Roller Coaster

I had been through some ups and downs this week. Earlier this week, I called Moses before I went to work and found out that for the second time in a month, he skipped the trip to the village. I felt so let down. The farmers must have been so disppointed. They are in the process of doing double digging farming as Moses taught them, and are probably anxious for him to check out their work and help them get it right.

When I got on the Muni, I was still preoccupied by the conversation with Moses. I was so frustrated, and I wondered how I was going to help farmers make any progress this year.

"What's wrong with these people?! " Still fuming with Moses' recent absentism and poor commitment/communications.

"He didn't keep up his work and didn't even bother to let me know!" I was angry, "I just don't get them!"

"What am I going to do now?" I pondered the next step. "Does that mean I have to give up on the project?" I asked myself. I felt that I was running out of options.

"What else can I do to make this happen?" I looked out the window and was deflated.

All of the sudden a man on the bus wailed, "Oh, Melissa! I love you. Pleeese, Melissa..... I need you!"

I realized that he was talking to someone else on the cell phone. The bus full of people were listening in. Well, I guess the people in San Francisco aren't exactly ordinary, either. I was glad that it took my mind off the problems with the project for a short while.

This morning, I got hold of George. He confirmed that he had gone to the village last weekend alone. He arrived late (Why are they always late knowing the amount of work that needed to be done?!) but managed to vaccinate 80 pigs. That would have been a big achievement except that he vaccinated the pigs irregardless of the families' participation in our training program. Not that I want to discriminate against the people who do not participate in our group, but that prevented him from vaccinate the pigs owned by many of the members of our group due to time constraint. The idea was to encourage farmers to attend training regularly and reward their attendance with vaccination services. The inconsistency is going to create problems and inequality within the group. I just hope that I didn't create more problems than I helped solve. If Moses had gone with George, we could have prevented this. On one hand, I was grateful that I could get George to go back again and vaccinate so many pigs even though the villagers are so scattered. One the other hand, I am starting to worry about the looming "public relations" crisis with our group.

Farmers expressed their longing for Moses to return so they could get some help with the new techniques that they are trying out for the first time. I decided to give Moses another call. To my surprise, I caught him on the bus coming back Mbulu. I was so excited. He must have changed his mind. I was dying to hear about his trip, but the reception was bad.

There is hope again!