Plan not to plan

This past weekend I’ve been to Akatsi, a district in The Volta Region, 3 hours away from Hohoe. Jenny and I went there with Theresa (Project Manager at the NGO) to check on the conditions of some communities once we needed that information to fill in an application form to get funds to build a new health clinic and to renew another.

The interesting thing is that we talked to Theresa and we planned to go to Akatsi during the whole week – from Sunday to Friday (last week). Theresa was supposed to go there on Saturday and we would join her on Sunday. The Friday before the NGO director said that she was not going there on Saturday anymore but on Sunday. That was ok as we were planning on going there only on Sunday.

It was Sunday and Theresa told us that she would only go there “maybe” on Tuesday. On Tuesday she said she was going on Thursday. On Friday we heard a “Saturday will be”. Indeed we did go there on Saturday but I think that happened mostly because Jenny was flying back to The Netherlands the Tuesday after.

This is one of the many situations where I’ve experienced planning something and ending up doing something completely different. That was the case when I arrived in Accra and we were supposed to leave to Hohoe at 2pm. We left at 4h30pm. The same happened to the other volunteers.

Every time we don´t have internet because we’re out of credit, the NGO Director says he is going to recharge it again “today”. One week later it is recharged.

Most of the times the NGO Director is not in Hohoe; he spends most of the time in Accra. Several times I’ve talked to him on the phone and he says he is coming to Hohoe “today” – he ends up arriving in Hohoe two or three days later.

It’s extremely hard to live based on a plan (as we do back home) when no one ever sticks to the plan. From what I understood that’s mostly because there is no long term thinking. Every decision is made according to how much satisfaction they will get in the short term - this concept of short term is not the concept we use in economics in which it might refer to months or years; short term here means few hours.

I guess I’ll plan not to plan.

29/08/2012