A few (moving) visuals

Here are a few videos and a picture from my home, my village, the road between my village and Saboba after a storm, and the bus from Bimbilla to Yendi. Enjoy.

Seeing People for People

Preconceptions can be hard to shake. They are idealized images of the way the world should be, formed in ignorance, when reality is still shrouded; yet they are given so much weight in our consciousness. When our preconceptions come up against truth, it is often difficult to accept that truth and reject false though long and deeply held belief. Sometimes, even after seeing what is plain to those with an open mind, we reject it in favour of our previous notions. It couldn’t be that we were wrong all that time; we must simply be looking in the wrong place. We search for vindication of our beliefs, throwing away that which does not fit and including that which lends support. Slowly, we build up a fortress of falsehood from scraps of truth, blinded to fact by a more comfortable fiction.

Or, in the face of contradiction with our preconceptions, we change our beliefs. A radical notion, perhaps, but one that should be embraced a little more tightly if our thinking and discourse are to move closer to reality. Even if changing beliefs is something of a painful process.

A little context may be required for this line of thought. I recently spent four days in a  village about half an hour from Saboba, doing nothing but living with the people. The purpose of my visit was to see how poor rural farmers live and work, to experience some of what they experience, and in doing so to grasp the reality of the people we’re trying to help. The hypothesis is that by such an experience we will better know their problems, their opportunities, and their thoughts, and thus be in a more suitable position to design our interventions. Straightforward enough, except when what I see in the village collides full force with my ideas of what a poor farmer should be like. Luckily, village life is slow; there’s lots of time to think.

As mentioned before in this space, EWB promotes a certain type of villager: the driven, entrepreneurial farmer, always looking for ways to do better. People fitting that description exist, of course, it’s not fantasy; it’s simply a fortress built on scraps of truth. Whether or not it’s a sensible messaging tactic is an argument for another day; what it doesn’t do is prepare volunteers for meeting poverty face-to-face. The village I visited was not full of people pushing to improve their condition, working twelve hour days to feed their families and pay school fees. In this village the necessary work was done but not more, with the remainder of the men’s time devoted to leisure. Moving slowly from day to day, sitting around, listening to the radio, complaining to the white man about how they struggle; never once did they seem to be grasping at a better future. Even more depressing was my sense that they would never change, that they would never attempt to exploit their opportunities. People living without change and without initiative: not exactly the image expounded by my organization.

At first I rebelled against what I was seeing, trying to convince myself that the community was an anomaly sitting amidst a sea of motivated, hard-working villages. I thought that perhaps I had chosen the wrong village for my stay, that it was giving me an inaccurate perception of village life. But I soon realized that looking for the “perfect” poor person was not the point of this experience; the point was to learn how life actually works for the people we are working with. Whether or not it fit with what I wanted to see, these are the lives of our beneficiaries and we need to know their realities if we are to create profitable change. I needed to stop looking and simply see what was in front of me.

What I saw wasn’t the most motivating. I want to work with people that are pressing for something better every day, as those people seem the most deserving and will give the best return on our investment. But that’s not most people, in Ghana, Canada, or anywhere else. Most people just get by, without pouring themselves into work or being innovative. Yet the farmers in the village are still poor, regardless of their level of ingenuity or work ethic, and they could still use our help. These are the rural poor, our beneficiaries; these are the people we need to learn about to make ourselves effective. We can’t see only the ideal just as we can’t focus solely on the worst if we are going to design programs that make sense for most farmers. Programs that have ambitions of scale and impact have to be applicable to the average farmer, the farmer that isn’t entrepreneurial, that isn’t willing to sacrifice everything else for a few more stalks of maize. It’s that farmer we need to know.

I could have seen only what I wanted to see in the village and so maintained my inaccurate picture of village life, and I nearly went down that path. I almost rejected everything that didn’t fit, and almost thought about all the other villages I could have visited where surely people were making a go of things. I almost let my preconceived notions of what a poor farmer should be like blind me to the facts of how people really live. But if we are to do our work properly, we must see what’s there, see people for who they are rather than for who we want them to be. Let us cast off our ignorance, and so better serve.

Duncan

It’s not easy oh…

The time is winding down rather quickly, my days left in the office few, and in the field even fewer. Due to my tendency to procrastinate, the last couple weeks of my placement are quite packed with workshops, report-writing, and farming; I need to finish everything I can and load in as many experiences as possible before the flight home. I will leave Saboba on the 21st of August, early in the morning, and begin the ten-day odyssey to Canada. Soon, I will not be able to get anything else done, and I will have to be content with what I have achieved. And I will have to ask myself that most difficult of questions: did I really do anything worth doing here? Did I have any impact?

Impact is the watchword of EWB: we always strive, or at least strive to strive, for impact. For us, having impact means helping people in poverty, having a positive influence on the lives of poor people. In each of our activities, no matter overseas or in Canada, our aim is always the same. If we are not having impact through our actions, then we need to change our actions; if we are not having impact as an organization, then we need to change our organization. So it’s important, when all is said and done, to look back and assess whether you actually achieved anything for poor people. Because if you didn’t, something needs to change.

It is commonly recognized in EWB and across most development organizations that it’s difficult to have real impact when you are working overseas for just three months (which is the total amount of time I will have spent in Saboba). You just start to get your feet wet, gain a little confidence, and then you pack your bags and say goodbye. Every Junior Fellow knows this, and each one, before she goes overseas, thinks that she will be the one to break it, that she will have impact even though her colleagues and her predecessors failed or will fail. But then a funny thing happens: she lands in country, settles in, begins work, and realizes the mountainous barriers before her. The differences in communication and culture, the low capacity of her co-workers, and the ridiculous organizational structures rear their heads, and she is thrown back. She attempts to learn a new job, pick up a new culture, fit in in a new home, and stop missing friends and family in Canada, and she tries to do this all at once. It’s not easy, oh.

Once things finally settle down and she starts to figure it out, it’s back to Canada to tell everyone about Africa and development. And she wonders if there was any point in her little trip, whether all the money, sweat and tears was spent for any purpose. Most of all, whether any poor people are better off for her struggles. Often, the answer has to be no, or at least probably not, if our volunteer is going to honest with herself. Four months, and what gained? That can be hard to take.

Yet there is a little hope for our tortured JF. I said that EWB strives for impact, and that if we are not having it, we change what we are doing. So, if we don’t think the JF program is having impact overseas, why does it continue? It continues because we believe that spending four months living and working with people in poverty changes people. How can you spend that amount of time here and remain blind to poverty, live as you did before without attempting to do anything about the inequality in our world? It may sound a little absurd, but EWB is trying to create “development champions”, people who will come back to Canada, share their experiences, connect Canadians to Africans, and continue to work for the poor for as long as they live. That’s the rationale behind the JF program, and that’s how we hope to have impact, because three months just isn’t long enough. As difficult as it is to accept that.

Duncan

Simple Practicality

Canadians aren’t always so practical. We live with so many rules and hang ups that getting things done isn’t always easy. Obstructions built by us into our social codes make simple things difficult, even though the logic behind such rules is often hazy at best. You don’t quite realize how constricting parts of our society are until you live elsewhere, in a place with a different set of rules and mores. It’s a lot easier to see what’s what from the outside, and question why it’s so.

Take getting from place to place. In Canada, I would have to find formal means. I would have to buy a ticket, go to a station and wait for my appointed vehicle to come at the appointed time, taking my appointed seat. In Ghana, on the other hand, I can simply stand at the side of the road and flag down anything that comes by, whether it be a bus, pick-up truck or cargo trailer. They stop, tell me where they’re going, and if our destinations match I jump in the back. Sometimes they ask for a few dollars for the trip, sometimes not. We’re both going to the same place, so why not take a few passengers and make a little pocket change? Yet hitchhiking in Canada is a practice abhorred by decent people, who think formal methods of travel are the only ones possible, despite the inconvenience.

Or look at what would happen if the motorbike ran out of fuel on the highway. In Ghana, I would flag down a vehicle, pay a few dollars and siphon off a little fuel. They get money and I get fuel, and everyone’s happy. Siphoning fuel is another activity generally seen in Canada with disdain, and I doubt very much I would be successful bartering for fuel at the roadside in Manitoba. I for one can’t see any reason why this should be the case.

I’m not going to argue the Ghanaians are particularly practical either, especially given the institutionalized stupidity and inefficiency I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing. And I know I’ve only provided a few examples to stir your thoughts. But every once in a while I see something that makes sense here, yet I know would be scorned by the masses in Canada. Such contempt would come not on account of reason but rather by way of our social rules, rules that should be a little better considered before being enforced so stringently.

Duncan