Change of Plans

We met with the Water Association this afternoon to finalize plans for the tree sale. Much to our surprise, they had decided to change key aspects of our plan! I'm glad we had Hoda there to help with translating because it would have been a challenge without her. At first they wanted to open the sale to all of the duars (villages) served by the Association. We were able to talk them out of that because of the limited number of trees and by explaining that this was our way of thanking our village for hosting us over the past two months. Then they told us that instead of three trees per family, they wanted to sell two trees per family – this is because they weren't sure how many families would participate. The final issue was whether or not to charge a small fee for the trees. We had previously decided to charge 3Dh per tree as a way to instill a feeling of responsibility and buy-in from community members. The Association members were concerned that the villagers would be suspicious of the Association and how they would use that money. It was kind of a strange discussion because they quickly dropped their arguments and agreed to keep the fee. I have a feeling that this isn't the last time we'll run into situations like this.