cameroon log

Goodbye SNV

or, the good the bad, and the just plain..ugly.

Thursday November 13th 2003

The official handing over of the SNV building happened today… although, this was as much an official: goodbye Lomié event, as a hello GECEC event. After years of being here, the SNV is gone, years ahead of schedule…with much unfinished business.
So, this may lapse into a semi-coherent rant (which may be hard to distinguish from the rest of my posts, but humor me), but what a fucked up situation. So, first, I’ll go through the event, then the implications. We are supposed to show up at 2pm, at three, the sous-prefet shows up, there are to be some testimonials about how great the SNV is, a paper signing and key exchange, then we wander around the building for a few minutes, then dinner at Chez Jacky. I showed up at 2ish… at 3ish the rest of the people showed up. At 4ish the sous prefet shows up.. which is really weird.. Its like a king or royalty or something.. like his arrival in and of itself is the event…which, I guess it is. This protocol stuff would be annoying, if it wasn’t so silly. I got out of having to sit around by being the official event photographer. Rolf even asked me take pictures for him. Two cameras… oooh. I’m a big man now. Oh yeah. Then the testimonials began
It was the testimonials that really got to me. One person after another getting up and saying how much the SNV changed their lives for the better. How good and helpful they are/were. This would be great, if it were true… for example, Seraphim from CODEVIR, the people who borrowed money from GECEC for the portable saw project, spoke about how great the SNV was, and how grateful he was for all their help and support… I know that they are on the verge of collapsing… and largely because the business plan and feasability studies that the SNV did were.. well, not great (and let’s keep in mind here, that these were done by the very same people who are now the SNV’s consulting experts). Somone else was telling me much the same thing about one or two of the other testamonials. One guy, was no longer welcome in his own village… As if this weren’t enough to get me riled… Rolf spoke. Rolf went on and on about how, at first the change was something he thought was bad, but finally, he saw that it was good… (which I agree with, but for totally diffetent reasons).. and how they weren’t really leaving, they were just going to be neighbors, a short 5 hour bus ride away.. and look at all the great stuff they were leaving behind… like the nifty satellite.. and this fantastic new building. This went on for a while. It was pretty uninspiring, and made me understand how badly the SNV wanted, or needed really, to bail on Lomié. Needed is the right word. I’m sure that Rolf and Jaap didn’t want their money, and plans to be short circuited. They are both likable, and sincere… the irony of a sustainable development project bailing, and leaving less than nothing behind is clear. So, then the Mayor was asked to speak. He wasn’t so flattering. He asked point blank: are any of these organizations strong enough to stand on their own? In his opinion, not really. He said it nicely, but was pretty clear that he wasn’t fooled, and that this was going to be a fiasco. Rolf got up to rebut, and fudged and hemmed a bit. He missed a great opportunity to ask they mayor what he, and the city of Lomié were going to do to help.. but he just fudged around. More speeches, some wandering around, and then dinner…which was a huge event, and probably the last big client Jacky is going to have for a long long time. Oh… I forgot to mention…that the titular head of GECEC (the director of the board.. not Charly) gave a speech about what the SNV now GECEC compound was going to do. It was during that speech that I found out that I was expected to be working there everyday..and that I would be doing sys-admin for some decrepid computers that the SNV was leaving behind, as well as managing the satellite phone system. Nice. So, this is what really pissed me off. I am being asked to clean up after the SNV, and the Dutch government. What the fuck is that about. So my big beef? That the SNV created the need for email, and sat phone communication, and then, because of bad planning, are taking it away… no wait, even worse, they are expecting Charly to turn it into a profitable business. They are asking Charly to do what they themselves never had to do… so if it fails, it is of course, Charly’s fault for not being a good manager. The thing is, it is doomed to fail. No one bothered to ever go into costs. I still haven’t seen a bill to understand exactly what the costs are… they don’t even know how it works. I had to tell them that you get billed for incoming and outgoing mail… although there is still debate about that… which is even more stunning.
Bottom line, I have to get this poison out of here as soon as possible. I am going to do what I really didn’t want to do, use my satellite modem for the town. I am going to try to set it up as a viable business, and add in the cost of the future security deposit so that when I leave, GECEC can keep the modem, and take over the billing…without having to suddenly dump thousands of dollars into the system (which is what the SNV is asking them to do). I’m so glad I was asked.
I also have to sys-admin two old wintel boxes running win 95, with 16 megs of ram. I will have to split my time between working on my current job, with my (bad ass) computer that can do exponentially more, and maintaining two pieces of shit that the SNV couldn’t be bothered taking with them. I basically got downgraded because of the SNV’s crappy ass job of leaving Lomié. Yeah fuckers, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Now I get how this development thing works. Build a well, poison it, and then blame the locals for drinking out of the well. Nice.