"You know I have an association. . . "

One thing I find very amusing here is the sheer number of associations there are. Everyone and their mother seems to have their own association, from the taxi driver that drives from Zaida to the village, to the guy I buy vegetables from, to the guys who run the cyber cafÈ. I rarely go one day out of the village without at least one person telling me about their association and asking for my help. It's great, I guess, that this seems to be one area of the government devoid of any and all red tape - one man in the village was talking to me on a Friday about how he was thinking about starting his own association, and the next time I saw him, Monday afternoon, he said he'd started it and filed all the papers and was ready to go. And it's great that people feel like they have the potential to help their communities. But the number of associations that get created and then do absolutely nothing is astounding. Which is why I laughed out loud when the rich land owner told me the other day that he was going to start his own association. "To do what?" I asked. "Everything." "Everything like what? You can't have an association that does everything." "You know, stuff to help the village, like a road and a hospital and whatever it needs." People seem to think that there's just all this money floating around that associations are entitled to the minute they file their paperwork. There is money out there, for sure, but I'm finding that it's really really hard to get.