Another day in the office
on A Zambian Experience (Zambia), 29/Mar/2011 08:33, 34 days ago
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks on the work front and some of the frustrations of working life in Zambia have kicked in again. I’ve been here over a year now and still I’m finding the bureaucracy a challenge. Take for example a funding application that I was working on last week with Kwacha Kum’mawa. We only got to hear about the call for proposal on Monday. The donor, a very enthusiastic Zambian male from a new project in town (funded by a well known large international NGO) praised the work of Kwacha Kum’mawa and almost convinced us that he was going to write us a cheque there andthen. ‘What great work you are doing, we are looking for a project to fund just like yours, I think we can work together quite closely’. Anyway 10 minutes later we are given the necessary papers and in my head I’m starting to put dates in the diary of when we will meet as a team and the boardto discuss the project and come up with a needs assessment, concept paper, budget and then perhaps in the next couple of months the team will get down to writing the proposal. The thoughts running through my mind were stopped short by a sudden announcement from enthusiastic male. “OK, deadline isday after next and we want 5 proposals from you....good luck you people! ” We were ushered out of his small office and looked at each other in shock. I wondered how on earth we were going to write 5 proposals in one day, especially as the computers in the office are riddled with viruses.We retreated back to the KK office for an emergency meeting in order to‘strategise’ and reflect on our ‘capacities’. I then began to think that it was ridiculous to be asked to write 5 proposals in one day. It just didn’t make sense, especially as we were still waiting for the guidelines for the application which we hadn’t yet seen. So that afternoon Florence, head of Kwacha Kum’mawa called up the donor and asked if he was sure about the number of proposals required for the application. Enthusiastic male said ‘mmm, well you can write 5 if you want or you can write 1, it’s totally up to you!’.In the end we submitted one, after a frantic afternoon of the Kwacha team trying to find the supporting documents.. My university days of struggling to meet deadlines all came back to haunt me. It didn’t help that the internet was down, there was no power in the morning (we had to write everything from my solar battery powered laptop) and they had overspent the budget on photocopying! However Kwacha Kum’mawa was able to meet the deadline and submitted the proposal to the local office and emailed a copy to HQ in Lusaka, as soon as the network connection came back!It’s a shame about the challenges that small organisations face in applying for funding and the mixed messages and strong promises made by some local donors that end up causing confusion, raised expectations and again a sense of dependency rather than partnership. Who knows what will happen in thiscase? I guess I should be optimistic, but I think I have been here too long to see how sometimes the money never seems to arrive.I hope enthusiastic male awards Kwacha Kum’mawa the money, as they truly deserve it.