Second and Very Effecient Village Trip!! (Aka its all about who you know and who knows you)

So today (Friday April 15) we had headed off to the villages again to try and reach Tegetero but what I didn’t realize was that we were going to end up talking to the village Ward Officers for all three villages..

Upon driving into Kiroka we pulled over to say hi to the Ward Officer for the region, who I came to realise had a strong working relationship with my co-worker/piki piki driver, and we had a very successful meeting whereby we planned to meet officially with all the leaders the next week on Tuesday. Although I was slightly concerned about this because I remembered it was market day on Tuesday he still assured me it would be no problem and that Kiroka would just be happy to have someone to learn from etc.

Thereafter we continued to go deeper into the region until we reached the Tandai village (the main village) of the Kinole ward again and ran into the ward officer and agricultural officer for Kinole. Once again it became apparent that my co-worker/driver had a good relationship with these men and then I finally found out that the co-worker I was now working with had been the Faraja field project officer for all of these regions for three years so he knew everyone really really well! Needless to say I quickly came to realize that this was going to change everything and after a meeting with the ward officer for Kinole, who called the ward officer for Tegetero to come and join us if he happened to be in the village (which he was), the relationship and working dynamic were entirely different than last time. There was a lot more compromising and listening and collaboration so things looked great today! After only about an hour of discussions with both ward officers dates were established to do the mapping and so on and we headed on our way back to town.