**Breaking News** Our bags arrived! They look like they may have been dragged across the tarmac, but they arrived. For those of you who know my distaste for putting anything away ever, you will be surprised to know that I was so excited to see my bag that I immediately put everything away in my closet when I got it at 12:30 in the morning. Shocking, I know.
Today Amy and I began the first day of training for the field assessment. We are working with 10 people from local NGOs to create interview teams who go into the "field" and gather information about the conflict in Cote d'Ivoire. Right now we are doing a "post conflict" assessment. Basically, that means that we are examining the political, social, economic, and security context of a country that has experience conflict in the past but is no longer in the midst of active fighting. The last assessment that Amy was on in Jos, Nigeria was in a currently "hot" situation. If you have been watching CNN at all, there was a major massacre of the citizens of suburban Jos last weekend. Don't worry, none of that is going on here.
At any rate, today we worked with my new favorite person, Murtala, to translate the West African Conflict Assessment (WACA) framework into French so that the local groups can understand. Everything went pretty well. I had a hard time understanding the accents and my spelling is HORRENDOUS. However, a nice man from the north (a major distinction here) helped me out and was our not taker. Here are some lessons I learned today:
1. Amy and I are kind of a big deal. Yesterday I mentioned that we were celebrities for being white. Now, we are SUPER celebrities because we are being funded by USAID. How do I know that we are celebrities? Well, the president of the Front Populaire Ivorien/ Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) only agreed to meet with our assessment team if Amy, Murtala and I all went on the assessment. The FPI is the political party of the Ivorian president and this guy who we are interviewing used to be the Prime Minister and is more or less the right hand man of the current president. He's sort of a hybrid of Rahm Emanuel and the chairman of the DNC. Amy just commented that he may be very disappointed with the Americans who show up at his office. Not only are we female, but we both look much younger than we actually are. To quote Amy, "On the government food chain, we are plankton." Oh well!
2. You have to take serious bribe money if you plan to do any traveling in the north of the country. My note-taking savior told a story where he had to pay approximately 200,000 CFA (approximately $400) to travel safely between two cities which are relatively close together.
3. The Ivorian national soccer team is called The Elephants. I like it.
4. I learned about "bissap." Bissap is like a juice made from hibiscus flowers and is the orange juice of West Africa.
5. One of our participants believes that the French intervention known as Operation Unicorn (perhaps named by a six year old girl?) was set-up to destabilize the Ivorian government so that the French could reassert control over Cote d'Ivoire. I'm not saying that he's wrong, but I'll be interested to see what his field notes look like.
Alright, I'm off to prepare for my interview tomorrow!
(Picture is a view of the car lot/church as seen from our "office" on the terrace)
No comments:
Post a Comment