Development... 'A work in(g) progress'

From 19 Aug 13

Some thoughts on the matter of development.  A subject worthy of many thoughts and scores of books already published and awaiting the digestion of the populous.  A matter in which interestingly enough, those that are or see themselves as 'develeped' seem too eager it a duty to carry it out for others (much like myself, in a broad sense, you could say).

What's interesting about 'us' trying to help 'them' a concept that really doesn't sit well with me by the way, this notion of people divided, is that we know hardly a thing about it.

I feel as if we're always just barely scratching the surface and applying bandaids to wounds failing to have the time or means at identifying the root.

Much like an erosion issue we face here.  It was my instinct to guide the village in amassing rock cages to slow the rate of water flow at the base of the hill where it seems damage is the worst.  But in fact, one should venture further up the hill to attempt slowing the rate of water before it even has the chance to reach the deep gullies at the base.

But what one should maybe do more, is stop trying to 'fix' everything while hardly knowing anything.

Organizing leaders and elders of the village to have even a conversation is a good first step.  After all, they are the ones that know the land, what and how it's used, and how it can best be manipulated if need be.  Why hasn't anyone addressed the issue before or how have they tried?  Other good guiding questions to ask before throwing out knowledgeable prescriptions as the 'doctor of all knowledge' you are seen as whether or not you wish to be viewed as such.

These are all lessons I'm learning the 'hard' way if you will, or am realizing after the fact.  But so much pressure can be placed on us to do something.  To spend grant money, to mitor and evaluate projects.  But what if you just don't know the answer and are tired of blindly aiming at something you're not even quite sure of anymore?

Authors have written on this, at least somehow, I'm sure, and NGO's have pretended to apply the new way of thinking, capacity building vs. handouts.  But it seems still now that no one is able to penetrate deep enough to offer a truly utilizable worthwhile project.

Sometimes I feel the best thing we can do is stop 'waisting their time,' which I don't think we're actually doing, by giving our ideas and encourage them to discuss issues and act on their ideas.  That's the goal anyway and what they tell us to do.  But then no one does or says anything, you get bored and tired of waiting and start planting your own seeds.  A compromise I suppose but still frustrating.

To back up; What inspired me to write today was my bra.  A cheap Chinese made number from the local market.  It looked nice.  It looked like it was trying to look like something from Victoria's Secret with little purple dogs on it.  It did the job anyway.  But in less than one weak of wear the under-wire started to poke thru into my sternum.  And the left strap, always popped off so that as I would try to done on the garment, I would have to spend an extra minute or two trying to hook the strap back into the bra causing both annoyance and frustration.  And it isn't just the bras or the underwears or garments that last for a what seems like a breath of a day before they are addled with snags and tears and imperfections from the lifestyle of living in a poor village in the middle of the bush in some small country in Sub-Saharan West Africa.  It's the shoes.  It's the cheap batteries that appear to be filled with black compressed ash as they decompose after maybe a months use. 

Big breath.  Big sigh.  I was glad I bought the bra.  To remember that even though I live in the village with everyone, I'm not necessarily walking in their shoes.  I don't have all the same struggles they have.  I have a nice bra from The Gap that has never given me any problems.  I have Chako's that don't fall apart and if they do the nice people at Chako's will replace them most likely.  I can drink tea in less than ten mins if I so feel the desire from a propane tank and stove top.  Instead of having to collect firewood and starting an open fire, etc etc.

To  truly master a place can take a lifetime.  Many of us on the front lines of international work and development often hardly have more than maybe five years to give at a maximum.  Where posts are often in a city or town and not village (with Peace Corps as the only exception that I know where the post is likely not a city or town but some remote village somewhere).  

I've been in and out of my village for a little over one year now and still feel like I'm just scratching the surface.  It doesn't mean that some projects we try to push aren't worth while.  But I think the point I'm slowly understanding is that the most valuable resources in these poor, often resource depleted countries, are the people and that one oughtn't feel afraid to encourage them to utilize one another.  I don't think even now, I would be given or even understand the full story of here if I were told it.  I'm realizing it's not necessarily for me to master here.  It's for them.  And perhaps the best we can do is pester them to start these conversations.  But even that's a challenge because when you ask them, they have rehearsed answers for you that eat at your very should because you just can't achieve everything on their simple wish list and even if you could, their requests are for yet more bandaids because thinking much beyond their isn't much done.  Nor is it in the Western world to be fair.  Our waste management system, still now, is but a series of expensive and perhaps inefficient bandaids.  At least in most places.

So why rant on something that's likely been said often enough?  Because, at least from what I've experienced and observed, those that are eager to help, for the most part, like me, don't know this until you've lived it.  Maybe you can't..?  But I must for the simple purpose of stating so only, that the ideas and solutions of the most weight, live in and lie within the people.  If it's a problem for 'us' but not 'them' then obviously there is no known solution yet.  But then let's ascertain why the dichotomy of perceptions.

To new and eager vol's, and anyone in the business of these affairs, it is in my opinion, truly, much more helpful to support the people in their solutions towards change and adaptation shall it be so wished by them.  If you see for instance erosion, maybe instead of assuming they know not a thing about it or its devastating effects, assume all knowledgeable until proven otherwise.  And don't let them fool you for in order to appease you and make you happy- they will try to make you seem and feel like the more knowledgeable higher being.  They will purposefully reduce themselves for you without maybe even knowing it.  This is why getting them to step into those roles of expertise is difficult in front of and around your.  But don't let them fool you.  They are well aware of much more than we give credit for.  And we are much more out of our league that we might initially realize. 

But I won't say its for naught.  It is a beautiful most enlightening experience.  But to make it really worth their while, get them to talk, if even just to each other.  And give them the permission to be and do great things.  Understand that standing out is culturally inappropriate and that work done is shared by the community.  But not the whole community works.  But they will all take the credit.  They don't always trust each other.  There's little reason to trust in the earnest efforts of foreigners anymore, and they don't always trust themselves.

Earning that trust takes time but requires nothing more than attempting to know them and live life with them.  Side by side, as much as possible.

From a strictly grass rotts perspective, that's what I've got to say on the matter.  Top down approach is an entirely different matter althought incredibly complimentary and important.  But one I'll leave for a later time.

It's incredibly simple yet entirely challenging tasks.  Don't discredit your effort and don't give up.  Answer the call but just don't answer chalked full of solutions.  Answer with a blank slate an open mind, heart, and sense of humilit and ability to laugh at yourself in the most trying of times.  Have courage to cry when you feel you wish to.  But do answer.  They will love and forever know you, less for your efforts, and more how you made them feel. 

One thought on the matter anyway.

A rainy, lazy day

From 14 Aug 13

I try to keep track, if even inconsistent and vague, of what happens each day on the callendar.  Today, in the middle of the day, after finishing the second NY Times Magazine, eating lunch with my host family, and having not made it more than thirty feet from my doorstep, I surrendered to the 'nothing' day and proceeded to write 'dara' in Wednesdays square.  Thursday's box was full with plans of going to the weekly market and speaking with counterparts in the town there about upcoming projects.  I tried to use the full box of Thursday to justify the empty one of Wednesday. 

It's difficult though.  We're constantly torn in this unique set up where your everday life is somehow your job and so when you aren't 'working' for some, it's hard not to feel like a waste of a volunteer.  That somebody could do better.  That US dollars shouldn't be wasted with me reading magazines in my house taking a day to relax.

As the day went on, I was in and out of my backyard, weeding and uprooting trees.  The small space, approx 10"x13" has at least now eleven trees.  All well and healthy.  Five of the former thirteen were Leuceana trees.  A fast growing nitrogen fixing potentially invasive green buddy.  Last year we tried to plant five in my host fathers farm and it felt like such a victory!  Until the cows ate them...

This year I diecided to care less.  I didn't do a tree nursery for myself but did one with the village.  But the aftermathe of the one I did last year called my attention today, in my 'nothing day.'
I pulled one tree out and thought, after the fact, that maybe it could be transplanted.  They are hardy trees anyway.  I came outside and asked my host family if they didn't want it.  A seemingly more common method of asking using the negative form vs positive, i.e., you won't eat? You won't put on something nice to wear to go out? etc.
 So, my host mother directed me and one of my host brothers to go place it in one of their bathroom areas.  The leaves were already starting to wilt.. well, maybe it will come back?  Some hours later I came out with another tree.  I had tried to be more careful about up rooting it.  This time it was my educated brother, (a teacher) and his wife sitting outside.  I again asked if they didn't want it.  

Lan mooy njerring? What's its use?
Dafa dimbale suuf si rekk.  It helps the soil only.
Xop yi nag? And what of the leaves?
Dimbale na suuf si itam.  They also help the soil.
Baax na nu tegal ci tooli Baay.  Ok let's put it on fathers farm.

As we went out I tried to explain how we tried to plant them there last year but that the animals ate them.  After we transplanted I suggested we try to protect them and suggested more planting throughout his field in the future to provide green fertilizer and stability.

When I cam back I crossed out 'dara,' the Wolof word for nothing, and wrote 'transplanted 2 trees.'  
Sometimes you just need a day to catch up with yourself, your work, and your life here.  Sometimes you just need a day.  But I bet, even when you aren't transplanting, that they aren't just nothing days.  They are something.  Conveniently, the word for something and nothing are the same word, dara.  Those wise Wolof people.
 

Electronical detachment...

Greetings all!  It has been some three months since my last entry.  I have written quite a bit but haven't had the time or effort to put thought to computer screen.  I must be at that point in service where just 'being' sounds much more appealing than dealing with the technical woes of attempting posting anything on a computer with shaky internet and unreliable electricity.  Where 'being' means reading a book or catching up with fellow volunteers or Gambian friends etc.  I'm finding that the more time away from the internet I have, the more I want to be away from it. 

That being said, I will try to catch up by Dec at the very least.  Because I do appreciate that it allows me to communicate my experience and reach out to friends and family and perhaps random but welcome viewers back home or wherever.

But all is well.  It is a few days before Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.  Volunteers have done a lovely job organizing events for those of us in country wanting to celebrate such events so far from home.  It's always a bit harder to be away from home on the holidays but I'm really looking forward to enjoying my last ones with my new-found "Gambian volunteer" family. 

Facing my last quarter of service seems unreal, exciting, terrifying, happy, and sad, and everything else all at once.  I still have several things running that I hope I can focus on til the end as, granted people continue to show interest in them... as:

+Erosion control
+tree nursery establishment and outplanting
+village tree outplanting celebration
+Village health Care Group
+HIV/AIDS sensitization lessons and dramas
and last but not least,
+continuing to build on and strengthen existing relationships, exchanging culture, ideas, and friendship

All to come in following blogs that will for sure be backdated and untimely. 

In the meantime, I wish everyone the merryist and happiest of the holiday season.  I ask anyone to think twice or more times about if they really need "this thing" or "that thing" on Black Friday, a day that supports consumerism, a behavior that destabilizes ecosystem services and thus threatens our quality of life by threatening to destroy the basic elements that keep us alive, namely, water, which it all comes back down to.

Anyway, happy thoughts from The Gambia.  Where we are all just trying.

(This posting took about an hour of unsuccessful attempts before properly uploading)

BeeCause it's important!

 My counterparts, Baay Malick and Malick Seidou.

 Three amigos.

 Her well is fifty some meters in depth!  

A scaly chameleon friend.

BeeCause training part two.  Featuring the man responsible for it all, Balla!  In the training we constructed KTB (Kenyan Top Bar) hives and learned how to make soap and body butter with honey and bees wax.  We learned about measuring and obtaining quality honey with less than twenty percent or so water content.  The training took place in another volunteers village for three days.  Our counterparts got to go transfer bees from the catcher boxes we made at the last training to transfer into the freshly made hives.  Us girls got to try to cool down and relax as there were not enough bee suites.  But don't worry, we've all gotten our suites on and those bees angry before!  Such a rush!

Around the compound

 Learning how to use binoculars.  I wish I brought a pair of these!  With Hoja and her mom, Awa, and Robert.  My short time VSO sitemate.

 Jugal and Fafa.  My sister and brother.  Standing in the corn field.

 Yura.  The youngest.  Very spunky!

 Grr!

 Fanta.  Her mom is in Senegal.  She's been with us for a while now.  Just kicken it.  So cute.

 Awa.  My aunts daughter who has also been staying with us lately to help out.  Compounds are constantly changing.

 

 Baay.  My host father.  Coming back from praying.

 Host mom, Dado, and some of the kids.  Certainly not the best photo faces but it was the brightest.

 Ndey and Maddie.  Mother and son.

 Jama and Isatou.  Mother and daughter.

 Ndey, holding some 25L of water. 

 Baay.  With permission to take his picture this time.

 Maam.  My host grandmother, Fatim.  An amazing and strong woman.

 Our kitchen.

 My backyard, featuring a flamboyant tree planted last year.

 My Leuceana tree from last year.  So tall!

 Gayende, checking out the camera.

 And my bed.  It's looking nice these days.  I have to make it every night and strip it every morning because black stinging ants fall between the wall and mosquito net, somehow crawl under the net or through the holes, and sting me in my sleep!  But this new system has been better, is more open and spacious.  Kind of like a flat in Manhattan now...

People and village picture break!

Gayende liked to play in my jibadah, a mud jar that keeps your water cool.  The jar was pretty moldy so now it's a perch outside.

This is the Alpha I always talk about.  He's one of my best friends here.  He runs this Bitik (shop) in the town nearest me.

My host mom and I showing off our tippy tap.  An old oil bidong (container) fashioned to work as a running water tap for hand washing.  The post has since been knocked over by a horse.  We talk about repairing it.  Someday.  There's a newer easier technology we might try for the next one that uses physics wisely.  To come.  Maybe!

Nalgene, I thought you were unbreakable!  This happened around month three.  It fell off my bike handlebars full of cold water on the super hot pavement going about 10-12 mph.  Another volunteer brought me a new one from the states.  Thanks Mikaela! : )

Just hanging out.  You know, no big.

One of my other best friends, Hoja (left), host sister/cousin, in her compound, wearing my hat.

Baby Isatou.  Maybe about one month old here?  Or so.  She was very very small when I saw her after a week old.  I was very scared.  She's alive and well today and continues to get bigger.  An incredibly strong young one if I may say.

Another kitty in the jar shot.  I think she liked it in there so much because it was cool.

Host mom showing PC herself how to fill the tippy tap.

My friend Maram (madam).  I don't see her in village too much but we hung out on this day when I had a camera.  She is very sweet.

Hoja again.  Looking gorgeous.  She is engaged to be married soon!  I hope I'll still be here to see her wedding.

Another friend, Kayway.  Sorry it's so dark.  I don't visit her often enough but really enjoy her company at site.  I went over there one morning for the first time for breakfast.  I don't know why I was so nervous.  I think the language barrier mostly.  I brought a jar of tea with milk and honey.  And she sent out for bean sandwiches and green tea with sugar (attaya) to make for me.  The hospitality was above and beyond.  Her and her husbands hut is really nice with mosaic like broken tiled floor.  Her husband is really experimental with agriculture.  One of my favorite couples in village.

Another Gayende shot.  Just chillin.  She actually hates the heat.  Sorry kitty.

And me.  With my lovely village look. 

And then the wind blew

(8 July 2013)

Ndey? (Ndey?)
Hm? (Hm?)
It's dark. (Dafa lindim.)
Where? (Fan?)
There. (Fale.)
Yes. (Waaw.)
Do you think the rain is coming? (Fog nga taw mungi dikka?)
Huh? (Huh?)
I said, the rain, do you think it will come? (Manee, taw bi, fog nga dina ñow?)
Rain? (Taw?)
Yes. (Waaw.)
Eh, I don't know. (Eh, xam uma di.)
But, it's so dark. (Waay, dafa lindim torup!)
Yes, it's dark. (Waaw, dafa lindim kaay.)
But only g-d can know it? (Waay yalla mo ko xam rekk?)
Yes, only g-d knows it. (Waaw, yalla mo ko xam rekk.)

Then I was silent.  I just sat happily with Ndey, my cousin, or something like that.  Watching this dark wall slowly impress upon our village from the East.  It's bad luck, or so it seems, to try and predict weather.  But it's something that is such a natural and easy point of conversation.  I wanted to say that I was sure something was coming but I bit my lip and just watched, feigning ignorance.  Every few minutes I would point out how the horizon was getting darker, a bit as a joke.  Then, everyone began to scatter.  They told me the wind was coming as if it was a surprise.  I smirked a bit as I swiftly went into my house to prepare it for the unknown, hoping somewhat desperately that rain was in tow.

I had asked them about rain dances earlier, or trying to, explaining, somewhat exaggeratedly for simplicities sake, that we have rain dances where I'm from because it is also dry there (Arizona) and that rains are important.  I don't think they believed me.  Or maybe it's just so difficult to conceive of anywhere outside of here.  Especially when you've hardly ever even left the village. 

I wished I could have filmed it.  Althought a wind storm or storm in general isn't that unlike other storms.  The dust here makes it a different world though.

It felt like dusty air conditioning blowing through.  The air just before was quite hot and humid and still.  The mixing of such opposing temperatures created quite a stir, literally!  The neem tree whipped around like one of those blow up dancing men outside of car washes or a new music store, dancing hard to impress you enough to enter.  This tree is a solid mass of fixed carbon dioxide, strongly rooted and heavily branched.  Bobbing about like a teen at a rave. 

I was so excited.  I absolutely love storms!  Desert storms are some of the best.  West African ones may be even better but I haven't seen anything top the lightning storms of AZ.  But, these ones can come close.

I was running back and froth from my back yard to inside my house.  Constantly rubbing the dirt out of my eyes.  The coolness was irresistable.  And the sights, like being under water with a brown hazy ocean ceiling.

I started to see and hear my family run back and forth out front.  At first it was just the children playing in the crazy weather.  Enjoying like me.  Then I saw my older sisters.  Something was up.

I looked out one of my windows that just looks out to the narrow path between my house and my grandmothers.  Straw was everywhere.

Shit.  I went outside and latched my outer corrugate leaving Gayende (my kitty) locked inside.  Two huts had lost most of their grass roofs.  Everyone was running back and forth with their belongings in case the rain picked up.  I started to help while trying not to be too much in the way.  It was drizzling on us as we moved things, but only a little bit.  I was astonished. Their houses are really just as full as mine if not more!  Ok, maybe it's the same.  But all of their stuff was just hidden!  Hidden under the straw mattress or behind the cloth curtains.  All I ever knew of these homes was to have the beds, the pans (large 25L basins) and trunks of clothes, some shoes or flashlights, etc.  But these houses, they were lived in.  Like the clutter you find in your mom's or grandma's house from generations of use and love.  It was reassuring in a way.  As well as frustrating, so much to move! 

Fortunately there was a new house with a new corrugate roof to evacuate to.  And also fortunately, the storm was not as tremendous as I had originally hoped.  That hope popped like a soggy sad balloon at the site of the mostly roofless houses that keep so many of my loved ones and their belonginings sheltered.

After we moved as much as possible, and of value, and our grandmother, I returned to my house.  Like any crises, when the crisis isn't mine, I did what any good Jewish girl would do.  I turned to food.  I popped my family some pick me up fresh popcorn.  Then made some for myself before collapsing on my floor.  Surrendering to the almond m&m's and children's stories my mom sent for Words on Wheels (...I have to make sure the stories are good!).

I felt exhausted.  And not because the things we were moving were extraordinarily heavy, or because I had worked particularly hard that day, but because of the weight of the poverty that is life here.

Every volunteer, just about, complains about chronic fatigue.  Sure, we don't have the best beds or mattresses (actually, no mattresses, just foam or straw or both), nor do we live in the best climate or have the most supportive of diets.  All excellent reasons to be tired.  But I think it's a much more subtle storm that moves through all of us, at varying degrees throughout our service.  An emotional heaviness that we bear, probably a lot of it subconsciously, anytime we see the kids too skinny, children and adults wearing rags, deformities, sick people without proper medicine or access to it, houses in ruins, food in scarce and or bland quantities, dirty households, crying babies, children beating each other or moms beating (disciplining) their children, people fighting, and just the visible despair that shows on their faces sometimes.  It's like you can see inside their heads when their counting something or looking at food stores or clothes, just not having the money in the copious amounts they wished.  Their whole spirit slumps, their face falls, but it's much more subtle than that.  You can see it only if you look.  Like looking gently with your peripheral vision.  I think we try to not see this, or at least I did, for a long time.  But I think whether you choose to see it or not, you do and it definitely has an affect that weighs on your soul.  And it weighs more heavier and harder as they become your family, your community, and your people.

I'm almost certain that was the exhaustion I felt after living that minor disaster with them.  It's somehow even harder when their faces are bright, their energy is high and they're never without humor.  And how could it be any different?  If they let it weigh them down, they'd never be able to do anything!  Which, actually happens too.  I hardly feel like I can do anything amidst it all sometimes, and I have an out!

All of us, at some point, and in some way, feel this weight.  It's arguably why so many of us feel for Africa and her people.  Because they are our fellow peoples and their lives and our western lives, are somehow not the same level of living.

But still now, after all this time, interest, action, and aid, none of us have the magic cure.  But I think the solution is simple.  Not easily achievable but simple.  I don't think it's something that the most intelligent engineers, architects, or scientists can discover.  It's that potential, buried in each and every one of us, that just needs to be seen or sparked by someone, to ignite it, and have that person finally feel free and allowed to express it, whatever it is.  It's a trait even many westerners struggle with.  That sense of confidence, ownership, responsibility and integrity of self.  That allowance in your self to be yourself even and especially if that looks different.  These are not always easy traits nor are they always natural.  Society can shape us in a way that makes these even harder to access.  But I think it's that simple faith in self that is going to move mountains.  Nothing more or less.

I drafted this as you can see on the eighth of July.  It's now the twenty seventh as I finally type it.  It's raining, as I type here in the capital city.  Sheets of it.  It's not so windy here.  Not as much as it is up country.  But it's a comforting rain.  A rain of promise.  A rain of hope.  A rain of, Inshallah, prosperity, peace, and change.