Wednesday, September 1, 2010

A History of Development: First Edition of Kristi's Ongoing Conversations with Herself

8/22/10

So, I’ve been meaning to write this entry for ages, but not sure how to do it.  But thanks to my mom, I have a spark.  And a fun metaphor.

Let’s contemplate this well-used proverb:

“If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”

We’ve all heard this little proverb a million times.  It’s one of those clichés that has been repeated so much, we’ve lost where it comes from or why it came to be in the first place.  So, I’m about to rip it apart in good old analytical form as the academic world has pounded into me over many years.

The history of development can be painted by this proverb.  In post-WWII times, colonial empires began to break down, and new countries—who had for generations been propped up, created, and consequently messed up by outside colonial powers—began to gain independence; many of these countries were in Africa.  During this era, when much of the world was rebuilding itself, the West turned its gaze not only on itself, but on these new countries as well.  These new countries were categorized as poor and in need, not having the ability to fend for themselves and in need of outside help.  In truth, many countries asked for such help, not being given two legs to stand on after the dissolution of colonial governments and already operating on a Western notion of riches, success, and modernization.  So, many argue, with the need for “development,” a new colonizing project began. 

So, the West began “giving men fish.”  Lots and lots of it, because these poor souls needed help and aid to combat their dire poverty.  It came from governments, from churches, from missionaries, from organization with private donations, and yet, the problem didn’t go away.  This “fish” could have been anything from food to clothes to technology to latrines.  People were still hungry.  Enough fish couldn’t be given.  The “development experts” scratched their heads and realized, well, if we give them the tools to do it themselves, surely that will solve the problem.  So, they gave the people fishing poles.  Lots and lots of them.  They gave them fishing poles that were high powered for optimum fish yield, made of the best state-of-the-art material and heavy duty line.  They forgot, though, to teach the people how to use them, so they ended up as measuring sticks or trophies or as status symbols.  So, the experts designed teaching seminars and sent in the best knowledge to show the men how to use it, but they went back after a year and found the poles collecting dust and the people still hungry and fish-less.  Why?  Well, the mechanical reel broke on one and the line was lost on another.  But who knew how to fix it?  How could one get more line?  The broken part costs $1 in America, but we can’t get it in Cambodia.  We have to import it and that costs a whole month’s wages for that one lonely fisherman.  And the people were taught how to use them, but not how to fix them if they broke.  So the experts designed poles made from locally available materials and decided to diversify tools—they give the people nets as well.  Still, they go back after a few years and the tools are used less than what was expected.  Why?  It turns out they have only given the tools to the men who then sell the fish for cash, but it is the women who do most of the fishing to feed the household.  So, they give the women poles and nets and show them how to use them.  Still, there are some people fishing and fishing well with great tools and knowledge, but it has not caught on like the experts thought it would.  Why are people still hungry?  Turns out there’s a cultural taboo against eating this particular kind of fish.  It’s believed to create impotence and infertility.  So the experts provide scientific evidence to the contrary, but it’s met with confused looks and raised eyebrows.  “Well, maybe not for you, White Foreigner, but for us _____ people, it has always been so.”  So now we are at a crossroads.  Chip away at the cultural belief, or find a different, equally viable source of food?

This handy little “teach a man to fish” proverb, when a metaphor for development, is rife with hidden assumptions.  First, the assumption is that the man is hungry and unable to feed himself properly.  Therefore, someone outside must give him food or teach him to feed himself.  He is a man to be saved.  Second, given that the man really is hungry, fish is going to solve all his hunger problems.  They ignored why the man was hungry in the first place (drought or politically unequal distribution of food?) and the circumstances that led him to be hungry.  When “development” first began as an industry and a field, it was thought that increasing productivity, capital and economy would solve all the poverty problems.  If people could only make more money, they could buy all the solutions to their needs.  Good ole trickledown economics and the American notion of purchasing power.  If we can only increase their cash flow, other sectors will naturally improve—education, health, gender equity, civil unrest, political instabilities, social welfare... Because they would be able to purchase all these things and carry more power with their money.  Third assumption:  the man is the one who fishes.  Oddly enough, Western aid has favored giving men all the tools for development from education to farm equipment because they are the obvious breadwinners right?  Women may actually provide all the household labor, but all that was needed was for men to make more money.  Women’s inclusion in development programs up until the 1980s was purely as baby machines.  Development institutions never saw the actual labor that women do in agriculture or the informal business market.  They were using their own cultural lens when distributing development: the solution to underdevelopment and poverty was to transform it into a modern patriarchal system.  We are still working—25 years later—to properly resist this type of development.  The inclusion of women into development and their participation in it has its own history and ideas, beliefs, and critiques.  That will be the subject of another post.  The fourth assumption is that by teaching a man to fish, these skills are sustainable for a lifetime.  What happens if he fishes too much and then all the fish are gone?  What happens if there’s a drought and the fish don’t come?  What if he dies before being able to pass the fishing knowledge on to someone else?

So where is the field of development today?  I’d say these three buzzwords cover it pretty accurately:  Environment:  Now that we’ve taught the people to fish, they are overfishing, and there is too much strain on the environment.   Gender:  We must make sure we include the women in everything!  Sustainability:  Will they continue this after we leave?  How long can the West prop up the non-West?   In order for it to be sustainable, whatever tools, skills, or knowledge we give them must be already congruent with the lifestyles they lead.  This is Peace Corps’ favorite buzzword.  Sustainability.

In a previous post, I linked to my friend Emma’s blog because she had already done a good job of explaining Peace Corps’ approach to development and why we think it is different, and, hopefully, more successful.  Development is a long, arduous process with no straight forward answers about how to make people’s lives better—especially in a cross-cultural context.  It also has no clear steps about how one place should develop.  Contrary to popular belief, development is not linear.  It moves forward and backward, and at times, from side to side.  After 60+ years of development theory and practice, we still don’t have it right.  But we keep trying to make it so, because what else are you going to do?  The best we can do is to learn from our mistakes, and that doesn’t happen unless we continue to look critically and analytically at what we are doing so we can make new solutions.  The development process is long and slow, frustrating and confusing.  We, as Peace Corps volunteers or NGO workers, are only a teeny tiny piece in the monstrous apparatus of development.  One can see why, after discovering the past trespasses of previous development paradigms, how it has indeed made much of the world poorer in many cases, and overwhelmed with the knowledge of how the richer developed world continues to dump on the underdeveloped world can argue and shout for the complete severance of all contribution to the global South.  It becomes easy to ask: Why are we doing this if we just continue to screw it up and because it’s our fault in the first place?  As a wise professor once told me:  we must not use this information to become paralyzed to inaction.  This knowledge is intended to inform so that we may continually evaluate and change our thinking, our views, our processes, and, hopefully, the outcomes.  We live in a globalized world.  Country boundaries mean less and less as our physical and information travel increases.  Everything we do, together as a planet, affects everyone else.  If a child is malnourished in Ghana, it affects me in America.  Even if there are malnourished children in America.  They affect me too.  Suffering and poverty know no political boundaries.  Philanthropy shouldn’t either.

Next on Kristi’s Ongoing Conversations with Herself:  What is poor?  And who says so?

Greeting the Chief

Once I had been in Damanko a couple of days, Kofi took me to “greet the chief,” who is actually his uncle.  Every town and community has a chief and it is proper whenever you are in their community, to seek them out and say hello and what you are doing in their community.  Every community we have been in while training, while visiting volunteers or whatever, one of the first things we did was greet the chief.  Though the situation differs due to tribal practices or region, they usually proceed in this way: you approach the chief’s compound and seek out either him or one of his elders after having prearranged this meeting.  All official chief business takes place in a round concrete room with a large pedestal on which sits his official seat and that of the Queen Mother.  The individual or group must be “invited in” so once the chief situates himself on the pedestal and sorted out the cloth that drapes him, the group is invited into the round room.  For northern chiefs, the protocol is to squat when you approach and stay that way until he invites you to sit (which isn’t very long).  After the proper greetings of hello and how are you, you tell the chief your name and your purpose for seeing him and being in the community.  You say this to the chief, but he also has “a linguist” who repeats, translates, or summarizes what you just said so the chief doesn’t have to question in case he doesn’t understand something.  They also say the linguist is responsible for “polishing” the language—using the right words/language in the presence of the chief.  It is also proper to bring the chief a gift, usually something small like kola nuts or alcohol which you then present, especially if you need something from him—permission, knowledge, etc. 

Armed with these experiences, Kofi and I went to greet the chief.  Now I know for the Konkomba people (who is the predominant tribe in this village) their chief system is considerably less formal that most of other tribes in Ghana.  In this chief’s round room, sits his pedestal and throne and Queen Mother seat, but also a stack of DVDs, a TV and DVD player, a ceiling fan, and probably 20 large burlap sacks of groundnuts.  Three women were in there watching TV and shucking groundnuts, much like one would shuck peas.  Kofi and I sat down in the plastic yard chairs that are everywhere in Ghana, and a few minutes later, the chief came.  We squatted as he came in the room and he sat on the edge of his pedestal.  We exchanged greetings and I told him my plans for the next few months.  There was no linguist (I’m not sure this chief has one) so Kofi was translating, though I know the chief must speak at least as good English as Kofi does.  After that we presented him with the small gift of alcohol.  Now when alcohol is given to a chief it is usually the locally brewed gin.  It’s very strong and used for ritual blessings and the like, so when I asked Kofi what I should bring to the chief, he dithered then eventually said “Bring him a beer.”  The conversation went something like this:

“You mean like Star or Stone or something?” These are the Ghanaian brewed beers. 

“Yes.  Bring him a Star.”  Star is about like PBR, I think.  “And a biscuit.” 

“Kofi, are you telling me I should bring the chief a Star and Obama biscuits?”  I nearly died laughing.  Biscuits are cookies here, and because Obama’s name is on everything, there are Obama biscuits everywhere.  They’re small wheat type cookies that taste little sweet and how I imagine dog food would taste.  We didn’t get the biscuits, but we bought a Star on the way and gave it to him, still in the plastic bag.  The chief knew before this greeting that I was here, and has been expecting me to come for a long time and seems very excited for me to get started.  He’s rather young—in his forties—and pretty easy-going.  He was wearing a yellow anti-malaria shirt and denim jeans.  I think we’ll get along just fine.

On the Road to Damanko

8/17/10

So this is it.  I am sitting here in my new house in Damanko.  Now the work begins for real.  I have hit the deep end of the water now.  It seems to me that training has been an act of removing a series of safety nets one by one until you’re finally left alone, standing on your own.  From what I have now observed and experienced, Peace Corps training creates a continuum for us new trainees to move along from “fresh off the boat” to “fully integrated.”  When I first arrived, I was enmeshed in a large group of people in my same situation—here for the same purpose, from the same country/culture, and similar walks of life.  Though we all came from different experiences and backgrounds, we all became comfortable in our shared backgrounds and sense of purpose that stood in stark contrast to our new surroundings.  Peace Corps kept us more or less isolated, restricted our activities on our own pretty severely, carefully monitored our food, provided for much of our transportation by private Peace Corps car, and made sure every place we stayed for any length of time was highly fortified for our protection.  And all around treated us real delicate-like.  At first it was a little aggravating, having been used to striking out and exploring things on my own, but they repeatedly told us it was for our safety, and for our comfort, so as not to overwhelm us too soon and increase somebody’s risk of terminating early.  After a time of careful isolation, time used to get to know our fellow American and develop bonds we would use for the next two years, Peace Corps gave us a little language skill and sent us out in groups to travel to a current volunteer’s site as our first introduction to life and operation in Ghana.  Upon return we were placed into homestays which incurred a higher degree of culture shock than previously encountered, but was still closely monitored by Peace Corps.  The homes are carefully chosen, the family members instructed on how to properly cook for their new American children, and language and cultural facilitators placed in the villages themselves, should there be any friction between the American, their homestay family, and the integration into Ghanaian life.  Still, I was not far from my fellow volunteers, my trainers, or other support staff and still spent most of my day with these people while we were receiving the necessary skills for the next two years.  After a time in homestay, getting used to living at a different standard, getting used to a different rhythm of life and family structure, but still having an escape in my own room and with my American counterparts, we were introduced to our assigned Ghanaian counterparts and given a chance to visit the place we would spend the next two years.  On my second opportunity traveling in Ghana, I was still not required to do it on my own, and was guided by people who have been navigating this scene their entire lives.  After site visit, there was technical training at a different village, more remote, more rural, more underdeveloped before going back to homestay and preparing for the official swearing-in.  Afterwards, when they have fully grown their new volunteers, Peace Corps stands at the door and waves good-bye, wishing you luck, and promising to be there at the most critical times, but otherwise will remain at an arm’s length to let you succeed and falter by yourself.  You’re welcome back anytime, but your bedroom will now be converted into the craft room.  And with that, they send us off to our sites.  As many of us were traveling the same direction—through the Volta Region—we could begin travel as a small group, and one by one as we got farther, people would drop off, making the group smaller and smaller.  I am one of the furthest away, so one of the last to get to site.  It has taken me two days, but even so, I arrived here with another new volunteer, my friend Nhial, who waited here until his counterparts in the next village could come pick him up signaling the real end of training.  As he left, I suddenly had this vision of my last safety net being surreptitiously pulled away.  It reminded me of one single moment after moving to college for the first time.  When my parents walked out of my dorm after moving me in, the transition to adulthood hit me for real.  I was on my own now and completely responsible for everything I do and don’t do.  One safety net right after the other has been peeled away as training has progressed, until now I am here in Damanko, by myself, and starting from nearly scratch.  I know some language, and know some of what to expect; I have a good APCD (Peace Corps acronym meaning Boss) and good counterparts I can rely on.  These are safety nets I still have, they are just further below me and I have farther to fall before I hit them.  I am not too overwhelmed by the newness of it all anymore, but it is still jarring to finally be the only American anywhere around and without the comfort of time and experience in a place.  It’s definitely a challenge that I want to look back on and be proud I conquered.  It just takes time.

Anyway, that said, I have a long, interesting, and exciting road ahead of me.  I have a great house for starters.  Housing is provided by the communities that request volunteers and have to meet certain Peace Corps requirements, like: a concrete or plaster structure with two locked rooms, exclusive latrine and bath room, and a place to cook.  My house is my own little Fortress of Solitude.  I am quite amazed at its presence and functionality.  I have my own small compound, which can be closed off with a locked door, and that, in turn, is surrounded by a plastered wall with a closeable and lockable gate.  I have two large rooms, one for sitting and one for sleeping, my own latrine and bath room, and a kitchen room with a storage room.  I am the fourth generation Peace Corps Volunteer to be here, so I have the benefit of piggy-backing on previous volunteers’ accumulations.  It’s quite the Peace Corps jackpot really.  Others I know that are at brand new sites have only the rooms and the bed and must otherwise acquire their household needs (which PC does give us money for).  This means I have furniture, a furnished kitchen with propane to cook with (which is proving a task to get currently since there is an apparent nationwide shortage at the moment), even drapes and flooring.  In the middle of my compound is a vine that reaches up to the roof and provides a nice canopy in the small courtyard.  I’ve called it my White Tree of Gondor.  My house sits on the edge of the market space, a space which every six days is overflowing with people, merchandise, meanderers, loud voices, vehicles, livestock—the chaotic bustle life which comes like a wave and splashes against my wall, flowing around the sides of it like a tide.  However, once past that gate, the world washes away (well, except for the noise), and I have a respite from the stares we PCVs refer to as “being in the fishbowl.”  This is a rare privilege for a PCV, and I hope that the temptation of hiding that the house offers does not impede my work or my integration.  I go out in short spurts at time, allowing myself to take it slow, because who says I shouldn’t?  I go out once or twice to buy food for me—and the cat. 

Damanko sits nestled in the curve of the River Oti that feeds into Lake Volta.  Its main social center is marked by a two story green mosque next to a filling station.  Throughout the day, the call to prayer rings out above the chatter and clatter and hubbub of life in the town.  Behind the mosque is a large open space surrounded by small enterprise sheds making small businesses.  This space holds the Damanko market every six days, but it is so large that it snakes along through improvised alleyways and into a different market space behind with shelters make of rudimentary logs and thatch.  The food sellers tend to be in the open, laying their produce on burlap sacks separating them from the dirt covered ground.  They sell tomatoes, oranges, garden eggs (which taste a lot like eggplant), hot peppe (not pepper, but “pep-pay” as it is locally pronounced), brofut (fried cornbread balls—yum), seeds, beans, fish, okra, onions, and some other things.  The back space is left for clothes and cloth sellers and other ready-made products. 

I have been amusing myself the last week or so by walking all over.  I walk to the large steel bridge that crosses the river and watch the men go out in their long fishing boats, paddling along and setting their nets, their silhouettes dark against the bright river.  I’ve walked to the clinic which is just behind the many school buildings which are empty and quietly peaceful while the students are still on vacation.  The clinic sits out in the bush outside the hubbub of town with a beautiful view of the valley.  It beautiful and quiet place to heal, I think.  Right next to my house in the market square is Grace’s hair salon.  It is only a room with chairs, hair products, and a couple of mirrors.  I sit with her while she does women’s hair trying to coax her 13 month old daughter to like me.  Connected to my house is another small building which holds a sewing school.  In Ghana, if you don’t buy Western clothes, you buy yards of cloth and take it to a seamstress or a tailor who will sew a dress or shirts and trousers for you.  This is a trade many men and women participate in, and next door to me is a government run school.  It’s very informal and the teacher and I get on really well.  The girls there enjoy helping me brush up on my language skills.  I watch the teacher sew men’s trousers.  Man, I never realized how complicated they are.  Sheesh.  Now that I’ve been here a little while, the people who were friends with the previous volunteers (a married couple from Ohio who left a year ago) have started to stop by and make themselves known.  Young Joseph comes by in the afternoons and though he’s only 13, I think he knows everything about the plants around here.  Rebecca comes to sell me bread.  She is my “tea bread” hook up, and I’m happy for it.  She’s really smiley and happy and I liked her immediately.  The bread she sells pays for her school fees (you have to pay to attend high school in Ghana) and hopes to go to nursing school afterwards.

So slowly I am settling in and beginning the slow process of integrating.  Kofi and I finally got the leaks fixed in the roof and now I can begin to organize my things.  If only I could get that darn propane so I can cook something.

Just.....water

8/10/10

Water/nsuo/nnyun/aqua/wasser

There we are.  “Water” in every language I know.  English/Twi/Likpakpaln/Spanish/German.  We all know so much relies on this single element; so much of life and activity revolves around this simple liquid.  Take a moment and think about your daily interactions with water.  No, really.  Do it.  I’m not talking about how much your body relies on it, but how you interact with water.  How do you use it?  How do you think about it?  When do you think about it?  What do you use it for?  How much do you use?  Do you use different kinds of water for different tasks?  Are there different kinds of water?  Do you like the way it tastes, feels?  Is it comforting, refreshing, dangerous?  How do you use water to interact with other people?  Do you?  Where does it come from before your body touches it?  Where does it go when you are finished with it?  How does it get from one place to the other?  How do we as a civilization get it from one place to the other?  How does it get to your house?  My host father asked how we get water up to the top of very tall buildings.  Do you know?

In a place where your water does not come from the lift of a tap or the twist of a knob, your interactions with water completely change.  They have to.  Water now becomes a major task to acquire and use.  As a Health/Water and Sanitation volunteer, water (like shit in the previous post) becomes a major part of my work.  For weeks I have been learning about the different water systems in place and observing the different interactions around water.  The infrastructure for running water does not yet exist for all places in Ghana, in fact, it is rare to have a house with running water.  Most households possess several large water barrels where the water is stored and accessed.  Here, in Anyinasin, there are three sources of water—the rain, the river (more like a large stream), and the borehole.  Each is collected at different times and used for different tasks and thought of differently.  When it rains (which it hasn’t done very much recently), the barrels are placed in strategic areas in the compound where the water runs off the roof.  It is fairly clean if you allow the water to run off for five or ten minutes to let the rain wash off all the dust, dirt, and lizard poop.  And…rain water is free.  Collecting from the river is also free, and you can guess how clean and healthy that can be to use.  Most people will also tell you it has a different taste from the other waters, and is usually preferred.  “It tastes sweet.”  Borehole water is a different matter.  A borehole is essentially a simple mechanized well.  Hand-dug wells still exist in Ghana, but many have been upgraded to boreholes.  A hole is drilled deep into the earth where the ground water is clear and (mostly) clean.  The top of the hole has a metal hand pump that must be, well, pumped any time one wants to access the water.  Collecting water from the boreholes tend to cost money because there has to be a fund for when parts break (which they inevitably do) and someone has to be paid to fix it.  Development agencies have finally realized that they can’t just come in and build boreholes and expect people to use them and upkeep them without education and funds.  (Okay really, I’m going to write that post on sustainability one of these days.)  Especially when the taste of river water is preferred. 
We use this water for everything.  There are three cups in the house that are used for dipping into the barrel to get water.  We use these to fill bucket for bathing and laundry, for cooking, for hand washing, and whatever else comes up.  The river water will be used mostly for dishwashing or other kinds of washing, or my host father may bathe with it after he comes back from the farm.  Water is moved from pumps to buckets, to barrels, to buckets, to dishes, to body, to clothes, etc.  It’s amazing how much less water everything takes.  I really don’t need more than a bucket of water to get clean, even if I wash my hair.  Clothes don’t need nearly the amount of water that machines use either.  In fact, I think my host mother has been able to get some of my clothes cleaner than they have been in many many machine washes.  It’s almost like the further and further we get from the source and act of acquiring such basic essentials, the more we forget how little of it we actually need.

Okay, so I’ve briefly described the sources we can get water from when we need it, so how do we get it, and what do we do after we get it?  So, the water barrels in my host family’s house are getting low.  My little sisters get a couple of buckets and head to either the river or the borehole.  Usually the river water is contained in one barrel and filled first because the river is closer.  I, however, am not allowed (nor do I want to) ever use the river water, (both as a HWS volunteer and by Peace Corps itself), so the barrel by my room and usually another one, is only for borehole water.   If the barrels are low, this is usually the first task of the morning.  So, I go with Prinsla and Adua (ages 8 and 10 respectively) to the borehole with the buckets.  It’s a short walk, really, down the path and across the road to the borehole pump.  Morning is water collection time, so there are already several women and children there, with the occasional man or boy.  Everyone is standing around waiting their turn amidst the strewn buckets and containers, the queue somehow worked out in their heads.  The pump has a large pipe faucet and the pump is a lever that is pulled up and down like one of those railroad carts from old Mickey Mouse cartoons.  One container is left underneath the faucet as a catch all as other containers are filled and/or poured into other containers.  When your bucket is filled, you put a small rolled cloth on your head arranged like a bird’s nest and with the help of another person, the bucket goes on your head and off you go.  Once you have walked back to the house to empty the bucket into the waiting barrel, you stand a foot or less away from it, and without taking the bucket from your head, bend your body in such a way that you pour the water from the bucket on your head into the barrel.  I have watched Adua do this many times without spilling a drop.

So, last week, I woke up to water being poured in the barrel.  I got up and got dressed and walked out of my room as the girls were ready to go for another round.  On a whim, I thought—I’ll go too.  And though it struck them as weird, they weren’t about to turn it down.  I wasn’t going to collect any, well, because I didn’t want to spill it on the way back, so I amused them and the rest of the town by trying to balance the empty bucket on my head.  Several mornings ago, the same scenario occurred, but this time, my host mother had to go too because we needed more water than just what the girls could carry.  So, with her encouragement and the amusement of the other women at the borehole, I risked the spillage.  Mame filled the bucket and, after a couple tries, placed it on my head.  I had a death grip on the rim of the bucket so I didn’t have to worry about balancing and with my old marching band skills called out of long retirement to a completely unforeseen situation, only managed to spill half of it down the front of me on the ten minute walk back.  Then, the best part of all, I get to pour it into the barrel from the top of my head.  Well, needless to say, I did spill a drop—several million in fact.  But at least most of the bucket got in the barrel!