tab… Fits with their new mandate, solves a bunch of problems. It is pretty much a typical Ben solution. It doesn’t really play well. Partially, I went way to far to fast, and partially, the folks here have no real idea of what is going on. The SNV is bailing on them. That is what I reallly got out of the meeting. They lost much/most of their government funding, and have to pull back. They have enough money to pay for their own salaries, but that is it…and this whole consulting thing, is an ugly compromise to attempt to justify the SNV employee salaries, and keep the taxpayers feeling good about ‘helping’. They have essentially been castrated. They are VC’s without the Capital… an uglier thought does not exist in my mind. So, all of a sudden, I feel like I have uncovered the con… and I’m supposed to be on the con artists side… you know, ‘cause were in the same business and all. We finish the meeting with promises of more meetings, and maybe some help from the SNV in writing the ROLD action plan.. or more accurately, in revising the one that Patrice is to write. What a scam.