Intro



The chronicles of Dominique Dagenais travelling to Ghana with Engineers Without Borders. Dom is one of two employees from TransCanada to join EWB and work alongside volunteers on a farming initiative in rural Ghana for 6 months.





Thursday, December 15, 2011

The DDA Fellowship; The last Conference


We had our last conference of the year for the District Directors of Agriculture Fellowship on November 16th. Our aim was twofold, on one hand have the DDAs present their change projects and to try to create a vision for a way forward in 2012 along with getting some feedback from the DDAs.
The Directors hard at work during session 4 in September
It was somewhat disappointing; only 3 of the 7 DDAs showed up; Dickson, Savior and Ahmed Adam were the ones present. Apparently the 4 others were all very sick and couldn’t make it; one of them was actually in the hospital, the malaria season has been brutal.  It’s hard to say if we should read something into it? Does it indicate a lack of interest from some of the members? Perhaps they were not happy with their change projects and didn’t want to share with their peers? Or perhaps they were just all very sick?

Considering the low numbers we did some really good work and got some really good outputs from them. I may have to visit some of those DDAs before leaving; we’ll see.

The Change Project presentations were good although they reflected the initial planning. More care should be given in the future in coaching the Directors for the planning phase. They should be introduced to basic tools of Project Management. The projects would greatly benefit by having things like scope and deliverables well defined.  It is also important for them to limit their initiatives to something that is achievable during the period of the Fellowship. From this last year working with the DDAs  we now better understand the types of constrains the Director are facing, therefore  our coaching should improve for the 2012 new DDA Fellows.

What was lacking in proper planning was easily made up by the hard work they put into it.

One Project that stood out was Dr. Savior’s from Karaga. The problem was well defined and the strategy made sense and the project is unfolding as planned. It will be ongoing for a while since his nutrition project is only the beginning of a bigger initiative. His project aims at teaching people how to use soy in their day to day diet.  They teach the family recipes and how to incorporate soya into their regular dishes without changing the taste. In his district, as in many district in Ghana, a fair amount of children suffer from malnutrition. The children don't suffer from lack of food but from  a lack of protein. There are many reasons for this and they are mostly cultural; people believe for example that eggs and meat are bad for children. People already grow soy as a cash crop so the project simply aim at changing people behaviour by having them incorporate 20% of soy with the maze they use for making Fufu and TeZed.

Ahmed Adam's from project Kpamdie was very challenging. I think that he may have tried to take too big of a bite at building capacity of its staff. One of the aspect that was clever and that used skills acquired from the DDA Fellowship was to create n Performance Based Incentive for the fuel allowances. In each district Extension Agents (EAA) and Directors of Agriculture (DOA are directors reporting to the District Director of Agriculture) receive a fuel allowance. Disregarding the amount of travelling the EAA and DAO receive the same amount every month.

Director Adam instituted a system where the EAA and DAO record their travel in a log and they are compensated according to their travelling. There are also spot audits. He also has included non-monetary incentive as reward for the better performing staffs. This part of the project seems to be getting some traction with the staff.

Interestingly enough when I visited his district in Kpandie the EEAs and DAO were very vocal about this system and there seem to be a strong buy in.

Doctor Dickson's improvement project from Bunkpurugu involved improving the distribution of Government sponsored fertilizers. His first phase was to acquire some hard data on the distribution in his district. His assumption is that by having better distributor locations the access to the program could improve drastically for the more remote farmers. His initiative, although simple, could have a very important effect on the delivery of this particular service.

Overhaul  I believe that the three projects were very good and will  be on going and will have substantial effects for their respective districts. Equally important, the sharing of this information within the |DDA fellowship could be a way forward to institutionalize some of these changes down the road?

The afternoon was a discussion about a way forward for the DDA Fellowship and work on creating a vision. We were able to come up with draft of the DDA Fellowship Vision. There is more work to be done but it is a good start. I have worked with Doctor Dickson in creating a simple Blog that we'll use to dissipate and share the information.

I'll write some more about the “Way Forward” in a future blog

Keep well allowances
Dominique

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

My name is Suhuyini.

Many people coming to Ghana get a Ghanaian name. For example Siera, one of my surrogate daughters was named Tunteya (which means progress) by a woman’s group from a village near Tamale. I never asked for mine and no one has volunteered to give me one; Father Dom works just fine with me. Olivier was giving his by a hairdresser located near the Gumani House. Within hours of arriving in Tamale the hairdresser and her daughter named him Hunpini which means God’s gift; God has a weird sense of humour.
Olivier became good friend with some of the nearby shop owners. I rarely talk to them besides the regular greeting when walking by or stopping to buy something. By Ghanaian standards I am an old grumpy guy who gets annoyed by the overwhelming friendliness. I rarely give my phone number and if someone ask me to be their friend I usually tell them that I already have enough friends and if I take them as a friend then I would have to fire one of my existing ones.
Tunteya and Suhyini on the bus to Mole
So I am not exactly the poster boy for the friendly face of the white race. I used to think that I was a bit of a cranky man; now I have graduated officially to being a cranky old man. I guess I became old because I am reminded every day in so many ways that I am so old. My EWBer colleges have certainly contribute in that departmernt, I guess the difference is just there. For some reason Ghanaian people won’t let me carry my own bag. So it feels pretty much the same, gray hair and wrinkles and all, but I am being treated like if I was 90 years old and not able to start my own motto. Not a big deal; until I came to Ghana I never though of myself as being old; I feel more like a man with a fair amount of millage? ;)

Being old is like getting a title, you may get it but it doesn't mean you get more money. Unstead of the title I would have gladly taken the raise. ;)

As I walked by the few days following Olivier’s naming, the shop owners start calling me Suhuyini when I was greeting them. They just decided that I needed a Dagbani name.  Suhyini means the “One Heart” the one who inspires, who brings people together, the one one who thinks and feels for the group. So those people who barely know me gave me a pretty awesome name. I asked a few different people what it meant, just to make sure. When I ask one of the men in Taha he simply said: “it’s you, One Heart”.
Maybe they are just polite and couldn’t find a Dagbani name that meant “Cranky Old White Guy who doesn't want to be my friend”? Or maybe they saw some of the “One Heart” in me?
I can’t say that my Dagbani name is totally fitting, maybe I am somewhat of a “One Heart”. It’s more about what I aspire to become but I feel that there is a long way to go; I struggle in being inspiring and bringing people together. I just wish I was much better at it.

The good news is that I still have many good years left in me. There still some fighting left in this dog . I may comeback in Africa in the future even if it’s only to visit my Ghanaian family. Nevertheless from somewhere in West Africa I am bringing back home a reminder of what I should become; what I should be.
My name is Suhuyini and I don't give a flying (Beep, Beep, Beep) how young I am. And I can carry my own bag.

Cheers you all,