Meeting Minutes

It is 9:55 am. I am sitting under a hangar at the alphebetization (literacy) center in my village, empty as usual, waiting for villageois to start arriving for the 10 o'clock community meeting, called by my counterpart. So far, it is just me.

10:05 rolls around. I get up and begin looking around for any sign of the people who said they would be attending. The literacy center is close to a pump, so I step out from under the hangar to greet the perpetual crowd of women gathered at the pump,

"Or keeni baani!"
"Aminata! Materkeni!"

They all look at me curiously as if to say "why are you sitting at the alphebitization center all by yourself?" Still no sign of the meeting attendees.

10:15. The six year old daughter of the village accoucheuse, Sabine, skips over and joins me. "Tantie, qu'est ce que tu fais?" I explain that I am waiting to start the meeting to talk about village health and the Microplan for 2007. She nods and says that she will wait with me.

10:30. I have taught a laughing Sabine the song about a "Petite Poisson" that I learned in 8th grade French class. She happily sings and makes the bubbling fish noises that go with the song "gloup! gloup! gloup!" I sing with her, keeping one eye on my watch and one eye on the entrance to the alphebetization center, willing people to show up.

10:45. Sabine and I are joined by a third party. Not someone who is there to take part in the meeting, but her friend Mikhail. Now the three of us are singing the Petite Poisson song. I am silently cursing "l'heure Afrique."

It is now 11:00. My counterpart pops over to see if I am still there. Yep, still waiting. He says that he will come back in a few minutes to see if anyone has shown up. Apparently being on time is not even a priority for the person who is supposed to be running the meeting. I continue to wait.

11:10. Sabine, Mikhail and I have moved on to the "Frere Jacques" song. I am teaching them the english version. They are adorable. I begin to ponder the idea of only inviting children to village meetings.

11:15. A man who appears older than time itself hobbles into the alphebetization center. He is draped in a long buubu and a turban, despite the 100 degree weather, and uses his staff to step up onto the platform where the meeting will be held. He leaves his sheep waiting outside the hangar. It is the village imam. The first person has arrived.

Shortly after the imam's arrival, around 11:30, a group of turbaned men arrive from across the field. Now that one of the village leaders has arrived, men begin showing up in masses. I stand up to shake the hand of every person that walks through the door. Sabine and Mikhail get bored with the talk of goats, sheep, cows, and harvesting that is taking place among the men, so they wave goodbye and skip off. I realize that my counterpart, the person who originally called the meeting, is not there, meaning that I am the only representative from the CSPS there. The men look at me expectantly, "are we going to start anytime soon?"

I realize that I cannot kill time with a group of men by singing a song about fish, so I try to make small talk in whatever limited Sonrai and Fulfulde I can muster. As all they ever really want to talk about are their animals, I find this surprisingly easier than I expected. I breathe a huge sigh of relief when the translator finally walks up.

11:45. My counterpart shows up, no apology or explanation for his tardiness, and the meeting begins. I have asked my counterpart to give me just a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to present myself and my role in village. I explain that I am there to talk about village health problems that I would like to work on, and that I need collaboration from them and cannot do it on my own. I cannot see anyone's expression because their mouths are covered by brightly patterned cloths wrapped around their heads, but I take it as a good sign that they are all nodding and grunting in what I hope is agreement.

It is now noon and stomachs are rumbling over the talking. My counterpart has begun his presentation about the health center's microplan for the new year. He takes the term "micro" too literally I think and begins to go into far more detail than is necessary about CSPS functioning. People are starting to get bored. One man, blatantly not paying attention to the meeting, summons a child to go buy tea.

12:30. Even I am bored. I am no longer sure what my counterpart is talking about. Two men are making tea in the back row and noisily stand up and move around to bring me a glass. I find it slightly amusing that I am not the least bit bothered that they are interrupting the meeting to give me tea.

12:45. People are no longer even pretending to pay attention. The translator has begun to shorten 15 minute speeches in French into one minute bursts in Sonrai. I notice only one man who appears to be concentrating on the meeting, staring intently at his hands. Wait...nevermind. He is not bent over in concentration, but hunched over in a deep sleep.

Around 13:00, I try to motion to my counterpart that it might be time to wrap it up. The men have already long given up on the meeting; some have begun to regather their animals outside the hangar and shake everyone's hand in farewell.

13:15. Meeting over.


Although it is easy to see the humor in the situation a few days removed from it, it can be extraordinarily frustrating when trying to make progress and working in these kinds of conditions. I wish that I could say that the elements of this meeting - namely the lateness and the apathy of participants - are an anomaly, but alas, my counterpart tells me that this is what a typical meeting in village looks like.

I am passionate about my work here, but it would appear following this meeting that the people I am trying to help are much less so. My perceptions from this encounter tell me that people here only begrudgingly attend meetings called for their own benefit, and while I can try my best to get them to attend and try to convince them that it is important, I cannot force people to care about their own problems.

So you might be wondering, why am I presenting meeting minutes if the meeting was seemingly useless? Was anything actually accomplished?

Of course the answer is yes, otherwise I would not be writing about it. All failed experiments at least result in a learning experience.

Lessons learned:
-Meetings in Burkina Faso will never start on time.
-No meeting can start without the imam or other comparable respected male village member.
-Detailed presentations about complex health problems do not translate well in a local language and will put an audience to sleep faster than you can say "paludisme."

I was able to meet up with one of the French-speaking meeting attendees a few days after the meeting to get his thoughts on what went wrong. I asked what he got out of the meeting and he shrugged. "You want to work with us on problems, right?" I eagerly nodded. He said, "All right, then let's have a talk."

We proceeded to talk for more than two hours about Saoga's failure to develop, and what he sees as the sources of problems. There was no set timetable for our discussion, no fancy flip charts, no discussion of "micro" plans, just honest conversation about an old man's worries about his family and his village. I did not say much during our conversation, just listened, occasionally nodding, or asking questions. I learned more in just 15 minutes of this conversation than I had learned in the entire almost three and a half hour block spent at the failed community meeting.

I learned that people are not apathetic about their problems, they are just unsure of what to do about them, where to proceed, and who to turn to for help. While this uncertainty unfortunately lends itself to a so-called failure-to-launch, it does not necessarily mean that they are unwilling to do anything, just that they might lack direction.

I also learned, most importantly, that a community meeting is not necessarily the best way to "launch." This might sound obvious, but people rarely respond well to someone talking at them about their problems (this seems to explain why they do not think it is important to be on time to these meetings) but can provide a lot of insights if they are engaged in a dialogue.

Three and a half hours of checking my watch, singing about petite poisson, and twiddling my thumbs proved to be worthwhile in the end. Because they taught me that discourse might just be the path to productivity.