My Internet Café Project

I realized recently that while I’ve mentioned my internet café project a bunch, I’ve never told the story in its entirety.  The ten orphan boys I grew to love last fall needed something sustainable to get them off the street, or at least put food in their mouths.  This past spring, while talking with my counterpart at HAPCO about helping these boys, we thought of the idea of opening an internet café whose profits will help support these orphans, and others too.  The internet café project we decided would employ one manager, one guard, and several part-time teenage orphans when they weren’t in school.  Every month a percentage of the profits would be divided amongst the orphans we wanted to help.

It was a flawless plan, we figured.  Since Ethiopians are just discovering the glory of the world wide web and Dangila isn’t yet connected (except for my house!), we thought this was a perfect business plan, bound to be a success.

I applied for Peace Corps funding through a grant accessible to Peace Corps volunteers working with HIV, funded by PEPFAR.  My counterpart and I came up with a project proposal, submitted it and were soon approved for the $5,000.  A month or two later, in July, we received the money and began figuring out the logistics of getting the café up and running.  I purchased two computers, a photocopy machine, and a printer in Addis and hauled them up to Dangila.  The next step was securing a location – if you haven’t read my blog entry “Not Knowing Everything” (and why would you have not?) you should now, to understand the rest of this story.  And yet here I am, two and a half months later, without a container for the café.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or container apparently.  There is a catch with this supposed “empty container for orphans.”  An Iddir (community group) was put in charge of organizing the container to benefit orphans from kebele 05 (which is like a small county or neighborhood- - there are five in Dangila).  The container was actually purchased with HAPCO funding over a year ago and since then, not a single birr has been given to the orphans it was suppose to support.  Yet the Iddir won’t relinquish control of the container.

The Iddir chairman’s reasons for not giving the container to this internet café project are flawed and ridiculous.  He says the container is suppose to help only kebele 05 kids, while our project has six orphans from kebeles 01-04.  Twelve of eighteen are from kebele 05 though and we increased the number of orphans early in the project to include all children which were supposed to be supported by the failed container projects.

It came to me one day that I should write him a sincere letter asking if we could please work together to achieve the mutual goal of helping orphans.  It was translated with the help of my friend and presented it to him in his office.  He hardly looked at the letter and definitely wouldn’t look me in the eye.  All he said was, “Aychelem” – it’s not possible.

Next step? Well, HAPCO has a signed contract with the Iddir since the funding originally came from them.  The Iddir promised to help set up a business to help the orphans, and a year later since they have not yet supported the orphans, HAPCO has the ability to take the container back, to give it to my project.  The mayor, who is in full support of my internet café project, wants to first give the Iddir time to “do the right thing” and simply hand over the container. Not likely. Hence the two and a half months of waiting.  And I fear if HAPCO actually tries to enforce the contract and take the container back things could get really ugly.

In the meantime we conducted a basic computer and basic business training for the eighteen orphans we want to help.  The internet café is not simply giving these orphans a portion of its profits, but the project also aims to keep the children involved in the café, and make them active internet users (which they will be able to access free-of-charge for a certain number of hours per month).

With the training completed and the waiting game with the Iddir still counting days, I am starting to worry.  There are only three and a half months left until I leave Dangila and finish Peace Corps, so I am starting to fear this project won’t finish.  I have literally put blood, sweat, and tears into this project (albeit blood by paper cut).  Six months have passed since brainstorming this idea and at the moment I’m feeling disheartened.  I don’t know where to go from here and simply waiting is becoming an impossibility.

Tears and frustration. Sometimes you can give all you have and it still might not be enough.  But I’m not giving up. No ma’am.