The Importance of M&E

There are many things I love about being a Peace Corps volunteer. I love that it is part of my job to hang out on a porch and explain to people that no, JFK and Lincoln were not assassinated by members of the same secret society and that we have 50 states in the US, not 52 as most people here believe. I love teaching and planning projects. I love that moment when the person you are working with realizes the importance of innovation and begins to champion new ideas. Something that is not my favorite thing is “Monitoring and Evaluation”. I know it is incredibly important to measure the impact of your work, but since so much of what we do is hard to measure, it is easy to throw up your hands and say that it is better to devote my time to working instead of seeing if my work worked. Since I know that I don’t enjoy monitoring despite its importance, I made is my “new year” resolution (new year being my second year as a volunteer) to do more M&E.

The graduates of YETP at AGUIDEP, my partner organization

So this morning I decided I would follow up with the young entrepreneurs I trained at two different locations. One group is at the 3-month mark and the other is at their 2-month mark. I split the work with my YETP partner in crime, Mariame and started making phone calls. Talking on the phone here, especially in French, is a real chore. The connection is bad, calls are dropped, and French is used creatively so it is really much harder to understand things over the phone. As much as I was dreading it, by the end of the morning I was excited. I trained 18 people two months ago in the creation of a business. As of today, 6 have started businesses (they are agricultural so everything is bought and in the ground, but they have not sold anything yet), 7 are in the planning phase either doing research, finishing up their business or action plans, and seeking financing, 3 were unreachable (people change phone numbers quite frequently), and only 2 had not started anything. They were two friends who wanted to work together and are going to come into my office for a refresher so they can move forward. This is such a new program that we were honestly not sure if it worked, but it does! Mariame has not finished talking to everyone, but out of the 3-month old group, already 4 people have reported that not only did they start a business, they have started receiving income.  One of this group also got a 4,500,000 GNF loan which means that his business plan was flawless since microfinance institutions are incredibly hesitant to lend to youth.

So while the act of M&E is not fun, getting to hear my students excitedly talk about how they have applied what they learned made my morning. Also knowing that our Youth Entrepreneurship Training Program (YETP) actually works will be a source of motivation as I start my most current course with 135 university students. 

Growing Pains

You probably don’t follow Guinean politics. I consider myself to be generally informed, but before receiving my invitation to Guinea, I could not locate it on a map. Some people are following Guinean politics, namely the large donors to direct aid projects, the European Union and USAID.

In 1958, Guinea became the first African colony to gain independence, which it did through a national referendum. It was not an amicable parting. When leaving, the French destroyed many plantations and factories. The vote broke down along ethnic lines, fanning the flames of ethnic tension that still rage today. (The three large ethnic groups in Guinea are Sousou, Peuhl, and Malinke. The tension is strongest between the Peuhls who hold the economic power and the Malinke’s who hold the political power. A favorite Malinke joke goes, “A Peuhl, a Chinese person, an American, and a Malinke are on a boat that is sinking because it is too heavy. The Chinese man starts throwing cell phones out of the boat. ‘What are you doing! Those are valuable’ shouts the Malinke. The Chinese man responds that they have too many cell phones in China so it’s no big deal. The American catches on and starts throwing dollars off the boat. ‘We have too many of these in the US” he says. The Malinke man looks around and throws the Peuhl off the boat.” Funny, right?) Decades of socialism, military junta, poverty, violence, military coup and a failed state followed until 2010, when Guinea had it’s first free democratic election, choosing “Le Professeur Alpha Conde” as president. As a volunteer, I can’t discuss politics. I am neither endorsing, nor blaming the presidency of Alpha Conde for anything going on in Guinea today. The fact is that the last step in this transition to Democracy has not happened. While legislative elections were supposed to happen within six months of electing a president, they have yet to happen. And that is why the EU and US have their eyes on Guinea. If they do not happen freely, fairly and soon, donor dollars will start fleeing the country.

That brings me to the point of today’s post. We have been having protests every month or two since I arrived in Guinea. Either the opposition parties don’t like the date of the elections, or the company running the elections, or I don’t know what. Protests take two forms, marches and “ville mort”. Marches are mainly contained to Conakry, where occasionally youth and police clash and there is violence and destruction. Ville Mort means “dead town”. All businesses are supposed to close. The thing about ville mort, is that with many people living day to day, they cannot afford to close their business down for a day so you get this half-baked protest that never amounts to anything. The one business that always shuts down it the large generator that powers my NGO, so for us “Ville Mort” means working as hard and fast as we can while watching our laptop batteries dwindle and it means no income for my counterpart who runs a computer training center. We’ve been having Ville Mort in Kindia for almost a week, but have been able to avoid the more chaotic clashes happening in other big cities. Hopefully, one of these protests will cause change, the elections will occur without problems and we all can do the work we want to do. These manifestations make it hard for me to work, they make it hard for Guineans to live, they destroy lives and property, but they are also to be expected in a country learning how to be a democracy. It is interesting to be living through it. 

In other news, I am helping my host sister with her homework every night and realizing that she cannot read. In class she memorizes phrases and repeats them back to me as if she was reading regardless of what the page says. Her books are in French, but she only knows Sousou and my Sousou is minimal. So, does anyone have tips for how to teach reading to someone who doesn’t speak the language they are trying to read and you have no language in common.