Saturday October 15th: Change

The last six weeks have been busy as I’ve been ignoring my partner organisation and following my own work plan. They’ve also been rather productive. I’ve coordinated a series of seven community meetings to raise awareness about waste management in different areas of the village, organised two village cleanup sessions, and taught touch rugby to some of the youth group who had never even seen a game of rugby before – the forward pass rule took a lot of getting used to. Over the past week or two, I’ve even heard a few comments about how tidy the village has been looking.

Whether any of this was worthwhile is impossible to say from here. It depends entirely on what happens from here on out. It would take less than a week to return the village to its pre-Thomas state if the locals were to revert to their previous methods of waste non-management. And even now, there’s a lot to be done to make the village tidy enough to attract tourists.

The hope of continued change rests with the locals themselves, particularly a small group of grandmothers from the mothers union and a few active members of the youth group who have been campaigning with me to tidy up the village. What they do when I’m gone will determine our collective success.

One activity in which we are yet to succeed is in getting any useful action out of the Kia House of Chiefs, and this point could be crucial. With a few words of encouragement from the chairman, effective waste management would be very achievable. However, he is renowned for not being active in anything that doesn’t involve consumption of food and beverages.

Whether or not the idea of waste-management sticks, working with the youth group and the mothers union was a success in itself as we have all learned a lot from the experience. And it has been a satisfying few months for me in any case. After having had my previous efforts largely stifled by my corrupted partner organisation, any change in the Kia community is a welcome change for me. Whatever the outcome, this past few months will be one small piece in the puzzle of development in Kia and I’ve enjoyed being part of it.