Sunday, 9 March 2008
The hut I am living in was built by my village for the previous volunteer, so now it is about 3 years old. Which means that the cement walls and floor are starting to crack and chip off, there are holes in the thatch roof where the rain will be able to come in when the rainy season starts (although the previous volunteer already had some of the thatch replaced last year), and the "crinting", the woven bamboo fencing for my backyard and latrine, is starting to fall apart. So I got permission from Peace Corps to pay to get everything repaired. Getting the cement and thatching was easy: I went to a store in Dialacoto and paid for the cement, and then paid for someone with a donkey cart to transport it back to my village. Same thing for the thatching: I paid some guys to cut some thatching grass out of the bush, and some other guys to transport it, and voila, a few days later it was sitting outside my hut.
The crinting, however, has been an entirely different story. Crinting is only made in a few villages around here (because of distance from the bamboo, I think), and the closest for me is a village about 10 km away. My host dad, the village chief, recommended a good crinting maker in the neighboring village, so one day, way back in January, my counterpart and I went to see him. He said he charges 1500 CFA, about $3, for each piece of crinting, which is about 10 feet long. We told him I needed 10. He said he could have them ready in 10 days. So we paid him a deposit of 7500 CFA, half the price of the 10 crinting pieces, and said we'd be back in 10 days to pay the rest and pick up the crinting.
My host dad had failed to mention to us, however, that while this guy makes good crinting, he's not exactly reliable. After a week, he sent someone to tell my counterpart that the crinting wouldn't be ready on the previously agreed date and gave a new date for when it would be ready. I figured this is just the way things work in Africa, and I wasn't bothered by it.
When the new deadline arrived, my counterpart and I biked over to the other village to get the crinting. But when we got there, his family said he was off in the bush making the crinting; he should be back at lunchtime. We said we'd wait. So we spent the whole morning just sitting there, with nothing to do but wait. The man wasn't back by lunchtime, though. So we had lunch with the village midwife, and then we waited some more.
Finally the crinting man showed up, and, as I had begun to suspect, the crinting wasn't ready. He gave us a new date when it would be ready, and we said fine, we'll be back then.
So it went for weeks. We'd show up in the morning, he'd be "out", we'd wait all day, and finally he'd show up and tell us he needed more time. One day we came in the morning and his family said he was out til the afternoon, so as usual we went to hang out at the midwife's compound. But then my counterpart decided to go back and check, "just in case" he'd come back early. Sure enough, his family had lied to us to cover for him, and he wasn't out at all but just hiding from us.
Finally I was fed up, and I told him that the next time I came he had better either have the crinting for me or else give me my deposit back, or else I was going to report him to the gendarmes. He agreed he would definitely either give me the crinting or the money.
So the next week we came back, determined to get one or the other. I thought that he would have been so scared after I mentioned the gendarmes that we would get whichever one (and I really didn't care which at this point) without any trouble.
But this guy was tougher than I thought. We showed up in the morning, and once again his family said he was out in the bush and would be back with the crinting by noon. This time we didn't go to the midwife's house to wait, but instead stayed at the crinting man's compound in ambush. But he wasn't back at noon. (I'm betting someone from the family warned him we were there and not to come back). His family told us, Well, definitely by 3:00 he'll be back. But 3:00 came and went. Definitely by 5:00. Ten they said, Well, sometime tonight. You can come back in the morning, and he'll be here. But I was really mad by then. (All day in the host sun with nothing to do made me cranky). So I reminded them that we had agreed that I would either get the crinting or my deposit back that day, or I was going to the gendarmes. I told them I'd better have received one or the other by 6:00 pm, or else.
So we sat there tensely for an hour, until 6 pm. Of course the man hadn't come back. I got up and told the family it was 6:00 and I was leaving. They tried to convince me to wait longer or come back in the morning, but I refused. (If I didn't leave then, I couldn't make it back to my village before dark, and the next day I was leaving for Tamba and then onwards for my much-awaited vacation).
So I left. When I got back to my village, my host sisters laughed at me, as they had been doing for weeks, for having wasted another whole day waiting for crinting I never received.
The next day I left for my vacation, determined not to worry any more about the crinting til I got back, and hoping that my counterpart and the crinting man would have resolved the situation by then.
Sure enough when I came back to my village this week, my counterpart told me he had gotten the deposit back from the crinting man (who I think was finally convinced that I was mad enough to report him to the gendarmes). He ordered the crinting from someone else, and a few days ago it was finally delivered to my hut.
So the crinting drama is finally over, and I didn't have to go to the gendarmes. (Would I really have reported the guy over stealing a $15 deposit? I'm not sure. I really don't know what the gendarmes would do about it – toss him in jail and throw away the key? Laugh at me and do nothing? Something in between?)
Now I just have to get someone to install the crinting and the thatch on my roof…
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