Fete du Ganni

Hello Everyone!

Happy February! A year ago today, I had just moved to Hawaii and was starting my internship in Agroforestry. It’s funny to think back to another time of major learning and transition. There were tough times, but I am so glad that I had that experience. It is an encouraging reminder during this adventure.

The past week had some long hours of being anxious that I wasn’t doing enough,h and (therefore) missing home. However, despite the angst, there were some really cool things that did get to happen, and that’s what I would like to get to tell you all about.

I had my first meeting with one of my two latrine comities. When everyone arrived, it became clear that none of the members spoke French, only Bariba! Apparently, there was supposed to be a French-speaking teacher, but he couldn’t make it. There was one guy who spoke some French and with the help of Baron-my-counterpart, who speaks several other local languages, we were able to muddle through. The meeting took over 2 hours. We did an exercise that Baron and I had done during a training session, putting the steps of a project on order. The comity members were surprised by how many steps there were, and it seemed like they felt like they were more a part of the process after doing the activity. We talked about various latrine logistics, and tried to decide what the community’s contribution would be. I got nervous that people were not ready to contribute significant time and resources. This would suggest that they aren’t very invested in the project. At the same time, I can understand wanting to see how much you can get out of a project, and therefore towing a hard line. Next meeting we will look at the budget in more detail, and it should become clearer then.

At the end of the meeting the president of the comity, who had not said much up until that point, spoke up. After all the logistics, and negotiating, and question answering was finished, he turned to me and said (with the help of other translators), ‘Please be patient with us, we have never done a project like this before, and this is all new.’

I really appreciated that he said that. Explaining my perceptions of a project, and trying to understand theirs, and explaining latrines, and negotiating logistics that are the best for the people of the town, all takes time and energy. Sometimes it feels like I am really just tiring out the people I am trying to work with, trying to incorporate them as much as possible. I felt like the comity president’s words indicated that they really do want to do this work, and learn how to do it better. We will see what happens next!

That meeting was on Friday, and Saturday was the “Fete du Ganni” in Banikoara, my closest major town. Ganni Fete is a traditional Bariba holiday when the local kings parade through town on horses. A couple of us volunteers got together to watch the festivities together. There were a lot of people out on the streets and, as we were able, we tried to chat them up in Bariba, which people loved. Some women befriended us and showed us where some traditional dancing was going to happen, and helped us get a good view. The local kings were all sitting in flowing robes in a row in front of the dance area. When we got there one older man was dancing holding what looked like a short horse-hair pony tail. There were perhaps four guys wailing away on the drums. After a few minutes 8 men in dance costumes, each with flowy pants, a fez, their owns small horse tail, and a staff, all took the dance area. They danced in amazing unison, sometime spinning their staffs of throwing them in the air. It was one of the coolest cultural moments I have gotten to observe so far.

After the dancing was over the woman turned to us and said in Bariba, “Now we eat”. They took us to a nearby house where we greeted everyone and sat down. They presented food in front of us (rice and yam pilé with spicy sauce). We all hesitated, sort of embarrassed to be accepting food from people we just met. They saw that we were hesitant and said, “Oh, wait a minute” and sent some people off. They came back with forks and spoon! The funny thing was, we each held our eating utensil and looked at each other and said, “you know, it’s actually easier to eat this with our hands!” After washing our hands we all dug in (without silverware) and thanked our hosts profusely.

The rest of the weekend held some good time hanging out together, and swapping work experiences and cultural tips. It is always cathartic to get to commiserate and encourage each other, never mind chat in English and trade news/gossip from the states!

I hope you are all doing well. I am looking forward to getting to visit home, now in less than two months! Time does move right along.

Thanks for reading,

With love,

Lauren