Mma Money

Ughh. ughh ugghh arggghhhhhhh. I wish I had words to describe how frustrated I am, but guttural intonations seem to be the only thing that’s burbling forth. The realities of “development” hit me like a train today and I find myself splayed on the tracks, watching the remaining clouds of black smoke, slowly drift into the soul-swallowing sky.

This morning was bitter cold and grey and tired, and I was looking forward to a little cheer from the children when we arrived at Kamogelo. However, before I could make it into the breakfast hall (where steaming vats of porridge waited) Sister Margaret beckoned to me and told me that she needed to speak with me in her office. I was nervous for a split second, until she launched into an urgent request for help. Apparently, the UNICEF project proposal is due tomorrow (I didn’t even know she’d been working on one) and she didn’t understand new guidelines for submission.

Speaking calmly (and actually kind of excitedly – it seemed like some sort of indication of action/progress/momentum) I told her not to worry and that I’d be happy to help. I read over UNICEF’s project proposal guidelines, and they’re really very straightforward and reasonable. They only fund short-term, specific projects, so they ask for an outline of current and future budget plans, proposals for project monitoring, progress indicators, data collection, analysis, public availability, a timeline for execution and some other basic organizational things. Apparently, Sister Margaret had submitted a few proposals in the past (before she had these guidelines) so she also had them available for me to reference.

So far, so good.

Yet, when I began to ask basic questions about financial records, annual funding/donations, expected expenditures, etc. I was met with a blank stare. It turns out that no financial documents ever reach Sister Margaret, but instead are held by the “bursar” of the Catholic Commission that heads the Kamogelo Project. This all stems back to the previously mentioned fact that the Sister has no direct access to funds or accounts for the day care. I immediately requested to call this bursar, and found another voice at the end of the line, but not much help. The woman I spoke to was one of the crankiest I’ve ever tele-encountered, and she insisted that I come visit her office if I wanted any information.

Thus, at about 9:45 am, Sister Margaret and I piled into the Kamogelo car for the twenty minute drive to the church. Reaching our destination, she ushered me into a snug, heated, squat building, and through a few rooms into the “bursar’s office.” What greeted me was shocking to the point of hilarity. An older, hunched woman, wrapped in blankets, sat at a desk with hundred pula notes stacked in front of her. All around, piled in groups of five to eight, were gigantic binders, crudely labeled in black marker (most dating back a few years.) These, I was informed, were the financial records for the church, as well as for all of the projects that fall under the Catholic Commission, the umbrella organization the funds Kamogelo.

Plucking up my courage and taking a few deep breaths, I began to slowly and cheerily inquire:
1) Who funds Kamogelo? How much money do they give annually?
2) What is the current balance of Kamogelo’s account?
3) How much money is allocated for monthly expenses?
4) What bank is used?

If my questions were straight lines, then the “answers” I received were Gordion knots. But what sort of sword do I have to slice through them? What I gathered, after an hour of increasing confusion, is that Mma Money (as I took to thinking of her) is not the world’s best bookkeeper. In fact, she is most likely the world’s worst. She hadn’t gotten around to filing, or even holding onto any information about Kamogelo for the year 2008, and even older paperwork was jumbled, providing no accurate trends or base figures. I managed to glean that the Diocese of Gaborone designated P200 000 specifically for Kamogelo in July of 2006, but Mma Money had no way of telling me the current balance, or providing any tangible record of how that money had been spent. Why? Because the money was never transferred into the sub-account that the Commission established for control over Kamogelo’s funds. Why? Because only ORFUND (the other consistent donor) can put money in this account. Thus, the “designated” P200 000 might as well have been imaginary. “Eh, there is a small balance,” she told me. “I think P5000.” You think? I think that there are children who need to eat and food that can only be purchased with money, and I think that they are relying on you to keep track of all this for them. I think I am going to scream.

ORFUND seems to have been donating P50 000 to Kamogelo every three months, but until just recently, this money was reserved specifically for teacher salaries (I saw them, they’re meager at best.) This seems good news, but considering that Mma Money insisted that their deposits were irregular and unreliable, I don’t know how to count ORFUND’s help as a future certainty. Even if there was still some pula left from the Diocese, and ORFUND did give consistently, I’m not sure that it would be enough. The day care doesn’t seem to have a cap on how many children it accepts, and prices for food and various other necessities are rising.

I left Mma Money’s office clutching a few copies of a June Standard Bank statement, and was ushered immediately into the office of the Catholic Commission’s national coordinator. My talk with her was brief, yet terrible, since she informed me that Kamogelo is a Project of the Church and all funds need to go through the church (thus severely complicating my hopes for financial independence and a PayPal account). She also informed me that SHE was the one writing the UNICEF proposal, but that I couldn’t see a copy of the project plans because she hadn’t typed it yet. How am I to assemble my part of the packet (budget work, etc.) if I can’t see hers? She was curt, and we walked back to the parking lot.

Accompanying us back to the day care was a new volunteer nurse (a very welcome addition to the Kamogelo clan.) She didn’t say much on the ride, but I did learn that she moved to Gabs from Tanzania in September of 2007, and still hasn’t managed to get her nurses license here. Apparently, (a fact confirmed by my friends in the Health Department) the applications are backed up by a few YEARS, making the process impossible. Hopefully, while she waits, she can do some good for our kids.

Aside from my own panic over the impossibility of this overnight request, (I’ve resigned myself to pleading for an extension in the morning – I just don’t have enough information about anything to submit something legitimate) I am terribly disheartened by the lack of organization here. From top to bottom, and bottom to top, Botswana seems to lack any sort of group motivation or national momentum. The misunderstanding, ignorance, or apathy regarding methods of organization, systems, processes, etc. run so deeply they’d be harder to mine than diamonds. Growing up in the states, I never realized how steeped I was in notions of assembly line manufacturing, optimum efficiency, ticking-clock mentalities, and cog in the machine purposes. I feel like there is a certain work ethic or drive that is just absent here, closely related to a faulty system of incentives. I know this sounds like a massive generalization, but every single Motswana I have ever spoken to here (really, I swear) has categorized Batswana as lazy and unmotivated. Of coure, I have met exceptions, but even these people peg their compatriots as such.

Along with the snail pace of technological development (EVERYTHING is paper here), the thought of the time it will take for mentalities to change is almost paralyzing. The mindset of the older generation seems intractable, and I can feel the nation’s growing pains in my own bones. It makes me wonder how anything manages to run as it is, and it hurts my head to even begin to imagine some sort of systemic overhaul. How in the world can these things be fixed? I was trying to sound hopeful when I spoke to Sister Margaret about some of this – suggesting that perhaps the younger generation will grow up with a greater knowledge of the world and more incentive to achieve – but she just poo-pooed it. “Some will change, yes, but most will think that this is the way to live.”

The words that now lie on the tip of my tongue are as follows: I’ve taken political science classes, I’ve read about development projects in national newspapers, I’ve seen documentaries, I’ve read books, I’ve attended lectures, and now I’m finally living the true knowledge of a third world quagmire.
However, I hesitate to fully release this utterance into the open because a part of me fears gaining anything from such a terrible situation, even if that gain is only mental. It is natural to me to scrape out the good from even the most horrible of experiences, but I am overwhelmed by guilt at the thought that at the end of seven months I will fly back to Philly with new knowledge and these children will be left to grow up. I hope to aid them significantly while I’m still here, and am in no way giving up, but I just am slightly flattened by the heavy, hard fact that I can’t change their lives or cure AIDS or give them chocolate cake and free internet and trips to the park and a carefree existence. Limitations, of any kind, do not sleep soundly in my brain.