It’s finally finished! It’s been months, and countless stressful headaches, and although I cant believe it, it’s finally done. Let me tell you the full story, if I can remember it all..
Earlier this year, I think it was March or so, I wrote a grant through USAID. USAID has funds set aside every year for development projects. Of those funds, they allocate a certain amount to Peace Corps, divided up among the 70+ countries we serve in. So every year PC Ghana has funds for Education, HealthWatsan and other projects that you can apply for. I applied under the Basic Education sector for a computer lab. The official title sent to
The plan was to take the lights (electricity) from the teachers’ quarters and bring it to the school, build an additional room, and fill it with computers. This year will be the first year that the BECE (national high school entrance exam; like the SAT in the
So the plan was to build a room and bring some computers to Diare JHS. This would not only provide a computer lab for the students to learn how to type and use a computer, but the fact that the school would now have lights means that the students could attend preps at their own school. Preps is a mandatory homework study-session every school night that the students must attend. Since our school had no electricity or lights, the students were going to the primary school in town. With lights they could now study in their own classrooms.
The first thing this required was to fill out and submit the grant application itself. That part, in kind with the rest of the project, was full of frustrations and stresses.
There are limited funds available through USAID, so if another volunteer applies before you, they get the money before you. If enough people with enough projects apply and get approved, you need to wait till next year. I expected that this year’s funds would be finished, but when I called Daniel Omane at our main office in
I met with Bubu and our Headmaster and we started calling craftsmen from the town to come give estimates. The mason came and gave his estimate purely in Dagbani. He looked at the current building, and told us his estimates on how much material each room would have taken to build. We told him we wanted to build an additional room, exactly like the others, only a bit smaller. Headmaster said it should be the size of his office, which looks like a broom closet. Bubu suggested half a classroom. I said no, let’s make sure we do it right, if we have extra space it wont kill us, and at this stage it wont cost too much more. Let’s shoot for 2/3 of a classroom. So the mason took the measurements for what 2/3 of a classroom would be, and gave us his estimate on how much materials we would need. Additionally he told us how much each of the items should cost. No problem right?
Time to read the estimate that was prepared: What I was given was a hand written jumble of numbers on a white piece of paper. Head and Bubu traded off filling out the estimate, so the logic behind it changed. Not only was the estimate written in old AND new currency (example: wood for doors = GhC 40 while roofing nails is labeled as 300,000 old cedis), but the estimate jumped between itemized and total values!
So for the example I used above, Quarter Rods (4) 25,000. I had no way of knowing if the 4 rods total equaled 25,000, or if it was 4 x 25,000 making 100,000. And on top of that, as you can imagine, converting back and forth from new to old currency can be confusing at times, and a zero is easy to drop. So looking at those numbers (25,000 = 2.5 ghc) I was wondering, did they actually mean 250,000 (25ghc)?
I called Bubu, and he could offer no additional insight. He said he thought that it was all in totals, not itemized (although some items clearly were itemized). And so I did my best effort to guess what was what, and where zeros were forgotten, and I submitted my application. The only saving grace was that of the Electrician; he submitted a real estimate, clearly itemized and easy to follow. I did some price hunting on computers and peripheral equipment and I sent it in. The grand total was for $5,850 equaling 8,366 Ghc.
A few weeks later I got a call from Daniel Omane asking some questions about particulars in the budget. What one item meant or another. I took the questions back to the craftsmen. One item in the carpentry section was “Fight” labeled at 60,000cedis. I asked the mason about it, because the carpenter was nowhere to be found, and he said it was the metal rods used to hold the roof down. When I went to reply to Daniel I looked at the estimate for this “Fight” and knew right away that there was no way metal support rods for an entire room would be 60,000 (6ghc). They must have forgotten a zero. I submitted it as 60ghc. I took this opportunity to ask bubu and head again “Have we captured absolutely EVERYTHING for this room? Do we need anything else other than carpenter, mason, and electrician? Does this workmanship cover everything?” They ran the list of items through again and assured me it was all there.
I re-submitted to Daniel my numbers and it was off to
About 2 weeks later I got a surprise! My Barclays account was now almost 8,400Ghc richer!
With the money in-hand it was time to get some concrete commitments from people that had been giving me “yes” nods. I spoke with Bubu and Head and told them that PeaceCorps had told me that they would not release the funds until some conditions were met. (I would have done this earlier, but I wanted to be 100% sure that we were getting approved before I started down this path.)
I said that with building a computer lab, it faces 2 main risks of continuity and sustainability. First is if the computers are not maintained and they slowly break down. The second is if they are stolen, which is a very realistic problem. For the first, I said that we would need to require that the district education office pre-approve Head to spend some of his capitation funds (money given each term for the school to use on internal costs) on computer maintenance every year. This would go towards a specialist looking-at and repairing the computers, as well as buying small parts that may waste through use. Secondly was a requirement that the district education office hire and staff for us a night watchman to stay at the school. This is a fairly common practice, and the primary school where our kids were currently going to preps had a night watchman, but since our school had no lights and really nothing to steal, we just never got one. As a matter of fact, the night watchman at the primary was on our payroll, but since our students always went to the primary, they just kind-of absorbed him into their own staff.
After a few weeks, and after speaking with a few people, the district office sent me a nice letter stating in writing that they had committed to both things. With a written agreement in hand of their support, and assuaging my main concerns, it was time to begin.
Time to start the real work.
I went to Tamale and spoke with some vendors about the things we needed to buy. Mohammed is the Programming and Training Assistant at the TSO. He’s essentially “The Man” and knows Tamale inside and out. He’s highly respected throughout the city and he’s a good go-to guy for essentially any project. Mohammed recommended a man to buy my electricals from, and Bubu showed me a place where we could buy the carpentry materials and cement. The wood we would just buy from the lumber yard when we were ready.
We arranged with a driver in Diare to charter his truck for the day. He’d go with us to Tamale, and drive to the different places to pick up all of the materials, and then drive them back to the school. My main concern going into this whole phase of the project was budget management. I knew that many of the numbers were going to be off. What I did now know was by what degree. So my plan was to be as frugal as possible with all the spending, watch literally every pesewa (cent) that was spent, and fight over any additional costs that were not originally agreed upon. I knew the project would get finished, but my concern was that if we went over budget we would have to cut into the computer section of the budget and buy less PCs than expected.
A few days before we were planning on going to Tamale to buy the materials we heard that the driver had an accident and his son had died. It was a very sad situation for the man, and so we asked him if we should get another driver. He said no, he would have his brother come from Savelugu and drive his car. That we were still on for the following day, and that we should just meet him there. That evening Bubu brought to my attention that we would need to hire loaders. I was instantly annoyed
Me: What do you mean we need to hire loaders? That’s what we’re paying the man for.
Bubu: No, we’re paying him to drive. We need to get loaders seperatley to load and offload the materials.
Me: Why didn’t you mention this earlier? It’s not captured in the budget, where will the money come from?
Bubu: That is even the problem…
So we brainstormed where to find money for these loaders, and I suggested… what if we ask the students? We were currently on break, and so finding the students would be harder than simply waiting for the next day of school and rounding them up. I was concerned that they would tell us to F off since they were on vacation and we ask them to run enough errands as-is during the school year. One of them rode by on his bicycle and we asked him to round up some of the more reliable strong boys in the school. Time to wait and see what results we got…
Within an hour we had almost a dozen students show up, all excited and ready for a trip to Tamale and to do work for their computer lab. During your service here, you have certain moments that set you back and just make you smile throughout. Being overtly stressed and sad about already being off budget so early on, and then replacing that with the surprise of all of these kids coming out of nowhere to help, was one of those great moments. I don’t know if they realized it, or if they cared, but it really meant a lot to me.
Ok. We were ready to go. 8AM the next morning the students would meet at the school and the man with the truck would pick them all up. I was going to leave earlier so that I would get to Tamale and make the purchases before they arrived. I went to the side of the road, hitched a ride to Tamale and went to the TSO to check some numbers. At a quarter to 8 I get a call from Bubu. The man’s brother could not come from Savelugu, so we didn’t have a driver. I now had no truck and no loaders. Crap. I asked Mohammed if he knew anyone in Tamale, and true to form as being the King of Tamale, in 45 minutes a new truck pulled up to the TSO gate. I told Mohammed that we had agreed on 100Ghc for the rental, and he conveyed the message to them. Excited, I jumped in and we started towards town.
Bubu soon met us at the place where we were to buy the cement. I paid for the bags and the truck pulled up to the curb. Once everything was set, guess what happened. Nothing.
The driver and his men stared at the bags, as did Bubu and I, as did the cement bag vendors. I told Bubu “OK, tell them to load the bags”. Which he did, to which they replied “No” unless we were planning on paying them extra per piece for loading. I asked them if we had not agreed on 100Ghc? They said yes, for the driving, and that was all. I asked them how much for the loading? They replied that it depended on the amount of pieces and how long it would take. This quickly was becoming a situation where they were clearly going to take me for everything I had. I once again started stressing about how the hell I was going to solve this situation. I told them to nevermind, that if the would not do it for the agreed price that I could find another driver. I called Mohammed and he agreed. The men complained, got in the cab of the truck, and drove away.
While I was waiting for Mohammed to show up, the truck pulled up again. The men said that the owner of the car had spoken with Mohammed and that he said they should do it for that price. It sounded fishy but I went along with it. We agreed on some small additional amount for the cement bags and they started to load. I honestly was kind-of confused as to what Mohammed had agreed upon with their boss, so I was just stalling until he arrived.
By the time Mohammed arrived we were at the place where we bought all of the carpentry materials (aside from the lumber). I asked him what he had arranged with the car owner. He told me he never spoke with the man. (I knew it!) I then asked him to ask them what their intention was on the loading charges, because it seemed that they wanted to charge me for every piece. Mohammed approached them and in a very professional but stern way told them that they were not going to make a killing on the loading, they were not going to charge by piece, and that we would pay them at most 20Ghc total to load everything. Additionally, when we got to Diare they wouldn’t even need to offload anything because the students were waiting at the school. They weren’t thrilled about the idea, but as I said, Mohammed’s words carry weight in Tamale.
While we were there, Mohammed asked me what my plans were for lumber. I told him I was just planning on going to the lumber yard. He offered a contact who would sell it to me at a slightly cheaper cost. I agreed and the man came over. I told him all the pieces I needed, and we agreed on prices. He suggested that instead of buying the individual 2x3 2x4 and 2x2s, I should buy the full 2x6 boards and then have them cut down, as a way to save money. He had all the boards and the cutting machines. I agreed and he left to take care of the prep work for that while we finished the other purchases. We loaded the masonry materials and drove just up the road to the plywood seller. By this point the main driver of the car was starting to get very annoyed. He was grumbling and complaining to anyone that would listen about the amount of stops we were having to make. It was now getting close to 11AM. I bought purewater satchets for the men and myself and we loaded the plywood on. We calmed the guy down and assured him we were almost done, and headed towards the man’s shop which was just out of town on the way to Diare.
When we arrived at the shop, I was excited that I had pre-arranged the pieces and the cuts because the driver was in quite a grumpy mood. I jumped off the truck hoping for an easy transaction and the owner of the lumber shop smiled at me and said
Oh, in fact.. it’s lights-off. Power has been gone for about an hour. Maybe I just sell you the wood and you take it to the lumber yard to cut it?
Shoot me. My stomach sank. How many freakin’ times can things go wrong or get complicated on this venture? When the driver heard he absolutely lost his shit. His quiet grumblings turned into outright rants and yells about how this was ridiculous, how long it was taking, and how he was getting ripped off for the price we agreed. The lumber shop owner, his employees, the driver, and Bubu all argued in Dagbani for the better part of an hour about how we were going to continue. The lumber shop owner called Mohammed, and Mohammed even spoke with the man about just finishing the job. The man seemed more calm, but still quite angry and he did not seem persuaded to continue work.
It reached a point where the arguments lulled and the lumber shop owner got on his phone again. I asked who he was calling and he told me
“I’m calling you another car, the man said he will not go anywhere again. He will not take your things to Diare.”
What?
He said that he will not drive back into town to the lumber yard and back to Diare. That we should find another car.
I took this opportunity to finally include myself in the conversation. The driver didn’t speak much English, so I let the men do their business in Dagbani, but it was finally time for me to chime in. I told him as clearly as I could, in Ghanaian English and syntax, using words he might understand:
You will not drive again?
No
No?
No.
Ok. Fine. But I want to be very clear. If we call another driver, I will not pay you ANYTHING. Look here; look at this paper. Have you seen? I have written here ‘Transportation of materials – 120Ghc’. That is all the money there is. There is no more money again. If I pay the new man 120Ghc, I will not have any money to pay you. If you want to offload the things and have the man transport them, then no problem. With me that is fine. But realize you will not get ANY money. I will pay him the full 120Ghc. So maybe you take this one last trip, and we go to Diare. If not, I pay the man the full amount.
Between my simple English and some small Dagbani translation, the idea seemed to settle in very quickly. The man instantly calmed. Looking like a kid who just finished a tantrum but still had residual grumpiness he mumbled agreement. We loaded the things onto the truck and headed towards the lumber yard. As we drove that direction I heard the call to prayer for 1 oclock. (This guy is gonna effing kill me).
We arrived at the lumber yard with the pieces, and between me and the lumber shop owner we explained all of the cuts we needed. By the time we left we were hearing the call to prayer for 3 Oclock.
The lumber shop owner bought the driver a gallon of petrol (gas) for his truck and his troubles and we continued to Diare. I called Bubu to tell him we were on the way and he arranged the students.
When we got to the school we pulled the truck up to the side of the building. By this point, as I said, we were on vacation and the Form 3s had already written their BECE exams. They were done with school and so the Form 2s moved to the Form 3 room and the Form 1s to the Form 2 room. This left the Form 1 room empty with no students next term.
We offloaded all of the lumber, metal piping and rods, and roofing sheets into the Form 1 room. The driving assistants, the students and I all offloaded the materials into the room. Note that I did not include the driver. That’s because he didn’t help. He was too busy sitting against the wall having a tantrum in the corner. I’m not joking. He literally sat by himself with a scowl on his face while we offloaded the materials.
Bubu suggested that some of the more “theft attractive” items we should keep in one of the quarters, since the classrooms were easy to break into. So once those items were done, we moved the truck to my house to offload the cement bags. This is also where we would keep all of the electrical equipment when we bough it.
When we brought the car around to my room, the tantrum seemed to visually increase. It was no longer sufficient to sit against the wall. The driver decided to enunciate his frustration by sitting a good 100 feet away. It looked comedically childish. I couldn’t help laughing to myself and taking a picture.
Mr. GrumpyPants
The kids then proceeded to offload the cement bags. The driving assistants decided to take a break for this part of the work because, quite honestly, those bags are fucking heavy. Each one is 50kg, which for us in the states is about 110Lbs. That is about as much as each of these students weigh. So how do you pull off carrying your own weight from a truck to a room? Ghanaian assembly line!
It’s amazing what these kids can carry on their heads.
Cement bags in my house
With all the materials loaded in the Form 1 room and in my hallway, it was time to pat ourselves on the back. Construction could now begin. When that work commenced, I would take a trip to Tamale to buy all of the things for the electrician.
My muscle-men posed for the camera as we all flexed our rock-hard bod’s. (Theirs more than mine…)
You're invited: To the GUN SHOW!
Bubu and I met again with all of the master workers. We sat with the Mason, Carpenter, and Electrician and spoke with them about the terms of the project. I told them all that we had purchased all of the materials they had requested, and that we were ready to begin work right away. We agreed that we would pay them in stages, as they completed each stage we would pay them a part of the workmanship money. I also added that while I did not want to be offensive, and was sure of their credibility and work ethic, I would not hesitate to change to a different Master Worker if they delayed or wasted our time in any way. (Construction worldwide is notorious for delays and price increases, in
Just before breaking ground
Work begins
Everyone agreed and we began the project. And quite honestly, the rest of the project, aside from day-to-day misunderstandings and frustrations that come from construction and the cultural clash of
The infamous donkey carts...
...or when the Mason mis-calculated the size of the room, and didn’t build enough cement blocks so I had to go and buy a dozen more cement bags. And let’s not forget that after he built the additional blocks he asked me for more workmanship money for the new ones!
First set of blocks
First blocks laid!
Haha, in retrospect it’s almost laughable some of the frustrations I went through, and as I type this on one of my 12 computers it was all worth it, but I'm telling you, some days I wanted to just lose it.
The wall starts to rise...
My main worry was that any overages, or any unexpected costs would eventually cut into the computer budget itself. Since the computers were going to be the very last thing we bought, they would be the segment that would suffer from any money lost in other places. I hated the thought of the kids losing a handful of computers because someone along the way forgot an essential item. And there were items forgotten. The electrician (thankfully just before I submitted my 2nd version of the budget) “forgot” that he needed an extra 100 meters of cable, which was something like 200Ghc more. Bubu and Head forgot that the windows would need louver blades (the rotating glass shingles), so we needed to buy those out-of-budget. The padlock for the door was not in our budget, neither was the whiteboard or markers. Luckily some of the other segments came in under, and some of the transportation costs were well under since I combined trips. One of the funniest lucky breaks we got was the “Fight” from earlier. It turns out that Fight was a combination of the Mason not knowing how to speak or spell English, and the carpenter not being around to correct him. Fight turned out to be Felt. In
Throw a roof on that thing...
And I have to say, that this project would not have been possible without several people: Mohammed, and his knowledge and sway in Tamale were priceless. Not only did he connect me with several great vendors that gave me good prices, but when things went wrong with items I bought, and I was stressing out over what to do, they replaced them with zero hassle; My students who were much of the muscle moving items to and from rooms; and Bubu, my counterpart. This project could have probably been finished in a month, but during the meat of the construction I was taken away to train the new volunteers that arrived in June. For many of the day-to-day questions, concerns, managements and payments, Bubu was my man. He handled all of these things, and only called me when there was a problem, or an issue of money that he wanted my approval on.
I managed the whole project extremely tight to the budget. Any time any of the workers tried to get even a single cedi more from me (I’m not kidding, I argued over one cedi) I pushed back and told them “no” most of the time. If the reason was good enough and I saw no other option, I only paid the additional amount, or purchased the additional materials with a good amount of frustration and hesitation, so the workers understood that this was not “rich white money” that I had to throw around, this was grant money that was limited and budgeted. Bubu was great in helping me with this. He also constantly reinforced this idea when people asked him questions behind my back, and he asked me every time before an additional cedi was spent. Honestly I could not have done this project without him.
Iron security-door
Plastering
This money management tactic paid off, and we came in around 600-700 Ghc UNDER budget. This meant that not only did I not have to cut into the computer budget due to overages, I actually got to upgrade my computers. Instead of Pentium 3s with the old, big, projection monitors, we purchased 12 Pentium4 Dells with flat-screens.
Soooo with the room built, and all that was left was to pick up my computers and paint the lab, I spoke with Head and Bubu about the final steps. Head’s brother is a painter, so he was our go-to contact for this final stage.
This was the conversation that we had between Me Bubu and Head (summarized for brevity):
Me: OK, it seems everything else is finished, now it’s just left to paint the building.
Bubu: Correct. So what color will we paint it?
Me: What do you mean what color? Wont we just paint it the same as the rest of the building?
Head: Well since we are painting fresh over this room, and the paint on the rest of the building is old, it would show a difference anyways.
Right. So you just need to decide what colors you want to paint it.
Colors? Plural?
Well yes, keep in mind the building is a main color with an accent stripe at the bottom. What 2 colors do you want?
So I can paint it whatever colors I want? Really? ANY 2 colors?
Well this was your project, it’s up to you.
Can they be really bright?
I don’t see why not…
Muahaha, some of you already know where this is going to end, and I’m sorry I couldn’t resist.
BLUE!
ORANGE!
2 Bits! 4 Bits! 6 Bits! A Dollar!
Computers arrive
Babs, the guy who sold me the PCs, setting them up
Ready to roll...
The whole point of the lab is to give them some hands-on work (called "practicals" here) to go with the notes that they have been taking. These first few lessons have centered around clicking, right clicking, double clicking etc. This week I just finished a lesson on windows management; using minimize/maximize/close buttons. Theyre catching on really fast.
I try to squeeze in some game-time into my lessons as well. The last 10 min of class or so I'll let them play pinball or some other game. At the end of the day, how did I learn to use the computer? Oregon Trail. (God bless that game).
First hands-on lesson!
You've done well... time for games.
Now that I've had a few lessons in the lab, and I'm finally able to enjoy the benifits of all those headaches, it's well worth it. Glad it's over.
On weekends I'm hosting "Lab Hours" where the kids can come and work on Mavis Beacon, the typing program. The deal is this: you come and do typing lessons. However long you do typing lessons, you can then play games afterwards for that same amount of time. So if they type for 45 min, they can play any of the games I loaded on the computers for 45 min. They think it's a hell of a deal...
Go Gators
good job, you.
ReplyDeletelooks AWESOME, G! well . . . save the paint colors, but i understand ;)
ReplyDeletegreat job. your hard work turned out smashingly.
Awesome story G-Mo! I have to tell Benito about the colors. :-) Congrats!
ReplyDeleteThis post was worth waiting eight months for. I can see you have been very busy. Well done, G.
ReplyDeleteAmazing bro. While Gators colors' are so two years ago, I still love the story man.
ReplyDelete