After my guests left, I fell back into my work in Falmey. Before my holiday, my Union ladies had completed the training course I set up with Falmey’s Community Development Agent. Adamou was an efficient and effective training leader, and the ladies who attended the sessions participated fully and really seemed to enjoy the chance to meet and discuss their work. I really feel that the women benefitted from the formal discussion of what they do every day without thinking, sometimes we all need to take a look at our rote behavior from a different angle. I felt proud that the women got some attention, a pat on the back for the commitment they have shown, validation of their importance in the community, and an opportunity to learn about progressing in their work.
I continue to hope that the work we did will give the ladies confidence to move forward in their own development, but I admit I have little faith that they will really put into practice the ideas and work methods they learned. Life is the ultimate test of sustainability, no matter how carefully we planned the project. I feel that we could make more progress towards behavior change if I had been able to stay in Niger and perform the follow-up and evaluation of the project. This last step involved attending the women’s monthly meetings, evaluating the ways in which they put their new training to use, and reminding them of the organizational tools that the trainings presented to them, so that they could really make the most of their time and work together. However, I do not have that opportunity and I can only wish my ladies good luck, and the strength to push forward with a development idea that challenges many of their traditional beliefs and customs.
Our “business plan” challenged some long-standing practices in Falmey, (1) multiple separate but not specialized women’s groups, (2) every women must see a direct benefit to herself before she will participate, (3) a group of women who do not engage in a steady work regimen can be officially registered, remain on the poverty line, and be eligible for NGO handouts. A select few wanted to pull as many of the active groups as possible into an overarching Union, look at group specialization, and to save in a communal safe to start financing small projects. The idea was to benefit from Falmey’s local development agents to share knowledge of a chosen enterprise, and to work with a small group of women in order to create a real change in their financial situation. Given time, and communal resources, the Union of women could then work on one small campaign after the next, hopefully rotating through the various types of income generating activities that the town of Falmey can support. We wanted to start with the communal gardening space, then be able to move on to other types of projects that different women would participate in, raising goats for profit, production of shea butter products, exploitation of peanut products, sale of street food for profit, and maybe even some small Union-sponsored activities such as town clean-up campaigns and encouraging participation in the adult literacy classes and young girl’s sewing lessons offered in town. 
Grand ideas, but not their own. It all seemed so rational to me, easy to do once you show people what they are missing! My counterparts and I did the best we could while together; our plans were altered, challenged, and boiled down to the understanding: we needed free access to knowledge, steady work, even if it was slow, to keep everyone interested, and time. I left Niger with the knowledge less than half-completed, the work in progress, and time off the table where it concerns me.
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