Bolga meeting - an uninvited guest - and a dinner party

Off to Bolga on Tuesday on the Metro Mass Transit coach for a meeting about TENI (Tackling Education Needs Inclusively)

On the way, it seems like all the Zoom-Lion men (waste disposal) are busy burning some of the big piles of rubbish which litter the middle of Walewale.

The meeting is useful but long - lunch afterwards is a welcome break.

On the left in blue is Letty, then Polly behind Letty, Christina at the table, Michelle hidden behind her, Janet, Charlotte hidden, Jude visiting from Accra, and Rachel.

Look who was on the wall when we arrived home. Charlotte saves its life (i.e. gets to it before I do) and sends it outside. A quick Google search indicates that actually a scorpion sting may be no worse than a bee sting. Or it may cause severe internal organ damage and death. Hm, better shake our shoes out before putting them on.

The day after this we find that we've invited a number of people for dinner. First of all we are visited by several children wanting water and fascinated by Janet.

Then the dinner party.
Back row: me, Maggi, Andrea who is staying next door and working for RAINS which stands for something like Regional Advisory Information Network Systems, so now you know what she does.
Front row: Charlotte, neighbour Elizabeth with her niece Juliet, Milou who works at a nearby school and Janet.
Juliet and I went round the party.

Meanwhile we discover  that these youngsters regularly hang out at the Moonlite Spot (= bar), so we join them there the following evening.

Shopping in Tamale - and Janet meets the chief

Staying overnight with Mark & Mar gives me the chance to get some shopping done in Tamale.

I don't know whether Barclays Bank should be worried, but the display on the ATM suggests someone has just had a go at connecting some new and perhaps unauthorised hardware device to the ATM....

I bite the bullet and pay out for Zain mobile Internet modem, and eventually this is made to work on my laptop in the Tamale Zain shop. I  also pick up various groceries, stationery and even a pair of shoes since mine are thoroughly worn through.  Mind you, you can also wait until you are on the tro-tro to do your shopping...

I'd like the third packet from the bottom on the left-hand-side please.
And a pair of brown sandals while you're passing.

The tro-tro ride features a search for fuel. But none of the filling stations in Tamale can help us. We are several miles towards Walewale when the driver stops suddenly, and then reverses for a long way down the main road. Sure enough, a lorry is by the fuel pumps. It's "lights-out" (not literally, this is early afternoon, but "lights-out" is Ghanaian for power-cut), but two men are hand-cranking the fuel pumps. Fuel shortages are common. On this occasion the tro driver doesn't just fill up with what he needs for the journey (which is what usually happens)  but fills his tank 3/4 full.
This has all taken some time, and I am in danger of missing our 4pm meeting with the chief of Walewale. But we arrive just in time......
Our friend Mashood is once again our guide and interpreter - and he's not here yet but we enjoy the courtyard scene.

But then Mashood turns up - and introduces us to his sister, Lala, who is the chief's newest wife

We are taken into see the chief, who honours us on this visit by shaking hands. We explain Janet's role here. ("Charlotte is here to help the teachers. Janet is here to help the head-teachers"). Via our interpreter, Mashood, the chief is very appreciative, and quotes proverbs about what happens when the white man helps the black man.

Janet gives the chief a white towel, the symbol of peace.

... whereas we just give him some photos from our earlier visits, which he seems to enjoy.

Then it's time to cycle home, and the girls take most of the shopping in their bike baskets. (Video of this is on my Facebook page).

Another OD success story - Rumnet

Friday morning - up at 5.30 am to get an early tro-tro to Tamale to visit Rumnet for the Organisation Assessment findings.  It was a late night last night at Alice's au-revoir party (see yesterday's entry).

Anyway, there is a distinct lack of action this morning in the southbound tro-tros from Walewale, but all is resolved when the Metro Mass Transit coach appears, so I have a comfortable ride to Tamale, and almost manage to get off at the right stop for Rumnet. Mar and Mark share an office - indeed share a desk in a pleasant 2-room office. Rumnet is the Rural Media Network, and a key publication is a newspaper, "The Advocate" whose strapline is 'Communicating for Social Change' - here is a recent page from "The Advocate".

I'm introduced to the other people who work for Rumnet, and there are 8 of us round the table to review the findings and recommendations of the Organisation Assessment.

 

One of the people present is Razzaq,  the part-time accountant, whose involvement in Rumnet is itself a recommendation of the Organisation Assessment  - he has joined within the last week. Rumnet is led by Mr Kassim and Mr Al-Hassan, who are both very well respected in the Tamale development community. Bernice, a journalist, and Nash the graphic designer are the other two key players around the table. A large whiteboard shows the plan, article by article, for the next issue.

You'll recognise that there are limits to what I'll blog about here as far as the Rumnet assessment is concerned. It's a privilege to be invited in to be part of this open sharing of the review of the Rumnet organisation.

Mar and Mark have conducted individual interviews with all staff, and this process itself has brought out a number of areas that needed discussion.  They have also held shorter interviewers with key external stakeholders. The mood is very positive and forward-looking. The findings are accepted, and after a little discussion actions are put into the diary over the next month to move things forward.   Finally Mar asks everyone for their feedback on the Organisation Assessment process, and again the feedback is very positive, for example Mr Kassim says (as far as I scribbled this down) "The process has given us a structure which we were able to follow to get a good report - has given us a focus of what to work on, and cogent issues to discuss - I'm excited about the next phase".

Rumnet has just been recognised by the Tamale assembly for its contribution to development.

Mar, Mark and I then head out to the Catholic Guest House to review the meeting, and also to check on their feelings about the VSO Organisation Development framework that I've proposed (which Dora and Nii are also looking at). The discussion takes the rest of the morning and continues over lunch. 

I then have a frustrating Friday afternoon attempting unsuccessfully to get Zain mobile Internet working on my laptop - we've decided we don't want to be totally dependent on Vodafone given our experiences with Vodafone so far. This is later resolved (apparently) Saturday morning, after Mar and Mark's kind hospitality Friday night, though this jury is still out on whether one can rely on the Zain software & modem doing what it's supposed to...

We've been living next door (almost) to Alice

Alice, who is researching local government and local decision-making in Northern Ghana for her PhD, is holding a big au-revoir party tonight for all her Walewale friends, before heading back to the USA for a few months. This is at the Ghana Education Service house which Jacob the U.S. Peace Corps volunteer shares with Leticia the VSO Management Support Office at GES and with Alice.
So we gathered to say goodbye to Alice
We do know why she's leaving, and where she's going to go. I guess she's got her reasons, but you just don't want to know. But for sixty-eight days we've been living nearby to Alice.
This was Alice with us at Sala in November.

We have included Maggi in the invitation, who came to dinner with us last night after we met cycling west last week.

Anyway it's a good send-off for Alice. Back row is Charlotte, Janet, Alice & Maggi. In front of Charlotte is Cynthia the hair-dresser but I don't know the others..

After the serious drinking (of Orange Fanta in the case above)

and the serious networking (Charlotte is talking to Charles and Yidana from the GES office) . . . .

..., the serious dancers get going

.... this is Fati, Maggi, Georgiana and Letty ..

There are those who take a little while to get going.... unlike Alice who has been in party mode since 5 o'clock at least..

but in time all the Sulamingas join in to show our Walewale friends that we can dance too..... and Alice is never far from the action all evening.

Felix

Here is our house in Walewale, as it looked when we first saw it and met Felix, the young man who did much of the masonry.

As we enjoy the accommodation that Felix and his colleagues built, we remember Felix, who died and was buried yesterday.

Status of some Organisation Assessments

Running workshops in adverse environments:

Krista is on the left in this photo, taken in Accra early December when I briefed her on the VSO Ghana OD process - we bumped into Jemimah in the VSO office, and all went out to eat red-red by the roadside for lunch. Krista  is working in Accra with the Foundation of Sustainable Livelihoods, and is planning to run the Organisation Assessment workshop from start to end of the assessment over the course of one morning on Saturday, The workshop will be in the open air in Tema because they have no meeting space they can use. The staff are all field workers and feel they cannot take time away from their mission during the week, which is why the workshop is on Saturday and one day only. This will be hard work for Krista - I offer to travel to Accra to help but she is confident she will handle the workshop ok. I send her a copy of a document I've written for the volunteers, "Running workshops, especially in adverse environments".  The resourcefulness and commitment of the volunteers is just very impressive at times.

In response to Krista's request, I post online the shell of the West Mamprugu GES Organisation Assessment report  (see Tuesday 26th Jan) , i.e. with all the confidential information removed, as a template.

Assessments nearing completion

Haydn and Linda are nearing the end of organisation assessment in Wa - see their blog in the blog list - and Haydn is going to send me a quick summary of the organisation assessment process there - I want to collect a few different Case Studies for contrast which will help in explaining the assessment process for real to new volunteers.
(UPDATE, 3rd Feb. He did! That was quick, thanks very much Haydn).

Mar and Mark at Rumnet have arranged a presentation of findings from the Rumnet organisation assessment on Friday, and I'm invited, so I'll need to catch an early tro to Tamale Friday morning.

Who decides what for Organisational Development

I'm still trying to nail down objectives for the assignment - my draft was approved sufficiently for me to come out here, but I need to establish which objectives are really down to me and how much discretion I have with them. We have certainly explored some quite widely varying options. There is an email interaction between Nii (VSO Ghana OD lead), Dora (Education Programme Manager) and me which needs progressing by means other than email. I'm able to get 20 minutes with Nii in the VSO Bolga office on Friday 29th which is quite productive.

We have a convivial weekend entertaining Betty (see photo of Betty and Charlotte on the swing, and also the pics setting up a mosquito net for the sofa). Betty is our outgoing regional volunteer rep (she's had a great 2 years and is shortly heading back to Kenya).

But this is followed by a sad result in the African Nations' Cup Final on Sunday.

 Refreshed by the weekend I give the OD responsibilities more thought on Monday morning. At the time of writing I'm hoping that a framework of responsibilities that I've proposed for VSO Programme Managers and the OD Lead, and OD advisers such as me (just me at present)  will tick the box for Nii and Dora, but I won't say any more till I've heard more from them.

Meanwhile I'm wanting to widen the case study material. In October I set up an online Googlegroup, which is a group with membership by invitation for VSO Ghana Organisational Development - currently it has 56 members in Ghana and Canada, though not all are active. (One of my proposed objectives is to share what we have developed, and the experience we have gained, more widely with VSO internationally). As well as allowing email to all with a single address, the Googlegroup provides a means by which documents can be posted online and shared. Speed of Internet access is a problem for some people when downloading larger presentations for example, but we try to keep the file sizes down as much as possible. Overall it's a good way of sharing knowledge on an ongoing basis rather than just in some timed 'handover' at the end of an assignment, so it's good for sustainability which is a VSO objective.

There's plenty of material on this Googlegroup from the Walewale GES Organisational Assessment - not the actual results, but materials such as script for the Director to use at the OD launch, notes on the approach Charlotte used to tackle the workshops, guidance as to "one way to tackle the assessment", photos of flipchart presentation material. I've encouraged flipchart presentations rather than Powerpoint - it's not technology dependent, and the flipcharts can be posted up around the office afterwards - "You'll end up doing a 2 to 5-minute presentation 50 times, and getting people talking about it".  This is potentially good reference material from Walewale, but circumstances differ and there are other success stories besides Walewale GES, so I'm exploring getting hold of more examples for guidance.