Pad the budget, reupholster the couch

My funding has been pulled. Not that this marks the end of my Atar School Improvement Project, but it certainly slows its progress.

While I traveled to MBeca to canvass a site for next year’s EcoHeath Camp, my directors were charged with a small task: verify the Mayor’s intentions to fund our renovation project. Maybe I jinxed their mission with semantics. My directors were simply to have reminded the Mayor of a promise already made. Verify that he remembered the funds already earmarked to pay for one fourth of a project he should be single-handedly funding anyway. This is how the task should have been framed.

But the ambiguity opened an escape route. “Les financements sont bouffés.” The funding had, in effect, been eaten by the Mayor, may god shorten his corrupted life. What is one fourth of our budget? 250,000UM. 900 bucks. How little he had to provide. Enough to remodel one room in his already ridiculously outfitted house in Nouakchott. Or, renovate three schools and improve the lives of nearly 800 students. What a shameful trade.

To be honest, the news was hardly surprising. I barely blinked; my director hardly had energy enough to throw his hands in the air in frustration. After briefly lamenting this development, we immediately sought a course of action. Thank god you didn’t allow him access to the funds from America. Of course not. Right. What now?

I vowed to play hardball. The Secretary General wants a municipal trash collection system? He can advise his boss to fund our project. Collaborate with Peace Corps? Not on a foundation of withdrawn funds and broken promises. I must use the little leverage I have and assume the Mayor cares about anything other than lining his pockets.