Growing Pains

The Otse Disability Support Group I work with has it’s share of challenges, like any other start up NGO. I went to a meeting to remind them all why I was there and what I could do for them in terms of training and what I should not do for them, in terms of what they should be doing themselves.

One of the issues I had was that I was carrying a key to the building, which I didn’t think I should have. I tried to give it to the vice-chair at one point and she didn’t want it.  A few small items had disappeared from the building and I and the Chair, who has a huge family and people in and out of her house all the time, were the only ones with a key. But when something went missing, she would imply that, “well, Katlego has a key.....”  So what I really wanted to tell them was that I didn’t quit my job, leave my loved ones, travel thousands of miles away to a foreign land to steal their cookies. Admittedly, if I were to steal a food item, it would be something sweet, but Peace Corps pays me enough to buy my own.

So I used this situation to remind the group of my role and to turn the key back in, without pointing any fingers back at the fingers pointing at me to distract any of the other fingers from pointing at them.  Everyone in the group already knows what is what and oddly enough seem to think that I couldn’t steal from them, not because I would personally never consider it, but because I am white.  They don’t know as many white people as I do or they would reassess that assumption.

So I put the key on a stone in the center of the meeting circle and it sat there, unclaimed until a long  discussion about what to do. It was a good discussion because members took ownership and tried to be as honest as they felt they could be about the issue of responsibility, theft and life in a poor village. It was finally decided that another member would take the key and the chair would only keep one key and not carry the extra sets of keys to her home. And that she would hide her key from her family. Not likely, but whatever.  The group has to deal with this.

I told them I would only come to meetings when then specifically needed me and that I would like to do monthly trainings for them to help develop their skills in running their organization. The chair then waxed poetically about how she saw me as like a watering can, there to help them grow by sprinkling needed water/nourishment/knowledge on them.  Where water is life, this was meant as a compliment. Where we are still trying to get the village development committee to hook up our water to the site, so we can begin the garden, I felt like I wasn’t doing my job of watering anything.