My project starts a'rollin'

This week was my introductory week to the Roche community.  One of the things we are taught at school is that the key to a successful project in a community is engaging your stakeholders: the community members and leadership, directors of similar or complimentary programs, staff of program, and supporters.  Monday, I spent the day at Sota Health Clinic, which is the other local clinic that SHED and Dr. Kawira operate.  I wanted to get an idea of how a longer-running, more established clinic operates and begin building a relationship with Dr. Kawira and gain from her insight into the dynamics of rural clinics in East Africa.  Then, on Tuesday, I had my first meetings with the local Health and Education committees for Village Life.  These are made up of villagers who are interested in the work of VLOP and who are the worker bees and community promoters that ensure VLOP’s work is carried out and embraced by the community.  For the Health committee, I had four people show up: Ongora, Josphat, Tomas, and Rosie, who were very helpful in my shaping of the evaluation, insightful in providing me their original vision and goals for RHC (so I can complete my logic model, which they really like: shout out to my prof, Dr. Bavon, and my eval class), and most importantly supportive in suggesting that I go introduce myself and collect stories and data from the village council and the community meetings.  When is the meeting? I ask.  Their response: tomorrow.  WHAT?! When is the next meeting? I ask.  Their response: in three months.  Looks like I’m going to the meeting tomorrow…flexibility, flexibility, flexibility.  I’m not really nervous about the meeting, as much as anxious because I have NO IDEA what to expect.

So, I prepare my notes for the meeting, make sure that I know what I’m talking about, and catch up on all intentions and recent news of Village Life with regards to the health center and uji project.  I show up to the village council building (at 12:45 rather than noon as I was told because, well, in the words of Leo in Blood Diamond, This Is Africa).  On the drive, Rosie taught me some more Swahili, so as I am introduced to the Roche village chairman, Jackson, I introduce myself, where I’m from, and that I’m a student at Clinton School, ALL IN KISWAHILI! WOOP WOOP!  After my full intro in Swahili, Jackson acknowledges my impressive Swahili and then informs me that he speaks English well, and he is right, so the rest of the meeting needs no translator.  He is happy that I have come to him first, so that he is aware of my presence in his village and he pledges to help me set all interviews up so that I have no problems or road blocks.  Our meeting goes well, and he is very responsive to my project plans and ideas.  He does, however, inform me that he does not think I should go to the community meeting today, but that he will happily call a special meeting for me in a few weeks (Sounds great to me!).  So my last days before leaving for South Africa, I will be putting together my schedule for the next 8 weeks and my project plan to be submitted to Jackson and the village council.  Friday, I plan to start recording data from patient and health center records…and then on to survey development.