Crisis Averted

After having the meeting with the chief about the nursery school I had to go to Lusaka to see off Jessica (The only other Guinea Volunteer that came with me to Zambia). She had decided to go home, and I wanted to make sure we were able to hang out a bit before she took off.

While I was gone, the Chief was going to address the whole issue with the nursery school with all of the concerned parties during one of his weekly meetings.

After a really great last hurrah with Jess I went back to the village. Already not in the greatest moods considering the circumstance, I met with the Headmaster of the Primary school and the Director of the Nursery school. They were supposed to tell me how well the meeting went… turns out the meeting did not go so well…

They told me that the Chief must have spoken with someone else in the time between our meeting together, and his weekly meeting. He ended up doing 3 things: First he dissolved the committee because they said they made really bad decisions… fair enough. Next he put the Headmaster in the school in charge of putting a new one together. Lastly he fined the Director of the nursery school 3,500,000 Kwacha (about 700 dollars). The chief said that the director, who is also a teacher at the primary school, was a thief and a drunk. He said that he stole the money from the hammer mill. 

Now, this teacher is one of the people I really trust in the village. I am 100 percent sure he did not steal any money. He also really doesn’t drink… I am not sure what happened, but I was shocked. I was really apologetic to Alex, the director, and told him that I would do everything I could to take care of it. He is about to have another baby, and his daughter just broke her ankle, so this would be a bad time to pay that kind of money. 

So… I decided to try to meet with the chief. The plan was to show him my confidence in Alex, give him some more information about the nursery school, and to hopefully convince him not to fine Alex. I tried really hard to get a meeting with the chief, but eventually I was forced to call him. I had to go to Lusaka the next morning and I really wanted to take care of this before I left. 

The discussion did not go as planned…

I tried to gently tell him what I described above. It did not go over well. Later I found out that he was mostly annoyed that I called instead of seeing him in person. I did not realize this was a problem. He seemed very angry at me for questioning his decision. He then said he would not fine Alex, but that the Nursery school was in my hands now and he wants nothing to do with it. I was speechless. Without his help, pulling the school together would almost be impossible. After a bit of verbal fumbling on my side, he hung up. 

THEN, to add insult to injury, the Headmaster of the Primary school, Mr. Chungu, met with the chief. I guess the Chief expressed his anger toward me questioning his decision. Apparently it was very heated. Mr. Chungu then called me and told me that he also does not want to have anything to do with the Nursery school because he did not want to be on the bad side of the chief. 

I explained to Mr. Chungu that I did not mean any offense by it. I just wanted to add a bit so that the Chief could make a decision with all of the available information. By no means did I mean to contradict his ruling.

After all of this, I went to Lusaka thinking that the whole project is in tatters, and at the end of the day it was my fault.

I finally got back to Kasama. I also just got a phone call from Mr. Chungu. The miracle worker that he is, he had another meeting with the chief and apologized on my behalf. He also told the chief that we badly needed his help and that we all had to work together. 

In the end, the Chief is happy, Alex does not have to pay the fine, the committee can stay together to create the Constitution, and the Chief is helping fund some of the things we need to do to pull the project together.

PHEW!

Its been a very emotional week…