Salt is to pepper as 'Development' is to ...

Meetings!!! Cause that's what we do.

   Oku is where I sleep now. I have an apartment with a parlor, small kitchen area, bedroom, and shower. The latrine is outside, about 25 meters away. It isn't covered yet so when it rains it is not a comfortable place to be. I'm hoping that the landlord gets on that sooner than later.

   What we've been doing this week is re-visiting the farmer groups that we made contact with two weeks ago when Philip was here. As I am trying to be the person doing most of the communication, I tried to keep the meetings small (2-3 people), but that didn't really work out. Most of the groups Cassman and I spoke to were between 10 and 20 people and in the end Cassman or someone else acted as my translator taking my 'strong' English into the Oku language.

   The items covered in each meeting were the organization of Mocha Joes Organic Growers, the rules (or by-laws) or being an organic grower, and setting a program for our field visits which is the real first step toward certification. In describing the organization of Mocha Joes Organic Growers, I used a flow chart as a visual aid (I'm pretty sure I've seen charts like this used to describe organizations here in Cameroon in the past). To make it more understandable I drew the chart for each group piece by piece, describing the roles and responsibilities of each person as they were added. Everyone was very attentive as I was speaking and I'll have to assume that Cassman was doing a good job of translating, but in the end the information may or may not have been effectively conveyed. What are some good ways to check for comprehension in a small group? Asking questions in an exercise like this doesn't seem quite appropriate, I would feel like I was being condescending. My brother, the high school math teacher, gave me the advice 'You just need to speak louder than anyone else in the room, that way, even if people don't understand you, they think you know what you're talking about' (he was joking). Of course being a white person here has essentially the same effect, even if you were to whisper.

   The next steps are going to depend on our team (Philip, myself, and Cassman) to start our field visits. After getting some experience with them we will be better able to divide ourselves to get the most of our time. In the meanwhile I'll be spending some of my time visiting the farms of our members to get myself some exercise and become more comfortable on these coffee farms. I guarantee there will also be a meeting or two thrown in, just to be safe.