bureaucracy

Goal: to write a grant that is asking for money to remodel my office and turn it into a safe place for females to learn about their bodies, health, and to exercise.
Obstacles: Turkmen bureaucracy.
I started the process for this grant two months ago when, after our mid-service conference, my counterpart asked if we could create a room with the above goal. I got very excited and said that as long as she was willing to do a lot of work we absolutely could. Peace Corps has a program called SPA (small program assistance). It is in place to provide monetary support for small community driven projects and our goal was to get this room remodeled and then to provide lessons to the community on general health, healthy lifestyles and exercise classes.
The process has been slow in coming and to demonstrate the process I’m going to describe one small aspect of this process – getting the budget done for the remodel aspect.
Step 1: get a list of supplies needed to do the remodel. I had no idea where to start with this so I asked my counterpart to head it up. I told her we needed to find someone who could do the remodel and that they had to list everything they needed. EVERYTHING right down to the last nail or paintbrush. I asked her if she could let me know when this person arrives so I could be there in case anyone had any questions. Several days later I got a list written in pencil in really bad handwritten Turkmen with words I had no idea what they were. I spent several hours working through what they were (the grant had to be written completely in English) and then we went to the bazaar and attempted to find out the prices of these items. I discovered very quickly that this person had not included anything to redo the floor. The floor just outside of my room has huge holes in it. I have had three children fall through the floor – it is entertaining as they fall nearly two feet down to the subfloor.
Step 2: The grant will not pay for general labor, only specialized labor. Therefore, we had to find someone who would do this work for free. The person we had previously asked gave a very definitive no. (It turns out my counterpart had told him we were getting money from America and therefore he expected a huge amount of money for this remodel, he listed that labor alone was going to be about 3 times the going rate) I asked around to see what other volunteers have done to get over this obstacle and the easiest answer was to see if the etrap (local) hospital could provide someone from their staff to do the work. My counterpart called the etrap director and he said that would be a good idea. Success!
Step 3: Get new list of supplies needed from the new remodel workers. I asked my counterpart when we could expect the new list of supplies (including supplies for the floor). Her response was that the men who would be doing the work were really busy and the director said they couldn’t come look at the room until after we purchased the supplies. I tried not to get upset and went with the flow. We (my counterpart and I) would go to Halach (the location of the etrap hospital) and find new prices for the things the previous worker had listed and ask if anyone could give us guidance on a new floor. I have a decent understanding of Turkmen but the conversation about the floor was totally beyond my ability. We ended up settling on a floor that was totally premade. I had no idea how we would go about installing this floor but hoped that someone could help us figure this out. Our next stop was the hospital.
Step 4: Find construction worker and talk with them. The goal is to get a contract listing all of the supplies needed to complete the project, the number of weeks required to do the work and the total cost of all the supplies. We arrived at the hospital and went to the directors office. We were told he was busy and we would have to come back in 1.5 hours. We then went downstairs to what I believe was the accountant’s office. We asked him about a letter we had to get from the director regarding his support of the project and we asked him about the construction worker. He repeated what the director said earlier that this guy was too busy to come and look at the room but that he would try to get him to take a minute out of his busy schedule to come and talk with us. About 20 minutes later this very humble looking older man arrived, he wore very nice dress clothes (not the kind of clothes you would do construction work in). He listened to the accountant talk about the project and the fact that we needed a contract with all the above details. This man immediately replies that he can’t do any of that if he doesn’t see the room. (Finally! Someone with some common sense!). Following this is a long discussion about the quick response time required, problems with this proposed project, and many other things I barely understood. The end of the conversation was resolved with the goal of this man coming with my counterpart and I back to our village that very day and looking over the room and talking about the intended project. I am beginning to think this is going to work out.
Step 5: Drive from Halach to Guychbirleshik. Sounds fairly simple. I’m not sure I could have been more mistaken. This man had to get permission from no less than three different people to make the trip (even though we had been given permission from the director for the whole thing). Then we waited a half an hour for him to get his car. My counterpart began talking to me about various issues Turkmenistan has and about the tendency for people to require bribes for any small thing to get done and also the tendency for Turkmen to pocket any extra money they could get their hands on. This moved on to a conversation about the fact that the etrap hospital and the director responsible for all of the small clinics in the area doesn’t even provide blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes to the doctors and nurses here. (Quick thanks to Judy Atkinson who was able to send 4 cuffs/stethoscope sets with my parents when they came! My co-workers were so incredibly thankful!) Nearly an hour and a half after we had decided on the necessity of the construction man coming to my village we finally arrived (the drive normally takes 20 minutes).
Step 6: Get new list of supplies and enter them into the budget. This step is still in the works. We did have a very productive conversation with the construction worker about what our priorities are and what we hoped to complete. He wrote down a bunch of measurements and told us he would get back to us on Monday with a list of supplies needed and hopefully their prices and the number of weeks it will take him and his team to do the work. Now I wait.