Development with a capital D

My next big adventure consists of a five day escape to Ségou, some 7 hour bus ride away from Sikasso, for a mini-internship at the FODESA. Alex, another short term EWB volunteer from the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, was assigned a placement with this extraordinary NGO. When Louis had come for a routine check-up before the retreat, he had detected my falling motivation. I suspect he was still under the charm of the exemplary pro-poor approach used by the organisation after coming straight from Alex’s routine check-up, but he suggested that I take a few days off to go see what a functionning NGO is capable of on the field. I knew that I could benefit from observing experienced facilitators and that I would apply any found best practices to improve my interactions with villagers in the vitamin project. So I wrote up a nice letter to the FODESA coordinator, who was already familiar with Engineers Without Borders for having worked with Alex. I clearly stated my objectives, rubbed them the right way (because they actually deserve it, don’t get me wrong) and then patiently waited for their enthusiastic approval.

The bus ride to Ségou was an adventure in itself. That day everything happened so fast. I had been trying to reach Alex for days now. I found his “green light” in my inbox and I was immediately anxious to get going. Four months in Mali is so little time, and I wanted this learning experience to happen as soon as possible so that I could use it to a maximum. But Alex was impossible to get a hold of. I finally got through to him on a Tuesday at 4 PM. He told me that ideally, I would make it to Ségou that same night, that we would go into the office the next day for me to meet everyone, and that I would leave the next for a rural area with an employee from Promavie. FODESA Ségou contracts out to another NGO specialized in village facilitation to do start-up and follow-up work directly with the involved villagers, prior to and following the implementation of the appropriate technology selected by the beneficiaries. The idea was for me to leave Thursday morning with a facilitator and be his partner for three days.

Diallo drove me immediately to the bus station, where one little indie bus was getting ready to leave for Ségou at 6 PM. I asked how long was the ride, did the generous math accounting for the countless stops, and asked clearly: “Alright, so this means that I will be in Ségou tonight at about 1 AM, right?”. They assured me that this was the case. I phoned Alex back: “Allo, Alex? Hey, I’ll be there early morning, around one-ish. How do I get to your place?”. I went back home, threw a few essetials in my backpack, bought a snack for the road, and I was on my way.

By 11:30 PM we were only halfway, in Koutiala. The driver decides that there is more money to make if we wait for the bus to fill up in the morning, since we lost many passengers at this stop. “We’ll be spending the night”, kindly informed me another passenger who must have pitied my tired, confused look that screamed out “I am in no condition to even try to follow this conversation in Bambara right now!”. So I made friends with some young dudes making omelettes on the side of the road. I tracked down a guy with a cell phone to let Alex know that I wouldn’t make it in that night. I then had my typical bread/2-eggs/warm-mayo combo, chatted for a while with these guys, and lied down for a snooze across a full row of seats in a different, narrow bus that ended up taking me to Ségou when the sun came up. I made it into the office with undereye circles reaching my armpits, but here things went more smoothly. I would actually leave for the villages the next day. I thought I was dreaming: was part of our plan actually turning out? “Alex, pinch me!”.

Alex took me to see his friends at the djembe shop. We chilled on the front porch as Alex played some familiar tunes and his friends tightened the skins on the djembes as they smoked a few joints. We bought some trafitional malian alcoholic drink and we all moved to the resto-bar where they were performing that night. I knew it was time to go when I wouldn’t even get my butt off the chair for a little dance and that I was nodding off despite the pounding right next to my ears...

Alex posing and Jean-Luc on the left, who was just arriving when I left Ségou to go back home
The next morning, bright and early, I was sitting on the back of Khader’s motorcycle. Khader is an amazing thirty-something year old man with the world’s coolest job. I followed him around to visit the many villages under his responsibility with already installed appropriate technology projects, where he would hold meetings with the villagers or women organisations to build capacity and address concerns. We also visited the other villages who were at the requesting stage for a certain technology project. This means that he would help the villagers organize themselves to conduct activities to raise the required 10% of the project cost. FODESA finds the partners that will invest the other 90% of the total amount.

Visiting a FODESA community garden

The beauty of the FODESA method is that they first approach certain counties and ask them which communities are most in need. FODESA then sends contractors on the field in these specific villages to perform a week-long feasibility study. A team of specialists settle in the village for a week to run a series of participatory activities with the villagers. The result of this initiative is a very complete “Rapport Diagnostic” which draws a comprehensive socio-economic portrait of the village. Some villages identify “Poor access to clean water” while others will identify “No income generating activities”. There is clearly a long list of possible constraints, but most correspond to something in the menu of appropriate technology projects that the FODESA offers.

Once again, the FODESA does not do the implementation of the technology with its own staff, but instead contracts out to specialized NGOs or companies in the particular domain. The FODESA simply plays a coordination role, placing the big bucks in the right places. It ensures that the right technologies end up in the right places by having the demand originate from the villagers who identify their constraints on their own during the feasibility study, and it provides the necessary follow-up to ensures the sustainability of the chosen technology. All in all, their approach is hard to beat: if I was an NGO, I would want to be the FODESA!

An MFP women cooperative meeting. Can you spot Khader, the only man on the picture?