May 8, 2008 Wess n Zitoon and the thunder go boom

The bloom is definitely off the rose. OK, not literally. The Rose Festival was last weekend and there are still roses blooming for dozens of miles in every direction. But figuratively… Today was not the best day I’ve had in Morocco.

There were plenty of great things today. We had our Great Tree Distribution (hence the title “Wess n Zitoon”, which means “Day of the Olive Tree”), plus an awesome electrical storm that provided a lightning show to rival the Midwestern United States, and thunder that rumbled continuously for over an hour. So that made me happy..

But some parts of the tree sale were frustrating, and I had a run-in with a teenage boy that made my skin crawl, and the flies keep swarming the table when we eat, and the baby peed on me. Which was kind of depressing and funny at the same time. Because babies are babies, the whole world over. And they’re wonderful and adorable and huggable and curious and beautiful … and sometimes they pee on you.

So why was I frustrated with the tree project? Well...

Here’s a quick recap of the timeline of our tree planting project:

CBT Week 2: The Genesis
§ We met with the president of the association, Mohammed
§ He proposed giving trees to the poorest families in our village.

CBT Week 3: Association Meeting
§ We love the idea of targeting the poorest families, but the association points out that they represent the entire village, so every family should get at least one tree.
§ We’ll sell the trees to ensure buy-in (pun intended) from the village families.
§ Appropriate price: 2DH
§ We’ll have a sliding scale, of sorts: 1 tree per wealthy family and 2-5 trees per family in need, with the need being assessed by the association.
§ Over the next two weeks, they’ll work out the ratio of wage-earners to dependents in each family.
§ They won’t give us a tally of how many trees they want – just the more trees, the better.
§ We’ll apply our full budget to the tree-buying, and should be able to get 200-250 trees, depending on the price from the nursery.
§ We’ll sell them the Sunday after we get back.

CBT Week 4: Association Meeting II
§ Peace Corps bought 200 trees, but for some reason, 198 trees have arrived.
§ Change in plan: They’re getting dry…let’s sell them on Thursday instead of Sunday.
§ Change in plan: Let’s not sell the trees. People might be suspicious if the association makes a profit.
§ Potential change in plan: Should we open the sale to families outside of our village?
§ Change in plan: OK, let’s sell the trees. For 3 DH.
§ Change in plan: Tomorrow’s tree sale wasn’t publicized, so no one knows about it. Association members will mention it at afternoon prayers today.
§ Change in plan: There was no sliding scale assessment. People might be unhappy about getting different numbers of trees. Let’s let everyone buy three.

CBT Week 4: Tree Sale Day(s)
§ Families from outside our village are participating, which means that there aren’t enough for everyone to get three trees.
§ Change in plan: Let’s only provide two trees per family.
§ Maybe people can come back for a third … later.

Sales reports:
§ By noon, 27 families had their trees.
§ By the end of the day, 31 families had them….Which meant that more than half the families still didn’t have their trees. Over 130 trees are continuing to dry out.
§ The second day, the tree sale started at 3pm.
§ By the afternoon of the third day, ~ 2/3 of the families had their trees.
§ By the morning of the fifth day, there were only 15 trees left. And that’s the last I heard.
§ Lhumdullah, we successfully distributed (sold seems like a strong word given that these are priced ~20% of market value) almost 200 trees.

I’d hoped it would take a few hours, not five days…and I’d hoped we’d target the poorest families, not sell two trees to each family…and I’d thought it would be limited to our village, not the surrounding countryside…and I’d thought the pricepoint would be 2 DH, not 3DH…and when I talk about my own hopes and thoughts, I also mean what we put in our proposal to Peace Corps. And when you write a project proposal and it gets funded, that’s more or less a contract. So when the plans suddenly change, we’re more or less in breach of contract with the Peace Corps. Of course, this is the Peace Corps we’re talking about. And a third-world (or second-world, depending who you ask) country. And our big picture was fulfilled. The tree planting happened. But I’m still not entirely happy. We did provide a source of income-generation to the people of our village, which is a good thing. A single olive tree, once it’s mature (ie in about five years) produces enough olives to pay a year’s dorm fees at secondary schools. So we may have just paid the way of our village’s girls to junior high and high school. Inshallah. And we provided trees, which are good on multiple levels that have nothing to do with income generation: they provide oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide, stabilize soil, and provide habitats for thousands of tiny creatures. Lhumdullah. But we didn’t do a lot of what we pledged to in our project proposal, and that upsets me.

And then the baby peed on me.