Like Selling Sand To An Arab

On Wednesday I started my accounting lessons with the 10,000 Girls. Gearing up for the mother of all gauntlets, I prepared a few activities that I believed would best help to make it all clear.

First, I should explain the system. Peace Corps has supplied the business volunteers in Senegal with a very nice set of manuals covering all areas of a business: management, accounting, marketing, finance, etc. Every category is simply broken down and organized and accompanied with pictures. I would put the level of difficulty on a middle school level. Best of all, they are all in French and prevents me from having to do any tedious translating. I have yet to find a volunteer who doesn't like them.

So here's how it works. It's a one page spread sheet, reading from left to right, that is broken into 3 sections. Section 1 is "date", "label," and "number". Section 2 has two categories of "Bank" and "Cash Box" which are both subdivided with the categories of "entry," "withdrawal," and "Balance". Finally the third category will indicate if the entry was a sale, direct manufacturing cost, direct labor cost, or indirect cost.

During training, we covered this in a one hour and a half session and at the end, we were told it would take on average 8 months to successfully teach. **Insert sound of jaw hitting the ground**

So knowing this, I very indirectly instructed my counterpart to very directly make sure the girls choose a competent girl to be the accountant. This went over as well as selling sand to an Arab. Somehow, only known to God above, and once again proving why I am in Senegal, they chose an barely literate girl with a bad attitude.

But crises averted. The time between my telling the girls that I wanted to do accounting and the actual meeting was a few days. In the mean time, I attended the literacy classes that counterpart teaches . As I've mentioned before, these girls are apart of a larger NGO that requires the girls to be in school and work at the same time. In order to help them meet this requirement, my counterpart and my predecessor created literacy classes that meet 3 times a week. My counterpart teaches English, and his friend teaches math and French. They are compensated for their efforts. I asked if I could come and visit and subsequently I was asked to teach a lesson in English. At one point during my visits. I learned who the accountant-elect was going to be and also noticed she had difficulty writing. So I did some asking, and approached my counterpart about what I saw. He was surprised himself and subsequently I asked him (being that I'm not Senegalese)to have the leader find a more capable girl, which was accomplished. If she can't write, then she won't record anything, and we'll have problems. Big problems.

So forward ahead to the day of the meeting. It's scheduled at 4pm and my counterpart had come over to borrow my computer earlier in the day for a web conference for his new job. Not a risk to my computer. He just sits in front of it, staring blankly. He can't type so by the time he gets a question out, it's too late.

So at 3:30 he finishes, and I suggested we leave then and stop by the post office because my package still isn't here and maybe he could help me. After leaving the post, at which point it's nearly 4, he says he has to go home to eat lunch. Fuming, I said ok, not really having a choice because I needed him lucid for the meeting. Well, the meeting started around 5, nearly an hour late.

I stated off the session by playing a game. I set up fake cash box and a bank and then gave them a set of verbal transactions that they had to record and to process. Much as I suspected they bickered and struggled and at the end we discussed their difficulties. Then I pulled out an example of the spreadsheet. I explained the headings and then we went over it line by line. It took a lot of work and repetition to make it clear and there were a few bad attitudes, which I fixed by letting them know they didn't have to be present. Most interestingly, they didn't want to use the calculator I had brought. They all preferred to use their cell phones! And for the easiest of transactions. When I asked what 14 thousand minus 7 thousand equaled, they all pulled out their cell phones. Afterwards, we went back and replayed the game that I had made and recorded the transaction the proper way. One girl, very surprisingly, caught on very early and had no problem answering my questions. And even at one point I had to ask her to not respond so quickly as to give the other girls a chance to think it through. I'd like to see her be the accountant.

The session finished around 7pm and we all went home. Overall, it was successful and we have another meeting on Tuesday to reinforce the lesson. Repetition is the name of the game here.