Waiting for internet

As of right now I have typed up 3 blog entries (4 including this one), 1 of which I have emailed to a couple people and 2 that no one has seen. So I thought today would be a good day to go to the internet café, create a blog account, and upload my posts. I got here today and after 5 minutes – with which you can accomplish absolutely nothing on this slow connection – and the internet connection died. It’s been at least an hour right now, and I’ve captioned all my Paris pictures and deleted some others, thinking that by the time I got that done the connection would be up. No such luck. So I’ll type out another blog entry and hope that it works by the time I’m done.

This morning I sorted through all the material that Turay had, a big stack of it. More than half of the material was information about other organizations and some education sessions. Most of the other half was SDI stuff, which would sound good. However, nearly all of that half are proposals for studies, proposals for helping others, and requests for money. As for financial records, there are the aforementioned yearly projections, which are the bullshit ones of over $100,000USD for the year, and also a budget which also doesn’t seem right. The best I could find was the 2007 annual report, which had I think 6 rows of numbers for each year, 2004-2007. However, I could find absolutely nothing to back up those numbers.

So from the looks of it, Sulaiman has been spending all his time a) Writing proposals, b) Sending those proposals to other organizations, and c) Waiting to get funding from those organizations. And the only funding I have found is £250 from Hope for Children in 2008, earmarked for registering orphans with birth certificates. And this money is nowhere to be found because apparently he cashed the check but then didn’t get cash until it was withdrawn from the org, and now the check has cleared from Hope for Children, but the bank says it hasn’t. That has been going on for 8 months. So the only funding has come directly from Turay lecturing at the University of Buea. But of course, none of that is recorded either.

I found out that this week is “relaxing week”, because it’s my first week here and I am to start work next week. I guess it’s relaxing week for everyone, as Sulaiman hangs out and talks with 5 other kids. The kids come over and try to get Turay to do their homework for him, and then wait until there’s some food. Meanwhile Turay tells them that he’s not doing their work, complain that they only come over for food, and tell whatever girl is around to make some lunch or dinner, which they usually do. Of course, never does he tell them to get out.

So I’m not too happy with the dedication level of Sulaiman. It might be that he’s just a push-over, and that’s why not that much hasn’t been done. Maybe he just needs a bit of a push and some organization. I did get him to write up some details on that 2007 annual report, so that would be helpful. There needs to be a strategy going forward.

Today I also typed up a list of the local organizations with which we might be able to cooperate with. I was going to send some emails, but, as I said, the internet is down. One of the organizations here in town actually seems to be doing some real work – I wonder if that is for real or not. I think I’ll propose doing that next week – contacting the organizations directly and finding out how things are progressing with them. However, since SDI is so indefinite, I wonder if there is a purpose in that.

Well, I’ve had enough of this. I’m taking the taxi back to the “compound”. I wish I could share my blogs with people today, but hopefully tomorrow. Ciao.