May 31st
“we are building a world on shadows”
I'm in an interesting place right now, mentally, physically... and the other physically. I guess I will start from the beginning of this interesting place.
So, Saturday myself, Gajin, Adam and Spencer met up in Wa. That would be the last time I got the chance to post. We had a pretty good time, chilling out and sharing stories about our placements and how they were going. We had had to split up at the internet cafe because the only internet jack working was mine, so they all went elsewhere and I stayed where I was. After I'd finished sending stuff and writing, I picked up and met up with them near downtown Wa where we went to a pretty nice guesthouse for the night. The TV had some really god awful sitcoms on, something called “wicked wicked games” that we started watching just because of how purely bad it was. I made it through the night okay, but at 6 in the morning some troubles started. I started having really bad diarrhea and had to go to the washroom around 6 times before everyone else had even woke up. I tried to drink some water to keep my hydration up, which turned out to be a mistake as the water as well as everything else I'd drank or eaten in the last 12 hours made a pretty epic return all over the floor of the washroom. It was around then the others decided it might be best if I went to a hospital. I updated Alanna on the situation, my supervisor in Burkina Faso, and got some advice on where to go in Wa to get help. We tried the clinic she had recommended first but it appeared to be closed, so we hit up the hospital in town instead. I thought it was actually a pretty nice facility all things considered. I had clean sheets on a bed in a ward shared with about 7 other beds which were variably occupied throughout the night. At various points they took people to a bed at the far end of the room and performed some minor operations. One poor kid had been bitten by a crocodile while fishing (/me recalls back to an event concerning several children swimming in crocodile infested water), so they had to stitch up his leg in all sorts of places and manners and goodness knows what. Basically my “rest” in the hospital was interrupted at various intervals by people screaming their lungs out in pain, it was fun stuff. For the most part i was probably the loudest patient there though, their tests said I'd contracted Malaria AND Typhoid. I was having epic diarrhea, stomach pains, dizziness, occasional muscle spasms, muscle soreness, all sorts of fun stuff. As I write this I've recovered from the malaria but still supposedly have Typhoid. I say supposedly because apparently the tests for these often get false positives, but I was retested in Bole when I got back 3 days later (Spent a total of 3-4 days in Wa, most of which was in the hospital). In Bole I took a place at the guest house my coach and I had stayed in the first night in town. It wasn't the cleanest place in the world but I needed the toilet (I learned the hard way that free range and diarrhea are not a good mix). I spent two nights there before Gajin got me a place at a brand new guest house right across from my office, so I wouldn't have to walk as far to get to work or to get water, as the petrol station was directly next door as well. It was pretty nice, had it had running water it would have been a lot nicer. The bed had something resembling satin sheets going on, there was a toilet and mirror and everything, air freshners in the washroom, etc. The running water thing was key though. Instead of relativiely clean clear water I was pouring water out of filthy jerry cans into a bucket. I let the particles settle to the bottom before washing but still had an interesting scent going on after my showers.In any case, while staying here I began having serious panic attacks. So I updated my coach and supervisor about this as well, at first I thought I'd be okayish, then they got worse, so I thought I'd be able to last 3 more weeks or so. Then they got really worse. So... now I'm in Tamale, less than a week later. They've put me up in a guest house with air conditioning, running water, a fan, and pretty comfy beds, and are making me eat western food. The staff seem to think that I am suffering from culture shock, which admittedly is very very similar to Generalized Anxiety Disorder so I can certainly understand. My feeling is that I probably do have culture shock but it is a minor to moderate contributor to whats going on, or perhaps was the initial catalyst. As the anxiety attacks get worse I've begun to feel depression and other fun and interesting emotions as well, so I'm honestly not sure what my future here is at the moment. I've decided to treat it as though it were culture shock and we will see what the result is, but I'm pretty far along in the process and pretty uncertain. Pretty scared too, to be honest. These are some of the worst anxiety attacks I've ever had, and I have yet to recover from the nervous breakdown I had last April. Having another nervous breakdown would probably be a bad plan. I do want to stay. I love the work I'm doing, I like Ghana, I like waking up to Muslim prayers in the morning and listening them lullaby me to sleep. The people here are absurdly friendly and easy to talk to and will watch your back even if you don't know them that well, which is pretty much the ideal kind of person for me and the sort of people I wish Canadians were. If I fully adapted to Ghana I honestly think I'd like it better than home.It's just that there are a lot of things getting. My OCD has been going wild here, especially as the anxiety attacks get worse. I just washed my hands 3 times, and had to wipe down my laptop cause there was like, a tiny smudge of dirt on the fingerpad. Other things have been getting to me as well. I dunno, i definitely have the mind for the work here but I'm not sure I have the mind for the world here, if that is sensible enough for people to understand. I'm planning on working with my coach Wayne to try and treat it as though it were purely culture shock and we'll see where we go from there. I dunno. I'm not getting my hopes up or anything just in case. Basically I'm a mental wreck right now and not improving, I had the worst panic attack pretty much ever this morning. One sign of a panic attack is that it feels like a heart attack, except this hasn't been something common to my panic attacks, only the absolute worst ones. This morning I felt like my heart was going to burst. There are some other issues going on but those are more private and definitely not something to share on a public blog =P Suffice it to say I'm not doing so hot.
On the plus side I did my first presentation for work. It went reasonably well I suppose, I'm not terribly good at presentations to begin with and this one was done while suffering from Typhoid and panic attacks, so yeah, interesting combination. In attendance were 3 AEA's out of the 5 in my district (one was sick, one was away), most of the district officers, and some members of the farmer group society from my village. They seemed for the most part really interested, one of the officers seemed to be falling asleep, I'm hoping that's not my fault lol. I was also having some crazy problems with my right ear, dunno what was going on there. Felt like the ear drum had burst or it had decompressed or something. In any case, it went well! I set my office up with all the forms and things my AEA's need too, so that they can at least start working on it while I'm gone. The farmer group wanted copies of the cards as well which was interesting. This is the same group I posted about last, that is having some finance troubles.
Soze, not much else been happening really, just been trying to deal with my mental disorders and physical diseases. Will see where things go from here, I'm just taking it as it comes as best as I can at the moment. That was a lot of “as”'s.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
May 23rd
see post below for basically last weeks events =P
just a story to share here really, other than this little update: I'm in Wa, which is in a different region of the country altogether, to use internet. its only 2 hours away from Bole or so. Staying the night here apparently because we didnt plan this internet usage trip out very well lol. I'm here with 3 other JFs though, Adam FK, Gajin and Spencer.
So the other day one of the executive members of a farmer group society in Mankoma came up to talk to me while i was chilling out in the shade (hydration is a really serious issue for me, to the point where im worried i may not be able to stay here for the whole placement, but im doing my best to deal with it). He had a pretty amazing story to tell. His farmers society has been doing pretty well for itself overall. it started out planting groundnuts because it had identified this as a potential market, but just this year had switched over to maize and casava because the groundnuts werent doing so well in the soil. theyre presently doing 12 acres or so total.
the stated goal of this society was actually really impressive to me. they formed specifically to fight poverty in their region and employ people in the village. and theyre really, really close to making a huge stride forward towards that goal. theyve just completed construction of a depot, where they can store their fertilizer and other goods, and next to that have nearly finished a processing center where they are going to put a grinder to process the food they produce. they plan to employ dozens of people from the village to work there, thereby reducing the unemployment rate and providing steady wages to many community members. except theyre short on cash by about 1000 cidis, from what i gather. they need some money to roof the building, and then a bit more to buy the processor. right now they only have 150 cidis in the bank, they had to pay 500 cidis to the district assembly to use a tractor to plow their land. basically, theres this amazing opportunity to employ and develop an entire village and be a shining example of success, and its 1 grand away from happening. otherwise its probably going to tank and just become another failed project. theyve invited me to their exec meeting tuesday, to offer my ideas and input on how they can raise this money. im not really sure what to say to them, they seem to think i have connections to big canadian NGOs but really im nobody here... its heartbreaking. i could probably personally fund the entire project myself, but thats not really helping in the way that matters. NGOs wouldnt really be helping either... so i dunno. im trying to think of local ways to raise that money, either through advertising deals or something else. ive also been told that if they owned their own tractor instead of renting it, theyd be farming 60 acres instead of 12, which is also ridiculous.
anyways, got some emails to send. shall post later hopefully =)
just a story to share here really, other than this little update: I'm in Wa, which is in a different region of the country altogether, to use internet. its only 2 hours away from Bole or so. Staying the night here apparently because we didnt plan this internet usage trip out very well lol. I'm here with 3 other JFs though, Adam FK, Gajin and Spencer.
So the other day one of the executive members of a farmer group society in Mankoma came up to talk to me while i was chilling out in the shade (hydration is a really serious issue for me, to the point where im worried i may not be able to stay here for the whole placement, but im doing my best to deal with it). He had a pretty amazing story to tell. His farmers society has been doing pretty well for itself overall. it started out planting groundnuts because it had identified this as a potential market, but just this year had switched over to maize and casava because the groundnuts werent doing so well in the soil. theyre presently doing 12 acres or so total.
the stated goal of this society was actually really impressive to me. they formed specifically to fight poverty in their region and employ people in the village. and theyre really, really close to making a huge stride forward towards that goal. theyve just completed construction of a depot, where they can store their fertilizer and other goods, and next to that have nearly finished a processing center where they are going to put a grinder to process the food they produce. they plan to employ dozens of people from the village to work there, thereby reducing the unemployment rate and providing steady wages to many community members. except theyre short on cash by about 1000 cidis, from what i gather. they need some money to roof the building, and then a bit more to buy the processor. right now they only have 150 cidis in the bank, they had to pay 500 cidis to the district assembly to use a tractor to plow their land. basically, theres this amazing opportunity to employ and develop an entire village and be a shining example of success, and its 1 grand away from happening. otherwise its probably going to tank and just become another failed project. theyve invited me to their exec meeting tuesday, to offer my ideas and input on how they can raise this money. im not really sure what to say to them, they seem to think i have connections to big canadian NGOs but really im nobody here... its heartbreaking. i could probably personally fund the entire project myself, but thats not really helping in the way that matters. NGOs wouldnt really be helping either... so i dunno. im trying to think of local ways to raise that money, either through advertising deals or something else. ive also been told that if they owned their own tractor instead of renting it, theyd be farming 60 acres instead of 12, which is also ridiculous.
anyways, got some emails to send. shall post later hopefully =)
couple days
big dump!
May 22nd
lordy!
So, I biked 32km on a crappy used bike from China. It wasn't as bad as i thought itd be, but it was bad. When i got back it took me 1.5 litres of water and a 20 minute rest to get from one end of town to the other. I made it though! I went on this bike ride with one of the agricultural extension agents (AEA) from my district office to visit a farmer group. We bike about 16km to this village, only to find that he hadnt told anyone he would be coming, so none of the farmers were even there. His two options were to either go another 8km (HA!) or backtrack to the other side of the village where there might be another farmer group, so i opted for that one. We wound up meeting a small number of people from a farmer group there. I learnt quite a bit from this short experience though so id say it was worth it. It was interesting seeing how people reacted to the AEA being there, to me being there, and how the AEA did his work. Im finding that everyone presumes im some important person from MoFA and not an outside westerner. Im not sure if that can be advantageous or a problem?
Another interesting discovery made later on: evidently AEA's are supposed to spend a week in the field learning rural livelihoods, just like me, except they have a policy requiring “suitable living conditions,” eg. A toilet, clean running water, electricity, etc.... so what you will never see in any rural setting ever. Its interesting that a requirment so detached from reality exists, because it suggests quite a bit about the mindset of the people creating these policies. Defintiely not people from the ground!
I just measured the inside temperature here, its 29 degrees at 9 in the morning. Thats after it having rained last night, so this is “cool” weather here. Itll probably hit 35 around midday if i had to guess. I here its 20 degrees in Ottawa. Just the idea of not feeling hot makes me homesick right now, lol.
May 18th
Okay, so...
I'm living in a small village called Mankoma, 10 km outside of Bole where I work. I'm at the MoFA office atm, this is actually the first time I've come here in 4-5 days I think. I came into town tuesday from Tamale, and met some of the staff then. I stayed the night in a guesthouse in Bole, kicked around town again a bit wednesday and then went off to Mankoma to greet my host family.
Mankoma has made me realize what a strange but beautiful collision of worlds Ghana really is. I'll often be sitting just outside of my room watching some goats or something wander by the door to the compound, or further down one of the neighbours pounding tz or foufou with a giant mortar and pestel, and then a big cargo truck will drive by, roaring past and forcing a couple goats off the paved road that runs through the center of town, blowing some dust behind it. Then perhaps your eye will catch the powerlines running parallel to the road, part of the Rural Electrification Project by the federal government, which have just been put up a couple days ago, adding a few new posts to the small number of trees dotting the village which people often use as shade during the hottest part of the day. Often someone has also built a small platform out of logs to sit on where it is shadey, or else added their own thatch roof to it to make small pools of shade where people may rest. The houses often have tin roofs, which make all sorts of racket when it rains but reflect the sun well when theyre new. Other houses are built with flat roofs, so sometimes at night that is where the family will sleep, climbing up using a ladder made out of a carved log. At night it becomes pitch black, as there is not yet electricity, but flashlights turn on all over town as the younger people go out to talk with friends, or stay in to study for school. In my house they bring me a carisine lantern for my room as well, so I have some general light. Many people here seem to have well-developed night vision, so that a flashlight isnt terribly necessary, but they may bring it anyways.
Mankoma seems to do well for itself in general, but its still definitely a rural village. There are three bore holes, which I've yet to see run dry, but they also have 3 rivers and a couple of small lakes nearby. The furthest river lies beyond their farms, a 5 mile/2 hour walk west. Beyond that river is Cote D'Ivoire, the country bordering Ghana on its western side. My family uses unclean water to do washing of dishes and things, but borehole water to cook, so one hopes it evens out to a healthy enough meal.
The people in Mankoma speak Gonja, although I'm picking up that there may be different dialects of Gonja even between Mankoma and Bole. Gajin has learned different greetings in Bole, and another westerner from the UN, David, seemed to be using what I thought was a greeting to mean “name.” I have a small notebook with about 8 pages of different Gonja words and the translations already, so I'm starting to pick up what people are saying sometimes. For the most part though I'm understanding Gonja by the tone of voice and body language accompanying words. Concern, anger, frustration, a joke, these are all easily identifiable because of Ghanain mannerisms. There are probably more nuanced things that I'm understanding but don't realize it yet.
My host family is fairly large. There is my host father/landlord, my host mother, and then their 2 sons and 2 daughters. One son and one daughter are very young, while the eldest daughter looks about 9-12, and their son says he is 19. He has been showing me around the village quite a lot. When I first arrived the MoFA director made it clear that I was there to learn about the life of a rural farmer, so everyone is interested in showing me their farm and their house, and what they do when they work.
I walked the 5 miles to my host family's farm, getting a pretty serious sunburn in the process. They grow so far away from town so that the goats and cows they keep in town do not graze on their crops. Why they dont just build a pen for these animals I haven't quite figured out. Well, the cows at least. The goats are handy sometimes, because they eat bloody well anything they find, so its like having a lawn-mower, vaccum cleaner and garbage man rolled into a tiny bleating animal. Baby goats are probably the most adorable thing in the world, just fyi. As you get out of town you come across these giant 7 foot high mounds, which at first you kind of think are just weird rock formations. But then you see the termites crawling all over them. I don't have any idea what would possess anything to go through what I'm sure is months of work to build these giant structures into the air, but I guess it works out for them. Apparently people sometimes dig into them to get female termites from the center of the colony, apparently this is to eat... so im watching what i get served now. After walking for nearly 2 hours we arrived at the farm, which was pretty large. Each able bodied member of the family keeps a plot to themselves, so there are 3 large fields of yams with a couple fields of tomatoes, casava, and beans being planted nearby. Yams are planted in a small mound, and they each grow a vine, so each mound needs a stick put in it, or otherwise a tree nearby that you can wrap several yam vines around. However, they kill the tree with fire so that it does not steal water or nutrients from their crop. So a yam field is an interesting thing to look at, as it is several yards of small mounds with sticks and stringy little vines coming out, occasionally dotted with a burnt dead tree. The farm also had three small grass huts, one which seemed to be purely for putting your bicycles and other things, and 2 others which seemed to be for storing yams and other produce.
In the village I ran into a woman from Japan, named Satomi. She has been in Mankoma for 4 years, so she speaks Gonja fluently. I had heard some various things about another “white” woman in the town, but it had never been clear to me that she was still there (nor that it was a she, there seems to be some confusion about that for some reason, i couldn't see why). If I remember she was staying in Mankoma while working for the UN in the surrounding area. Apparently she is leaving this week though, which is too bad because I'm sure I could've learned some interesting things from her.
Another place I stumbled upon in the village is where they make Pito. It is made out of maize that they let germinate a little bit before grinding up and boiling. It smells and tastes like a beer of some kind, but apparently isnt alcoholic, although I'm not sure I believe that bit! I've had only a little bit because it generally isn't sanitary where they make it, with flies buzzing all over the place. It's... intriguing. Not something I seek out to drink.
My host familys son also showed me a couple places on the other side of town, across the highway. What was most interesting from the perspective of my placement was his school, where there is a teacher that teaches agriculture and proper planting and harvesting techniques. I talked with him briefly, and I think I would like to work with him to develop a lesson plan for students about agriculture as a business, as a potential side project in my spare time. I talked with my coach and he seemed to be okay with it, so meh =P How they plant is a bit different than I've usually seen in Canada. First they make a big circular mound of dirt and sprinkle the seeds all over it, water it, and then cover it with some loose green foliage to keep the moisture in. They let the plants germinate a bit and sprout from this, and then transplant them all to rows to grow fully before harvesting. In Canada it seems we often just plant directly to rows no matter the size of plot, though I've seen some transplanting happen from a bed to smaller planting pots before.
Another very interesting place was this one house belonging to a family that has come from out of town. The father of the household has gone and come from the U.K. and been certified to sell a fertilizer that is apparently good for any crop, so he is busy trying to sell this to farmers in the surrounding area. At his house he also raises an absurd number of animals. There are goats, sheep, ducks (many many ducks), chickens, roosters, turkeys, dogs, a monkey, etc. The first time I went a bunch of ducks came up in a circle where I was sitting like I was their mother or something, it was awesome. I went a second time with my camera to take a video, which is pretty awesome too, I'll upload it the first chance I get.
Lastly, I had a long visit with the town blacksmith, Yusif. He's a pretty chill guy. I watched while he and his assistant made some knives, hammering the blades out of metal and then carving the handles out of wood. He has something seriously wrong with his foot, so he cant farm, instead he just sits under his grass hut all day working metal. He has offered to make me something, which would be a pretty awesome souvenir I think =)
It's been a bit difficult to adjust. I've basically gone from one extreme of living to another. No running water, no electricity, no toilet, no sink, no real bed either. I have a fairly large room, but its occupied by a mattress with a mosquito net over it and a wooden table which I've pretty much completely covered with various things that I need on a daily basis. My host mother brings me a small table to eat on as well. I finally got up the courage to take off the little cloth shed draped over it. Hopefully she will not be offended and just realize I don't need it. It's pretty much impossible to stop them from bringing me things I really don't need. Wherever I go a plastic lawn chair materializes. Sometimes its welcome, like when I had my nasty sunburn, sometimes its just silly. Sitting in a white lawn chair under a tree a few hundred yards from the nearest house, beside a borehole where women are washing clothes, thats just too much, even if it does hurt like hell to kneel or whatever.
Oh, I also saw my first praying mantis, which is an interesting story in and of itself. I was watching the women wash to figure out how its done, when suddenly something big falls from the tree to my left, big enough that i can hear it hit the ground. I look over and theres this praying mantis laying on its back, its wings (?!) stretch out by its side. Its still kind of alive but obviously if it just fell out of a tree it isnt doing so hot. I notice that one of its forearms seems to be missing but otherwise I can't see anything wrong with him. He's still twitching a little and looking around so I decide to keep watching to see what will happen. The boy washing in front of me picks it up to show me and asks if I'd like to hold it, which I politely refuse, so he puts it back down. Around then one of the ants thatd been crawling around comes up to check out the mantis. The mantis totally flips out and stabs the ant through the head with its working forearm before going back to its previous twitching and whatnot. The ant somehow survives this and starts trying to... unstab itself, I guess. At one point it actually pulled so hard it dragged the whole mantis with it a bit, but this seemed to wake the mantis up again, so he reeled the ant in and munched on it a bit, though the ant seemed to survive that too, except now it was half an ant and behind held against the chest of this almost-dead mantis, clutched between the two mandibles of the mantis which seemed to have finally kicked off and entered a fairly peaceful looking death pose, well fed I suppose. Around then I had to head out, but it was an interesting first encounter with a mantis.
I've also seen a crocodile, kind of. I guess its more accurate to say the crocodile saw me and I saw what it was looking at me with. One of the tiny lakes around Mankoma is apparently chalk full of crocodiles, so some of the kids took me to show me. Evidently this meant taking an en masse swim in crocodile infested waters, which I also politely declined. In any case, all i could really see was the eye poking out so it wasnt the most interesting thing in the world, though when they swim around you can see the water rippling. To my understanding they sometimes use that water to clean some of their clothes, which seems like a generally bad idea to me due to A) the aforementioned crocodiles and B) the brown, dirty, not-for-cleaning colour of the water. It would explain why so many people in Mankoma seem to be wearing dirty clothes all the time though, I guess it's cleanish. Maybe its also why so many clothes have holes in them?
Three pages 0.o time to stop, hehe. Oh! But I'll also just mention that my village has named me Kamyiti (ca mnyee tea), which is Gonja for patience =) which I think might be a womans name but meh, i make it look good.
May 22nd
lordy!
So, I biked 32km on a crappy used bike from China. It wasn't as bad as i thought itd be, but it was bad. When i got back it took me 1.5 litres of water and a 20 minute rest to get from one end of town to the other. I made it though! I went on this bike ride with one of the agricultural extension agents (AEA) from my district office to visit a farmer group. We bike about 16km to this village, only to find that he hadnt told anyone he would be coming, so none of the farmers were even there. His two options were to either go another 8km (HA!) or backtrack to the other side of the village where there might be another farmer group, so i opted for that one. We wound up meeting a small number of people from a farmer group there. I learnt quite a bit from this short experience though so id say it was worth it. It was interesting seeing how people reacted to the AEA being there, to me being there, and how the AEA did his work. Im finding that everyone presumes im some important person from MoFA and not an outside westerner. Im not sure if that can be advantageous or a problem?
Another interesting discovery made later on: evidently AEA's are supposed to spend a week in the field learning rural livelihoods, just like me, except they have a policy requiring “suitable living conditions,” eg. A toilet, clean running water, electricity, etc.... so what you will never see in any rural setting ever. Its interesting that a requirment so detached from reality exists, because it suggests quite a bit about the mindset of the people creating these policies. Defintiely not people from the ground!
I just measured the inside temperature here, its 29 degrees at 9 in the morning. Thats after it having rained last night, so this is “cool” weather here. Itll probably hit 35 around midday if i had to guess. I here its 20 degrees in Ottawa. Just the idea of not feeling hot makes me homesick right now, lol.
May 18th
Okay, so...
I'm living in a small village called Mankoma, 10 km outside of Bole where I work. I'm at the MoFA office atm, this is actually the first time I've come here in 4-5 days I think. I came into town tuesday from Tamale, and met some of the staff then. I stayed the night in a guesthouse in Bole, kicked around town again a bit wednesday and then went off to Mankoma to greet my host family.
Mankoma has made me realize what a strange but beautiful collision of worlds Ghana really is. I'll often be sitting just outside of my room watching some goats or something wander by the door to the compound, or further down one of the neighbours pounding tz or foufou with a giant mortar and pestel, and then a big cargo truck will drive by, roaring past and forcing a couple goats off the paved road that runs through the center of town, blowing some dust behind it. Then perhaps your eye will catch the powerlines running parallel to the road, part of the Rural Electrification Project by the federal government, which have just been put up a couple days ago, adding a few new posts to the small number of trees dotting the village which people often use as shade during the hottest part of the day. Often someone has also built a small platform out of logs to sit on where it is shadey, or else added their own thatch roof to it to make small pools of shade where people may rest. The houses often have tin roofs, which make all sorts of racket when it rains but reflect the sun well when theyre new. Other houses are built with flat roofs, so sometimes at night that is where the family will sleep, climbing up using a ladder made out of a carved log. At night it becomes pitch black, as there is not yet electricity, but flashlights turn on all over town as the younger people go out to talk with friends, or stay in to study for school. In my house they bring me a carisine lantern for my room as well, so I have some general light. Many people here seem to have well-developed night vision, so that a flashlight isnt terribly necessary, but they may bring it anyways.
Mankoma seems to do well for itself in general, but its still definitely a rural village. There are three bore holes, which I've yet to see run dry, but they also have 3 rivers and a couple of small lakes nearby. The furthest river lies beyond their farms, a 5 mile/2 hour walk west. Beyond that river is Cote D'Ivoire, the country bordering Ghana on its western side. My family uses unclean water to do washing of dishes and things, but borehole water to cook, so one hopes it evens out to a healthy enough meal.
The people in Mankoma speak Gonja, although I'm picking up that there may be different dialects of Gonja even between Mankoma and Bole. Gajin has learned different greetings in Bole, and another westerner from the UN, David, seemed to be using what I thought was a greeting to mean “name.” I have a small notebook with about 8 pages of different Gonja words and the translations already, so I'm starting to pick up what people are saying sometimes. For the most part though I'm understanding Gonja by the tone of voice and body language accompanying words. Concern, anger, frustration, a joke, these are all easily identifiable because of Ghanain mannerisms. There are probably more nuanced things that I'm understanding but don't realize it yet.
My host family is fairly large. There is my host father/landlord, my host mother, and then their 2 sons and 2 daughters. One son and one daughter are very young, while the eldest daughter looks about 9-12, and their son says he is 19. He has been showing me around the village quite a lot. When I first arrived the MoFA director made it clear that I was there to learn about the life of a rural farmer, so everyone is interested in showing me their farm and their house, and what they do when they work.
I walked the 5 miles to my host family's farm, getting a pretty serious sunburn in the process. They grow so far away from town so that the goats and cows they keep in town do not graze on their crops. Why they dont just build a pen for these animals I haven't quite figured out. Well, the cows at least. The goats are handy sometimes, because they eat bloody well anything they find, so its like having a lawn-mower, vaccum cleaner and garbage man rolled into a tiny bleating animal. Baby goats are probably the most adorable thing in the world, just fyi. As you get out of town you come across these giant 7 foot high mounds, which at first you kind of think are just weird rock formations. But then you see the termites crawling all over them. I don't have any idea what would possess anything to go through what I'm sure is months of work to build these giant structures into the air, but I guess it works out for them. Apparently people sometimes dig into them to get female termites from the center of the colony, apparently this is to eat... so im watching what i get served now. After walking for nearly 2 hours we arrived at the farm, which was pretty large. Each able bodied member of the family keeps a plot to themselves, so there are 3 large fields of yams with a couple fields of tomatoes, casava, and beans being planted nearby. Yams are planted in a small mound, and they each grow a vine, so each mound needs a stick put in it, or otherwise a tree nearby that you can wrap several yam vines around. However, they kill the tree with fire so that it does not steal water or nutrients from their crop. So a yam field is an interesting thing to look at, as it is several yards of small mounds with sticks and stringy little vines coming out, occasionally dotted with a burnt dead tree. The farm also had three small grass huts, one which seemed to be purely for putting your bicycles and other things, and 2 others which seemed to be for storing yams and other produce.
In the village I ran into a woman from Japan, named Satomi. She has been in Mankoma for 4 years, so she speaks Gonja fluently. I had heard some various things about another “white” woman in the town, but it had never been clear to me that she was still there (nor that it was a she, there seems to be some confusion about that for some reason, i couldn't see why). If I remember she was staying in Mankoma while working for the UN in the surrounding area. Apparently she is leaving this week though, which is too bad because I'm sure I could've learned some interesting things from her.
Another place I stumbled upon in the village is where they make Pito. It is made out of maize that they let germinate a little bit before grinding up and boiling. It smells and tastes like a beer of some kind, but apparently isnt alcoholic, although I'm not sure I believe that bit! I've had only a little bit because it generally isn't sanitary where they make it, with flies buzzing all over the place. It's... intriguing. Not something I seek out to drink.
My host familys son also showed me a couple places on the other side of town, across the highway. What was most interesting from the perspective of my placement was his school, where there is a teacher that teaches agriculture and proper planting and harvesting techniques. I talked with him briefly, and I think I would like to work with him to develop a lesson plan for students about agriculture as a business, as a potential side project in my spare time. I talked with my coach and he seemed to be okay with it, so meh =P How they plant is a bit different than I've usually seen in Canada. First they make a big circular mound of dirt and sprinkle the seeds all over it, water it, and then cover it with some loose green foliage to keep the moisture in. They let the plants germinate a bit and sprout from this, and then transplant them all to rows to grow fully before harvesting. In Canada it seems we often just plant directly to rows no matter the size of plot, though I've seen some transplanting happen from a bed to smaller planting pots before.
Another very interesting place was this one house belonging to a family that has come from out of town. The father of the household has gone and come from the U.K. and been certified to sell a fertilizer that is apparently good for any crop, so he is busy trying to sell this to farmers in the surrounding area. At his house he also raises an absurd number of animals. There are goats, sheep, ducks (many many ducks), chickens, roosters, turkeys, dogs, a monkey, etc. The first time I went a bunch of ducks came up in a circle where I was sitting like I was their mother or something, it was awesome. I went a second time with my camera to take a video, which is pretty awesome too, I'll upload it the first chance I get.
Lastly, I had a long visit with the town blacksmith, Yusif. He's a pretty chill guy. I watched while he and his assistant made some knives, hammering the blades out of metal and then carving the handles out of wood. He has something seriously wrong with his foot, so he cant farm, instead he just sits under his grass hut all day working metal. He has offered to make me something, which would be a pretty awesome souvenir I think =)
It's been a bit difficult to adjust. I've basically gone from one extreme of living to another. No running water, no electricity, no toilet, no sink, no real bed either. I have a fairly large room, but its occupied by a mattress with a mosquito net over it and a wooden table which I've pretty much completely covered with various things that I need on a daily basis. My host mother brings me a small table to eat on as well. I finally got up the courage to take off the little cloth shed draped over it. Hopefully she will not be offended and just realize I don't need it. It's pretty much impossible to stop them from bringing me things I really don't need. Wherever I go a plastic lawn chair materializes. Sometimes its welcome, like when I had my nasty sunburn, sometimes its just silly. Sitting in a white lawn chair under a tree a few hundred yards from the nearest house, beside a borehole where women are washing clothes, thats just too much, even if it does hurt like hell to kneel or whatever.
Oh, I also saw my first praying mantis, which is an interesting story in and of itself. I was watching the women wash to figure out how its done, when suddenly something big falls from the tree to my left, big enough that i can hear it hit the ground. I look over and theres this praying mantis laying on its back, its wings (?!) stretch out by its side. Its still kind of alive but obviously if it just fell out of a tree it isnt doing so hot. I notice that one of its forearms seems to be missing but otherwise I can't see anything wrong with him. He's still twitching a little and looking around so I decide to keep watching to see what will happen. The boy washing in front of me picks it up to show me and asks if I'd like to hold it, which I politely refuse, so he puts it back down. Around then one of the ants thatd been crawling around comes up to check out the mantis. The mantis totally flips out and stabs the ant through the head with its working forearm before going back to its previous twitching and whatnot. The ant somehow survives this and starts trying to... unstab itself, I guess. At one point it actually pulled so hard it dragged the whole mantis with it a bit, but this seemed to wake the mantis up again, so he reeled the ant in and munched on it a bit, though the ant seemed to survive that too, except now it was half an ant and behind held against the chest of this almost-dead mantis, clutched between the two mandibles of the mantis which seemed to have finally kicked off and entered a fairly peaceful looking death pose, well fed I suppose. Around then I had to head out, but it was an interesting first encounter with a mantis.
I've also seen a crocodile, kind of. I guess its more accurate to say the crocodile saw me and I saw what it was looking at me with. One of the tiny lakes around Mankoma is apparently chalk full of crocodiles, so some of the kids took me to show me. Evidently this meant taking an en masse swim in crocodile infested waters, which I also politely declined. In any case, all i could really see was the eye poking out so it wasnt the most interesting thing in the world, though when they swim around you can see the water rippling. To my understanding they sometimes use that water to clean some of their clothes, which seems like a generally bad idea to me due to A) the aforementioned crocodiles and B) the brown, dirty, not-for-cleaning colour of the water. It would explain why so many people in Mankoma seem to be wearing dirty clothes all the time though, I guess it's cleanish. Maybe its also why so many clothes have holes in them?
Three pages 0.o time to stop, hehe. Oh! But I'll also just mention that my village has named me Kamyiti (ca mnyee tea), which is Gonja for patience =) which I think might be a womans name but meh, i make it look good.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
I'm in Tamale! I will be leaving for Bole Tuesday.
Getting here was quite the journey. We had to travel by bus from Accra to Tamale, which took 18 hours. 4 and a half of those hours were spent waiting, because our bus broke down after we'd passed Kumasi. That was pretty interesting in and of itself though. We all spent some time talking to the people on the bus with us. One of the better moments was sitting with this guy from Denver who was on the bus with us, him on a ukelele and me on a harmonica, doing a tiki hut style song while a little girl danced around us, imitating my harmonica playing.
The heat here is something else. I'm pretty much sweating the second I move. It's worse inside because the air is stagnant, you need a strong breeze to make a difference.
I've done some pretty quintessential African things already. Riding in the back of a pickup truck along a dusty road, piling 5 people into a cab, haggling with merchants on the street etc. It's an absolutely amazing experience. I could go on at length but I think I'm on a short time scale here =S I did buy my first cellphone though. I managed to drop it within 24 hours, thankfully theyre pretty resiliant. I'm sure my brother will send me an email making fun of me for that =P
Check in later!
-W
Getting here was quite the journey. We had to travel by bus from Accra to Tamale, which took 18 hours. 4 and a half of those hours were spent waiting, because our bus broke down after we'd passed Kumasi. That was pretty interesting in and of itself though. We all spent some time talking to the people on the bus with us. One of the better moments was sitting with this guy from Denver who was on the bus with us, him on a ukelele and me on a harmonica, doing a tiki hut style song while a little girl danced around us, imitating my harmonica playing.
The heat here is something else. I'm pretty much sweating the second I move. It's worse inside because the air is stagnant, you need a strong breeze to make a difference.
I've done some pretty quintessential African things already. Riding in the back of a pickup truck along a dusty road, piling 5 people into a cab, haggling with merchants on the street etc. It's an absolutely amazing experience. I could go on at length but I think I'm on a short time scale here =S I did buy my first cellphone though. I managed to drop it within 24 hours, thankfully theyre pretty resiliant. I'm sure my brother will send me an email making fun of me for that =P
Check in later!
-W
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
12 hours to departure
This is a pretty difficult period to put into words. I'll do my best.
How does one approach the idea of being transplanted from familiar, comfortable territory to what is for all intensive purposes a new world? a different order of life?
I'm pretty calm about it. I don't know why, but I've never gotten terribly excited about traveling, the act itself. Usually the fact that I went to Germany, or Greece, or France sank in after the event itself. I was in data collection mode for a few days, and then processed all of the information afterwards. in Ghana i think if i go into data-collection mode I'm going to burn out after the first month, because of how much work that would be to maintain. Instead i need to seriously *live* there, and figure out how to do that quickly. And this is significantly different than people I know who have moved to places like China or Japan or other places. I have a set goal and precisely 3 and a half months to do it in. There's no leeway, I can't take a leisurely pace to the macro-scale of analysis, I need to hit it hard and fast and understand it as quickly as possible so that I can have an impact.
That's what I want, but realistically that might not happen, and might not even be what needs to happen. Maybe that macro-scale analysis should wait like it always has till afterwards, and I should just focusing on gathering the information despite the difference in time. But again, I'd like to be more... aware that I'm in my placement, rather than just disassociated from my physical self for it. For that I think id need a clear understanding of the culture and everything before I did the hard work.
so its sort of a problem for me... id rather that i got 2 months to observe the culture and come to understand it first, and then dive into the work. instead im doing both at the same time. this is trouble for how my brain handles complex situations like this i think.
in any case, id like to think about something else...
where am i right now? who am i right now? what am i expecting?
im feeling ready academically speaking, as in we reviewed a lot of technical information that will come in really handy. but as for psychologically preparedness for traveling, i was in better shape at the start of the week. i seem to have an unconcious preparedness system in place for traveling, and coming to a giant city instead of hitting up a hot desert threw me off by a big margin.
im very eager and hopeful, but im remembering myself a bit. all my social science training is kicking in, slowly but surely, and im remembering what questions to ask and when and how. its tough recalling stuff from that long ago though. its also tough putting myself in the margin of space i want to be. so instead of being deliriously optimistic, i want to be practically realistic but hopeful. not quite there yet. thats sort of what my previous post was about. we were asked to write out our commitments to the people we were working for, i wrote 2, the first being an ideal and the second what i would probably actually do. i wrote the second because i realized the first was simply not going to happen.
i feel as though ive kind of wiped my mind of expectations, though im not terribly sure why. i think this was a concious decision to some degree, because i dont want to have so many preconceptions about what im getting into. rather i just want it to be as though im exiting one river and entering another, changing flows and finding my new rhythm with a new stream of life. expectations feel like theyd get in the way of this, as though id be expecting certain rocks in the river to direct me in certain directions, or as though im expecting bends in that river where they may be none. why go through that trouble when i can let the rest of the river steer me in the right way when i get there? it just means asking a lot more questions of a lot more people i think.
on a side note, i think my doxy is messing with my stomach in some unpleasant ways. not too terribly sure what to do about it, other than hope it tides over. its been a bit better the last day or 2 anyways. hopefully i wont have to switch.
How does one approach the idea of being transplanted from familiar, comfortable territory to what is for all intensive purposes a new world? a different order of life?
I'm pretty calm about it. I don't know why, but I've never gotten terribly excited about traveling, the act itself. Usually the fact that I went to Germany, or Greece, or France sank in after the event itself. I was in data collection mode for a few days, and then processed all of the information afterwards. in Ghana i think if i go into data-collection mode I'm going to burn out after the first month, because of how much work that would be to maintain. Instead i need to seriously *live* there, and figure out how to do that quickly. And this is significantly different than people I know who have moved to places like China or Japan or other places. I have a set goal and precisely 3 and a half months to do it in. There's no leeway, I can't take a leisurely pace to the macro-scale of analysis, I need to hit it hard and fast and understand it as quickly as possible so that I can have an impact.
That's what I want, but realistically that might not happen, and might not even be what needs to happen. Maybe that macro-scale analysis should wait like it always has till afterwards, and I should just focusing on gathering the information despite the difference in time. But again, I'd like to be more... aware that I'm in my placement, rather than just disassociated from my physical self for it. For that I think id need a clear understanding of the culture and everything before I did the hard work.
so its sort of a problem for me... id rather that i got 2 months to observe the culture and come to understand it first, and then dive into the work. instead im doing both at the same time. this is trouble for how my brain handles complex situations like this i think.
in any case, id like to think about something else...
where am i right now? who am i right now? what am i expecting?
im feeling ready academically speaking, as in we reviewed a lot of technical information that will come in really handy. but as for psychologically preparedness for traveling, i was in better shape at the start of the week. i seem to have an unconcious preparedness system in place for traveling, and coming to a giant city instead of hitting up a hot desert threw me off by a big margin.
im very eager and hopeful, but im remembering myself a bit. all my social science training is kicking in, slowly but surely, and im remembering what questions to ask and when and how. its tough recalling stuff from that long ago though. its also tough putting myself in the margin of space i want to be. so instead of being deliriously optimistic, i want to be practically realistic but hopeful. not quite there yet. thats sort of what my previous post was about. we were asked to write out our commitments to the people we were working for, i wrote 2, the first being an ideal and the second what i would probably actually do. i wrote the second because i realized the first was simply not going to happen.
i feel as though ive kind of wiped my mind of expectations, though im not terribly sure why. i think this was a concious decision to some degree, because i dont want to have so many preconceptions about what im getting into. rather i just want it to be as though im exiting one river and entering another, changing flows and finding my new rhythm with a new stream of life. expectations feel like theyd get in the way of this, as though id be expecting certain rocks in the river to direct me in certain directions, or as though im expecting bends in that river where they may be none. why go through that trouble when i can let the rest of the river steer me in the right way when i get there? it just means asking a lot more questions of a lot more people i think.
on a side note, i think my doxy is messing with my stomach in some unpleasant ways. not too terribly sure what to do about it, other than hope it tides over. its been a bit better the last day or 2 anyways. hopefully i wont have to switch.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Profound thoughts concerning commitments
I will make you reflect, think, consider your reality; your importance, your place in a larger world. I will make you hope things you have not thought to hope for, and make you believe the power to achieve these things is yours.
I will live life alongside you. cry, laugh, work and play. I will share your hopes and dreams, and let you know that I believe they can be real.
Truth:
Ideals are for people who want to end the world.
Tears are for people who want to make it better.
I will live life alongside you. cry, laugh, work and play. I will share your hopes and dreams, and let you know that I believe they can be real.
Truth:
Ideals are for people who want to end the world.
Tears are for people who want to make it better.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
May 3rd
I did my sector placement presentation today. This was basically the most stressful part of the week I think. A lot of people stayed up really late and got something like 45 minutes of sleep beforehand. I hadn't really finalized my presentation plan until a few minutes before I had to go up so it was just a wee bit sketch =P
My presentation was on organizing farmers groups. While I didn't quite get the full strength of my message across, I think it was a pretty solid learning experience. I'll give the low down on my actual presentation and than what happened.
A) So in my mind I broke down organizations into three categories:
1: Social Input: These are the things that group members bring with them when joining the group. So for instance, when organizing a group of rural farmers, you have various things to take into account; ethnicity, race, class, social status, prestige, age, religion, etc.
2: Organization: Basically the methods you use to organize your group. so whether your a diplomacy, tyranny, oligarchy, etc. or a cooperative, corporate, or unionized entity. also, does one delegate, volunteer, etc. roles, or even share them communially?
3: Linkages: those parts of your group that extend beyond its boundaries and attach to its important contemporaries - e.g. the market, collaborative institutions, other groups, etc.
B) When I went around talking to the three discussion groups, some interesting ideas came up. for instance;
1: the skills and physical resources people bring to a group alter their status in it and in society. so someone with a plow or a diploma of some kind may be given much more influence in the group.
There were probably more but I was in the process of entering a coma at the time.
In any case, the presentation made it pretty clear I need to make less presumptions about what people know and how they can think. A lot of people commented on how they had difficulty understanding what I was asking about because they couldnt understand it from a social context but more from a technical aspect, which is probably why they went to saying things like the physical capital individuals could bring to a group, so maybe they misinterpretted me and i in turn misinterpretted them, but I think people got the jist of what I was going for, in that there was definitely discussion about the thick myriad of social issues preventing a group from functioning smoothly. so for instance, is it better to have all men, all women, or a mix in your farmers group? this has various repercussions and implications depending on context, method, and goal, but also in inputs, organization, and linkages. an all male group has different inputs, a different thought process of organization, and a different priority of linkages. this is crucially important to people looking to work with farmers group in Ghana i think.
gotta head out for food =)
My presentation was on organizing farmers groups. While I didn't quite get the full strength of my message across, I think it was a pretty solid learning experience. I'll give the low down on my actual presentation and than what happened.
A) So in my mind I broke down organizations into three categories:
1: Social Input: These are the things that group members bring with them when joining the group. So for instance, when organizing a group of rural farmers, you have various things to take into account; ethnicity, race, class, social status, prestige, age, religion, etc.
2: Organization: Basically the methods you use to organize your group. so whether your a diplomacy, tyranny, oligarchy, etc. or a cooperative, corporate, or unionized entity. also, does one delegate, volunteer, etc. roles, or even share them communially?
3: Linkages: those parts of your group that extend beyond its boundaries and attach to its important contemporaries - e.g. the market, collaborative institutions, other groups, etc.
B) When I went around talking to the three discussion groups, some interesting ideas came up. for instance;
1: the skills and physical resources people bring to a group alter their status in it and in society. so someone with a plow or a diploma of some kind may be given much more influence in the group.
There were probably more but I was in the process of entering a coma at the time.
In any case, the presentation made it pretty clear I need to make less presumptions about what people know and how they can think. A lot of people commented on how they had difficulty understanding what I was asking about because they couldnt understand it from a social context but more from a technical aspect, which is probably why they went to saying things like the physical capital individuals could bring to a group, so maybe they misinterpretted me and i in turn misinterpretted them, but I think people got the jist of what I was going for, in that there was definitely discussion about the thick myriad of social issues preventing a group from functioning smoothly. so for instance, is it better to have all men, all women, or a mix in your farmers group? this has various repercussions and implications depending on context, method, and goal, but also in inputs, organization, and linkages. an all male group has different inputs, a different thought process of organization, and a different priority of linkages. this is crucially important to people looking to work with farmers group in Ghana i think.
gotta head out for food =)
Saturday, May 2, 2009
May 2
Learning for today was centered around a case study that took an intense look at a development project that was undertaken in Zambia to essentially change the primary crop of production in a village from maize to a more drought-resistant crop called Sorghum. We essentially broke down an entire market system and the development process that the project wanted to undertake.
One of the things that came up this time, that came up with a similar case study during JF day at conference, was what happened before and after the market went through a cycle. so in this case the development agency created a micro-market in their target region, giving a large number of farmers processing plants, machines, and seeds to get set on their product. there were a variety of other incentives as well. it didnt specify where these seeds were bought, or where the equipment was produced. after the first year the aid company left, leaving the market it had created to run itself. essentially the aid process had to have created a sustainable market cycle, where farmers create output, sell it in a market, and re-invest their funds into their projects and livelihood or potentially find other investment sources.
what i was most centered on personally were the after-shocks of this however, and the potential for unintended consequences.
although it was not a particular issue in this case in the time-scale at which we viewed it, a possible repercussion exists at the market level.
imagine there are two villages, each producing around the same quality and quantity of grain, and selling it to a common market. if an aid company came in and heavily invested development into one of these two villages, its quality and quantity would skyrocket above that of the other village, meaning it would be forced out of the market and village B would no longer have a market for its product: the people would lose their livelihoods in order to increase the livelihoods of their neighbours in the next village over.
similar processes could occur at the individual level. say for instance one farmer had a wonderful return on his crop, whereas other farmers did poorly because of a lack of experience. this single farmer would gain a larger share of the profit, increase in social class in the community, etc.
in either case, "development" has in fact contributed to economic disparity, and created a worse situation. similarly, there are ways around this; in the village case, government regulation limiting where a market can gain its resources (buying no more than 60% of its market from a single source for instance). likewise, a development agency might yield better long term results by making promotion of social responsbility a part of its project, so that if a farmer became more successful than his neighbours, rather than using his money to buy their land, they might invest in a school or agricultural training. effectively, im interested in knowing what sorts of macro effects micro actions can have. this is obviously difficult to ascertain, but would be indefinitely valuable.
I had other thoughts, but its 2 in the freakin morning. night!
One of the things that came up this time, that came up with a similar case study during JF day at conference, was what happened before and after the market went through a cycle. so in this case the development agency created a micro-market in their target region, giving a large number of farmers processing plants, machines, and seeds to get set on their product. there were a variety of other incentives as well. it didnt specify where these seeds were bought, or where the equipment was produced. after the first year the aid company left, leaving the market it had created to run itself. essentially the aid process had to have created a sustainable market cycle, where farmers create output, sell it in a market, and re-invest their funds into their projects and livelihood or potentially find other investment sources.
what i was most centered on personally were the after-shocks of this however, and the potential for unintended consequences.
although it was not a particular issue in this case in the time-scale at which we viewed it, a possible repercussion exists at the market level.
imagine there are two villages, each producing around the same quality and quantity of grain, and selling it to a common market. if an aid company came in and heavily invested development into one of these two villages, its quality and quantity would skyrocket above that of the other village, meaning it would be forced out of the market and village B would no longer have a market for its product: the people would lose their livelihoods in order to increase the livelihoods of their neighbours in the next village over.
similar processes could occur at the individual level. say for instance one farmer had a wonderful return on his crop, whereas other farmers did poorly because of a lack of experience. this single farmer would gain a larger share of the profit, increase in social class in the community, etc.
in either case, "development" has in fact contributed to economic disparity, and created a worse situation. similarly, there are ways around this; in the village case, government regulation limiting where a market can gain its resources (buying no more than 60% of its market from a single source for instance). likewise, a development agency might yield better long term results by making promotion of social responsbility a part of its project, so that if a farmer became more successful than his neighbours, rather than using his money to buy their land, they might invest in a school or agricultural training. effectively, im interested in knowing what sorts of macro effects micro actions can have. this is obviously difficult to ascertain, but would be indefinitely valuable.
I had other thoughts, but its 2 in the freakin morning. night!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
April 30th
For the Jfs: http://africansignals.com/
And now for the not-JF folk:
Firstly, sorry for not updating more regularly; school and what-not.
Secondly, I thought I'd do a quick run-down of what exactly it is I'm and with whom for those who don't quite know.
Engineers Without Borders is a charity organization that, while originally very engineering oriented, is now a very soft-skill based organization. I mean this in that it utilizes sociological practices and organizational skills over technical expertise of any engineering background. Granted, I have the urge to try and build a windmill in my spare time overseas. But that's probably something unique to me.
My placement is with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Actually, today we did a training on impact which definitely helped me get a clearer picture of what I'm doing. Previously the only picture I had was that I was training government workers to train farmers in a curriculum entitled “Agriculture as a Business.” The impact lesson put the final goal of this placement into focus for me though. I'd thought of what the final goal would be, namely that farmers would be taught to utilize their farm as a means of generating profit and improve their livelihoods, but I hadn't really identified this as a distinct point in space or time. Thus I was left trying to draw a line from my placement activities to an effected change that I hadn't really pinned down as my end goal because I was considering it too far away from my placement. I.E. I wasn't imaginging my placement being part of acheiving this, but rather part of starting this. Instead I'm very much feeling that I'm an integral part of this process now, and my placement will be drawing a clear line from point A (my feet hitting the ground) to point B (improved rural livelihoods).
There were quite a few other learnings today, but I'm a wee bit tight for time sadly. I will give a fuller update later this week!
-W
And now for the not-JF folk:
Firstly, sorry for not updating more regularly; school and what-not.
Secondly, I thought I'd do a quick run-down of what exactly it is I'm and with whom for those who don't quite know.
Engineers Without Borders is a charity organization that, while originally very engineering oriented, is now a very soft-skill based organization. I mean this in that it utilizes sociological practices and organizational skills over technical expertise of any engineering background. Granted, I have the urge to try and build a windmill in my spare time overseas. But that's probably something unique to me.
My placement is with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Actually, today we did a training on impact which definitely helped me get a clearer picture of what I'm doing. Previously the only picture I had was that I was training government workers to train farmers in a curriculum entitled “Agriculture as a Business.” The impact lesson put the final goal of this placement into focus for me though. I'd thought of what the final goal would be, namely that farmers would be taught to utilize their farm as a means of generating profit and improve their livelihoods, but I hadn't really identified this as a distinct point in space or time. Thus I was left trying to draw a line from my placement activities to an effected change that I hadn't really pinned down as my end goal because I was considering it too far away from my placement. I.E. I wasn't imaginging my placement being part of acheiving this, but rather part of starting this. Instead I'm very much feeling that I'm an integral part of this process now, and my placement will be drawing a clear line from point A (my feet hitting the ground) to point B (improved rural livelihoods).
There were quite a few other learnings today, but I'm a wee bit tight for time sadly. I will give a fuller update later this week!
-W
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Reflections and Practical Planning
I know of some folk who've been to Africa, but I doubt that part of their objective whilst there was to become as much like the people they were there to aid. It's going to be an odd feeling. My basic goal at that level is to become Warwick if Warwick were born in Ghana. What is that Warwick like? This seems intrinsically related to culture and the environmental pressures on personal growth. Clearly I can't overcome the biological ones though. It's interesting to think about how that might work out in the long run. My brain is predisposed to think in certain patterns by genome type, yet heavily modified by environment and experience. The cells work in a particular way because of my diet, because of the level of exercise I get, etc. If I change both of these drastically, not to mention put a much greater workload on parts of the brain that normally don't have much to do (for instance, the part of my brain that considers essential needs and the part concerned with emergency situations or handeling difficult issues are not fast-linked. I cannot make connections and plans concerning these issues as quickly as someone who faces famine on a regular day, or who has to plan a 45 minute walk to get water into their day). How will this affect my work capacity in other areas? Will it be a temporary drain on mental resources for short periods or fundamentally change my brain structure as it reorganizes itself to deal with a new reality? If so, how will this affect my work capability and effectiveness? How can I maintain quality and efficiency? Should I be altering my standards of what quality and efficiency even mean?
Complicated questions with no simple answer! Likely, as usual, a little bit of yes and no to all. I am certain this experience is going to dramatically and permanently affect my cognitive processes in particular ways. How I perceive and articulate intellectual theories and issues concerning poverty, development, politics, etc. will be fundamentally affected I'm sure. But what about simple things, like how I perceive and articulate hunger? It's easy to say things like "There won't be grocery stores, you will not be in a consumer society any longer and thus you must prepare for a greater level of scarcity and fewer choices." But this has real repercussions for you actual cognitive capacities beyond having to just think about food more. Firstly I am putting resources towards planning on food that previously would've been expended on other issues. Maybe this won't matter so much, since I will be cutting out a lot of downtime for my brain in the western context (no TV, less internet, etc etc.). But then theres the bigger picture: Thinking like this will mean I am literally re-wiring my brain over the long term. Your brain adapts to circumstances by developing new neural connections. Thus if I make it a habit of thinking about food over Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart every day, the neurons responsible for processing that information efficiently will alter their patterns to process the newer information efficiently instead. And this does not affect just those single issues! Firstly theres the obvious statement that I do not have Stephen Colbert neurons, but rather a matrix of neurons dealing with information input, parsing, memory storage, comprehension, and linking to other issues. So any alteration to individual inputs in fact affects an entire cognitive system. Secondly, these systems are not discrete - memory is linked to hearing, which is linked to linking, etc. They all form a unitary web. Thus changing a particular system means the overall input into this web will vary. All of this is to say that my neural connections are going to be doing some very interesting things, all of which will be directly related to my overall feelings. I'll be rather displeased during those processes where neurons are disconnecting and re-associating, and happy when my neural web has maintained phases of stability. On top of this it will be fundamentally changing me as an individual. This will of course have direct affects on my ability to function. How that will play out, I haven't a clue though. Hopefully well! /rant.
Another major issue is my actual placement. The placement lists my location as blank. This is somewhat disconcerting. I take it to mean I will be traveling. From what I gather my objective whilst over there is to teach people how to teach, and to some extent influence what they teach. So I'm going to be taught how to teach people how to teach. My gray matter rebels against that kind of sentance structure, but its what's going down. It's surprising what skill sets related to this someone from our society already possesses though. I've a feeling the training will be more about realizing things we already know. Simple things like the distinctions between learning styles (auditory, visual, etc.). I'm tempted to save some PDF's on learning style studies to my laptop as a resource, it might come in handy. I'm also considering putting together my conception of how a learning plan designed to attune people to how other people function in a learning environment, while simultaneously attempting to alter that learning environment to bridge the gap between gender inequalities, socio-economic inequalities, etc. So much to think about! But it will be worth the effort to do.
Complicated questions with no simple answer! Likely, as usual, a little bit of yes and no to all. I am certain this experience is going to dramatically and permanently affect my cognitive processes in particular ways. How I perceive and articulate intellectual theories and issues concerning poverty, development, politics, etc. will be fundamentally affected I'm sure. But what about simple things, like how I perceive and articulate hunger? It's easy to say things like "There won't be grocery stores, you will not be in a consumer society any longer and thus you must prepare for a greater level of scarcity and fewer choices." But this has real repercussions for you actual cognitive capacities beyond having to just think about food more. Firstly I am putting resources towards planning on food that previously would've been expended on other issues. Maybe this won't matter so much, since I will be cutting out a lot of downtime for my brain in the western context (no TV, less internet, etc etc.). But then theres the bigger picture: Thinking like this will mean I am literally re-wiring my brain over the long term. Your brain adapts to circumstances by developing new neural connections. Thus if I make it a habit of thinking about food over Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart every day, the neurons responsible for processing that information efficiently will alter their patterns to process the newer information efficiently instead. And this does not affect just those single issues! Firstly theres the obvious statement that I do not have Stephen Colbert neurons, but rather a matrix of neurons dealing with information input, parsing, memory storage, comprehension, and linking to other issues. So any alteration to individual inputs in fact affects an entire cognitive system. Secondly, these systems are not discrete - memory is linked to hearing, which is linked to linking, etc. They all form a unitary web. Thus changing a particular system means the overall input into this web will vary. All of this is to say that my neural connections are going to be doing some very interesting things, all of which will be directly related to my overall feelings. I'll be rather displeased during those processes where neurons are disconnecting and re-associating, and happy when my neural web has maintained phases of stability. On top of this it will be fundamentally changing me as an individual. This will of course have direct affects on my ability to function. How that will play out, I haven't a clue though. Hopefully well! /rant.
Another major issue is my actual placement. The placement lists my location as blank. This is somewhat disconcerting. I take it to mean I will be traveling. From what I gather my objective whilst over there is to teach people how to teach, and to some extent influence what they teach. So I'm going to be taught how to teach people how to teach. My gray matter rebels against that kind of sentance structure, but its what's going down. It's surprising what skill sets related to this someone from our society already possesses though. I've a feeling the training will be more about realizing things we already know. Simple things like the distinctions between learning styles (auditory, visual, etc.). I'm tempted to save some PDF's on learning style studies to my laptop as a resource, it might come in handy. I'm also considering putting together my conception of how a learning plan designed to attune people to how other people function in a learning environment, while simultaneously attempting to alter that learning environment to bridge the gap between gender inequalities, socio-economic inequalities, etc. So much to think about! But it will be worth the effort to do.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Copy + Paste = Win
To start off, I thought I would copy/paste an interesting conversation about culture that has been going on at the myEWB site, and then my big 10 page essay of what I brought back from the EWB conference.
A) Culture, Education, and the Africa/Canada Divide
From Hasan:
A) Culture, Education, and the Africa/Canada Divide
From Hasan:
It is interesting to try and view what we are going to be doing as JF's in the same way as missionary work (I think that is the point of this discussion?)
Growing up as a Baha'i I was exposed to a variety of religious customs and beliefs, as I've grown older I've come to respect the role that religion and spirituality can play in a person's life. I know that some people wouldn't be able to function without a system of beliefs they consider to be divine proclamation.
An argument I constantly had concerned the value of religious doctrine in our world; we have had organized religion as far back in our past as we as humans can see and yet we still haven't reached any sort of universal utopia. From there I would argue that a human being only needs the ability to empathize and exposure to other opinions in order to act morally, the idea of a god for me doesn't come into the equation at any point (I don't disbelieve in the possibility of a god, but that is another topic).
The response I usually received revolved around the fact that yes it is true we cannot look into our past and see a time when religion or spiritually wasn't present and there is a reason for that. The claim is that exposing people to religious doctrine gives them a starting point from which they will cultivate their own beliefs and values; it gives them a set of morals to grow from. The belief they (Baha'i's I've talked to) have is that society wouldn't have developed without a manifestation of divine will here on earth to guide us. I think that is what the missionaries were basing their placements upon, and it is eerily similar to what we are doing, or at least what I hope to accomplish.
Going overseas I want to contribute to the movement towards universal access to education and knowledge. I believe that for societies to grow in this day and age it is important to be able to see how others have done it(which implies different levels of growth). I believe that every human being has the right to understand their situation and place in this world, to also understand the situation of others and then make informed decisions on what they want to do and where they want to go. That is extremely important to me.
I like to think that the difference between proselytizing and what we are doing is in the small print. Religious doctrine is supposedly unassailable, it can do no wrong as it is supposed to be absolute eternal truth, for many religious doctrine is the only truth and the only thing that matters, I believe that is the opinion of the pastors in Things Fall Apart.
Access to education on the other hand is not inherently moral, it is in fact amoral. When I say I want to provide access to education I mean I want to empower men, women and children, I want to give them access to more tools, I want them to see what the possibilities are and then decide on what approach they wish to take. Religious doctrine gives you the approach, and if you don't follow it you are going to hell. Access to education is access to opportunity. I don't know if I have the right to grant access to education and I don't know how damaging or positive doing so will be. I quite simply do not know.
So how am I going to act given my views on culture and religion? How is the fact I believe I am doing something to help Ghanaians going to manifest itself? Am I going to act arrogant and lose out on what they have to offer? I believe humility is the only answer, and I hope that my desire to understand how they experience life will overpower my arrogance.
I've been trying to figure out an appropriate posting to the culture question, I've written several and in the end realized I wasn't saying anything useful. Can we make a distinction between cultural beliefs and personal beliefs? What about mannerisms and cultural beliefs? I'm confused about what we are discussing.
Just [to] be a devil's advocate, Hasan;
"Access to education on the other hand is not inherently moral, it is in fact amoral. When I say I want to provide access to education I mean I want to empower men, women and children, I want to give them access to more tools, I want them to see what the possibilities are and then decide on what approach they wish to take."
There is a very repudiated philosopher by the name of Jacques Ellul who wrote about propaganda. His definition of propaganda includes more or less anything that conveys a message, so even the act of educating and socializing is an act of propagation. I generally disagree with him, on the premise that propaganda is its own word with its own meaning, and attempting to apply it as a blanket term is effectively conflating it with "persuasion," but there is some merit to this. if the west introduces a western style education curriculum, using a western school system, with western values, are we any better than the priests? a big part of religion is education afterall - you can certainly claim a difference in what it is that is being taught, but how it is taught, by whom, under what conditions, etc. is equally important. as Gramsci argued, education is a means of creating ideological supremacy, and can be easily hijacked for that purpose. we here in the west are educated to be strong supporters of liberal values and free market systems, and to think these things are essentially infallible, yet capitalist and liberal ideology have existed for less than something on the order of 200 years, which is an awfully short time relative to our species on a whole - clearly they are not infallible or natural. yet we seem to have no problem introducing these models to Africa, and convincing officials there that they will work by virtue of the fact that they worked for us. so, basically, education is not necessarily amoral, and access to it will not necessarily empower anyone, it may in fact marginalize or render them powerless. introducing a western model that we *think* allows us to fully understand and comprehend other peoples points of view (if this is the case then i fail to understand the rampant racism that still exists systemically in our society) can be binding not only on the people being educated but the entire society.
From Hasan:Hey Warwick, thank you for responding.
I should clarify what I mean by education, and maybe give you a better idea of how I view culture. Beware this is a rant, and I haven’t really responded to yours, I just wanted to vent. Sorry.
You mentioned the problem of racism in our society, I can vouch for the fact that racism exists and is living quite happily within the borders of
I’ve also seen racism between the two major native groups in
When I say the word culture I sometimes cringe. You talked of propaganda being misused as a blanket word, well for me culture is the ultimate blanket word. It is used to describe (and condone) all sorts of things; music, theatrical arts, political systems, rape, genocide, racism, FGM.
I can’t define Canadian culture (you spoke of this in your original post, much more eloquently than I can); I don’t even know what people mean when they say Canadian culture. Do they mean respect towards women? Do they mean hatred of Aboriginals? Do they mean saying please and thank you or do they mean our continual mockery of Americans? What is it that we Canadians do differently than Ghanaians? If we removed the language barrier and viewed of our cultures side by side what would the differences be? Without having lived in
I do know that I have no claim to what I view as the better parts of our society, I didn’t end racial segregation, I never helped with the women’s right movement, and to be honest I haven’t helped with the lgbt movement here in
To me those movements towards equality (is that a liberal thing? judging people on their actions and not skin color, etc..) are not just Canadian, they are universal. Those personal rights trump the rights of a society to hold on to religious orientation, political systems and cultural beliefs. In my mind a society hasn’t developed until women and men can argue in public on any topic and have their opinions judged completely on intellectual value.
When I say I want access to education, I mean equal footing for everyone on an intellectual scale. I don’t want people to have the same opinions as I do, I don’t want people to have the same understanding of reality as I do (I wouldn’t wish that upon another human being), I simply want everyone to be able to put their thoughts out there. Am I hoping to force social paradigms on others? Yes, one could say so. There are some things I would forcibly change in other cultures and many things I would forcibly change in
I don’t know what western education is and beyond mathematics and science I don’t think curriculums should be universal, each culture requires its own topics. My education as a westerner has come from more than textbooks, it has come from the people I talk with at university; the Iranians and Germans I discuss theology with, it comes from the Africans and Quebecois I play soccer with. It comes from a myriad of sources, none of which I would have had access to if I hadn’t attended university. Everyone should have those sources, not just me.
You say that liberal ideology has been around for 200 years? I don’t know what you mean by that. I also don’t understand what you mean by capitalist ideology. Humans have been greedy for as long as we have had goods to envy (greed is what comes to mind when I hear capitalist). Human rights and ‘liberalism’ have been around for quite some time haven’t they? Capitalism is just a term, as is liberalism.
What is the natural progression of human society and how is anything humans come up with not natural? How could one argue that an aboriginal or tribal belief is more ‘natural’ than a western belief? I’m sick of hearing the argument that an aboriginal community left alone has a culture of more value than western culture. No one knows if it does and what the hell are the requirements? You don’t get the picture as an outsider, by simply being present you are altering the culture. If I were to try and explain Canadian culture to someone I would not be able to tell the truth, it is simply impossible. In my mind all that matters is a persons experience, their existential knowledge. Morals cannot be taught, you have to see both sides, value cannot be given to a person one has to earn it through experience. Everyone has a wealth of knowledge to give, to share simply by existing. Culture is not a human being but there are parallels; like a human, culture grows and expands; some get sick and die, others are killed.
When I think about Ghanaian culture I think of functionality, I think of gender roles being borne out of necessity. We have been told that children are sometimes required to work in the fields instead of attending school. What exactly is wrong with that? Physical labor is gratifying in a way academia will never be. My second favorite job was demolition, pounding tiles with a sledgehammer for 14 hours a day. I have not felt that level of satisfaction since and may never again. So if that is all there is going on why in the world would anyone be concerned with
Can we agree that there are some issues that need to be dealt with? Is everyone in agreement that there are things that need to change? What are those things? I’m of the opinion that not everyone has a voice, not everyone has the opportunity to have a voice. If I go over and the voice I hear tells me I am not wanted then ok, I will know (at what expense to them? Who knows). Until then I’ll stick to my guns and say there is a problem that needs to be addressed and my approach is to learn about it, my initial response is to push for universal education.
I may seem like a strong supporter of women’s rights, the reason behind that is my family. I have four sisters, three of which are Baha’i’; my little sister Bahiyyih is in
From Me:
Firstly, on liberal and capitalist ideology:
liberalism, socially, believes in more or less letting anyone do whatever they please, usually with the caveat that it cannot be something that harms another. as far as applying this concept goes, it is very, very new - it certainly wasnt the guiding principle of things like the various empires we've had in our past. Not until very recently has liberalism become an institutional norm, that people have tried to apply to culture and society as a whole. I personally think the attempts by liberals to "liberalize" other societies are intrinsically hypocritical to the philosophy itself, and it would make much more sense for liberals to try and help societies liberalize themselves, if they wish, if they truly hold to the values they espouse (equality, liberty, etc.), but thats another issue.
As for capitalism, its a similar thing - greed and capitalism are not the same, greed is merely an attribute/side effect of capitalism. there are many people who argue against basing an ideology on the concept that acting badly will do good (instead they argue the novel idea that doing good will do good. shocking i know). there have been various iterations of this concept throughout history, mainly that "might is right," or if you have a bigger gun than the next guy you get to make the rules. nowadays its if you have a bigger bank account than the next guy you get to make the rules. they sound similar but there are important differences, namely that violence never got an entire ideology built around it. our society has glorified greed to the point that its nearly destroyed itself, as we can see down in the states. capitalism is a human construct - therefore something came before it, therefore it wasnt always the way we did things, and therefore it isnt the only way we can do things. for instance, if we used a bartering system, the accumulation of wealth would become significantly more difficult, wouldnt it?
as for the "natural progress of human society," that's certainly a difficult thing to answer. a liberal would be inclined to say that natural progress is whatever happens when a group of people get to make their own decisions, and arent being messed around with by another group in any way. Cosmopolitans argue on the other hand that segregating humanity into different groups is pointless, we are all one group, so any action taken anywhere constitutes our "natural" development. I think you fall more on the cosmopolitan side, which is where our society seems to have been heading for a few years now. i think this concept is a bit dangerous though, and needs to have some limitations put on it. it ignores the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that people who werent born in the same geographical, economic, social, or political situations you were might have different values or priorities. I've been trying to formulate a social deconstructionist argument around this concerning firstly the idea of the state, and secondly the idea of supply and demand, ill copy and paste a piece of a blog post i made on it:
"basic philosophy from Plato/Aristotle:
every object has form and matter
a wooden chair has the form chair, matter wood, an iron chair the same form but different matter.
the form can be defined more precisely depending on the object. If you want to differentiate between a something like an office chair or a luxury chair, for instance, the form chair can be expanded on in both instances, while the matter does not necessarily change but can.
The state: form being an organized, territorially defined system, the matter being people. states are not the only way to organize people, there are tribes, fiefdoms, etc., so we can then posit that the state is a social construct - it does not exist necessarily. This is clearly true since we can point to a period of history where the state came into being. I would argue here that since the state is socially constructed, it is not necessarily a universal given. I.E. we can point to instances where the system of a state has in fact not been the ideal system of organization for a community of people. Thus while the state system was an ideal solution for Europe at the time of its inception, in Africa for instance, it may not be, and perhaps a different socially constructed system should be created to accommodate firstly the different situation, but secondly the difference in *matter* - people in Africa are not people in Europe, so the presumption that a European-style state would function with Africa-style people seems somewhat pretentious to me."
the supply and demand thing im getting confused on so i wont go into it (is supply and demand a term that can be applied anywhere, and is thus a neutral theoretical construct, or is it implicit to capitalism and westernism, and just so integrated in our preconceptions that we cant consider not using it? does it have any implicit meaning or is it a generalized, flexible tool of analysis?)
my argument then is that western values are "natural" in the context of a western culture, but in the context of an aboriginal culture they are foreign and potentially re-constitutive, maybe to the benefit of the aboriginal culture, maybe to its detriment. when I go to Ghana, yes my mere presence there will influence their culture, but i hope this is by the fact that my external viewpoint will be able to identify attributes of their culture, and by my description of their culture they will become more self-aware of themselves, more capable of driving their own success, and defending against attempts to re-constitute who they are on other peoples terms. e.g. when Africa was colonized, the imperial powers tried to make Africans more like them, and to a point they sadly succeeded - Africa is now run by a system of european-style states, with european-style seperations of power - systems that absolutely fail in many places. the implication of a state system of government is as arbitrary as the lines defining the territory of those states, in my mind. if we could go back in time and hit the play button on Africa 100 times over, what is the probability that it would be separated into state governments every time? it could just as easily be a continent of fiefdoms, or a single empire. or, they may look to Europe and say "hey, that state idea is pretty cool" and copy them. I think cosmopolitanism needs to find a balance between realizing that liberalism can potentially be right, that self-determination is important, while also espousing its claim that "any idea can be a good idea."
so i kind of touched on my thoughts concerning your question Aline - basically that its impossible not to dilute both cultures, but that this can be a good thing - it depends what you dilute with =) i can also sort of reply by posting my summary of the white privilege article, which is what i logged on to do anyways:
"White Privilege
- We are socialized to be ignorant to the fact that many of our behaviours and institutions work to maintain the status quo. We are taught that other groups are disadvantage but not that our group is advantaged. This actually has the effect of marginalizing the other and continuing the system - disadvantaged is a term we use to de-value people. A disadvantaged person is not as capable as someone who is "normal." Thus even the system we have created to try and resolve the issue at present is still couched in terms of ignorantly maintaining this division. It would be significantly more productive to identify why we are privileged, and work to counter these things.
- It is important to identify factors to which one can relate being disadvantaged, so that one may understand the situation from anothers point of view. For instance, I am disadvantaged entering politics because I am not Christian. I can use this to identify with other disadvantaged situations and understand their context by relating it to my own.
- How does this apply to traveling overseas? Firstly, many of the privileges I have will be taken away - e.g., I cannot ask to see "the person in charge" and expect them to always be white, if ever. My culture will not be readily represented, I will be thrown into the position of the minority, and so it is important to understand the situation of the minority within my own culture so that I can more readily understand it within another cultural context. Secondly, many other of my privileges will be greatly amplified and become very evident, because I will be amongst a group of people I have been taught to view as "disadvantaged," rather than amongst a group of people I have been taught to view "as morally neutral, normative, and average, also ideal." I must work to identify what in my actions are socialized norms that attempt to turn other people into entities more like myself, and realize that these are incorrect because that cannot be my goal - but rather to encourage people to be more like themselves in every context."
i figure ill have trouble identifying what is important to me until i get there and i dont have it anymore - "you dont know what youve got until its gone," at which point ill probably be upset for a bit before figuring out a way to adapt. i wont be able to become Ghanaian, but i will be able to become a western version of Ghanaian, what my best imitation of a Ghanaian would be as restricted by my cultural background.
there are liberal-based individual rights, and group-based, communitarian rights. some people see these as mutually exclusive, but i cant really fathom why (a group needs individuals to exist, individuals would have no culture without a group). regardless, cultural relativism is sometimes used to defend infringement of individual rights by communal groups - this is not the cultural relativism im trying to defend, because a crime is a crime as far as im concerned. id elaborate but i think ive written enough today so ill just leave it at that simplification =Poh, and finally, re:education @ Hasan
what you described is the ideal education system, one that allows people to flourish, grow, and cultivate themselves for themselves, on their own terms. I definitely want this as well, but I doubt I will ever see it - if our society let us develop ourselves in such a manner, it would probably fall apart the way it is right now, because no one would be forced to drop out of highschool or college and work menial, low paying jobs because they couldnt afford an education, and thus thered be no bottom bracket to our society to support the rest of it. thered also be no place for governments to promote their own agendas (duty to the state, to be a good worker and contribute to society, to builds a national identity such as the Canadian identity project undertaken by the Trudeau government). our education system, as it stands now, rewards doing repeated, tedious tasks that tax most peoples patience rather than their intellectual ability. perhaps assignments occasionally push people beyond their intellectual limits at that time and place, but theres no reason to think they couldnt reach those points on their own on a longer time-scale, and there wouldnt be anything wrong with that. instead the education system is designed to pump out workers for each level of work needed as quickly and efficiently as possible. this was pointed out in the keynote at the Gala - scientists never learn how to write a proper argument, just how to do science. why arent they taught to exchange ideas, only achieve results? exchanging ideas is integral to personal growth, achieving results is integral to soceity as a whole - i think society only really has an interest in fostering one of these, the other one we seem to have to go out and find for ourselves, and often i see people miss out on it.
to relate this to Africa - we are trying to help a community of people who have been terribly scarred when it comes to their personal growth *as* a society. If we simply said "heres a model for education, set it up like this," we would very likely, instead of helping Africa, be creating a system that continued the systemic oppression that began with colonialism. Essentially my argument stems from your claim that education is amoral - i definitely perceive it as potentially being an enduring tool for oppression, marginalization and imperialism if it isnt dealt with very carefully. as the "white privilege" article points out, it has that affect here in our own society, so i think its very possible it can act in that way globally.
atleast, this is how i interpreted your argument and how i perceive our society*. i dont want to come across too strongly or anything! gotta work on that =S maybe im just cynical, haha
________
so that was pretty intense. I feel as though I may have misinterpreted Hasan's meaning of amoral in this instance - my thinking of the term has always been that something that is amoral is something that not only is not intrinsically good or bad unto itself, but also incapable of being utilized or turned into something good or bad. a grain of sand is amoral, for instance. i suppose this definition would mean that you couldnt claim water was amoral though, because you could drown someone in it or give them a glass of it to save their life... bother. Regardless, it was an interesting and informative discussion for the both of us I'm sure.
B) Post-EWB National Conference Reflections
Note: If you're only going to read a part of this (baha, I've posted what, 10 pages already? here's another 10 for your poor brain), skip to the last one on national security since I didn't hear many cautionary voices on the subject.
Agriculture (
“Agriculture as a business.”
We were provided with a short case study and asked to break it down into a timeline, which looked something like this:
- Construction of a dam was begun but left incomplete, leaving a water basin at roughly 20% it’s intended capacity
- A group of 10 farmers took advantage of this water basin to begin growing vegetables, a rare crop in the region. They did this for 5 years.
- EWB and Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) staff begin helping the farmers progress.
- The farmers tell the staff that they need a loan à at the start of a growing season they need money, but they want to wait to sell their crop yield until the end of the season so it will get a higher price. They would like the loan to facilitate the storage and wait period. However, Banks issue short term, high interest loans that require collateral. So MoFA and EWB negotiate a 0% interest loan for the farmers.
- To facilitate their profits, the farmers want to buy fertilizer and dig wells to increase their crop. MoFA staff calculate that if this loan and development plan is successful, each farmer will make a gain of 100 units of Ghanaian currency each.
- The farmers expand their fields by 40%
- Come harvest, the farmers are disappointed to find their yield to be much lower than expected. It is discovered that the fertilizer was expired. They store what vegetables they have in hopes of making up the loss at the end of the season.
- In storage, 50% of the yield is lost to a fungus.
- Upset with how MoFA staff handled the problem, EWB cuts relations in the area. Some of the farmers are left in debt and they are all angry with one another.
We were then asked to identify the points where things went wrong, and come up with possible explanations/solutions. Each point was then categorized as either an issue of Input Market (I), Output Market (O), Finances (F), or Extension (E).
I:
Fertilizer
- Was not properly checked for quality by either MoFA or the farmers.
O:
Market
- Price fluctuation in the product they wanted to sell was perhaps an unwise risk to take. Was the price fluctuation dependable?
F:
- MoFA should have encouraged the farmers to buy anti-fungal spray with part of their loan as well to protect their investment.
- Risky business plan – did not account for risk (best case scenario, but no worst case scenario). Did not take into account conflict resolution and business soft skills
E:
Storage
- Were the vegetables stored in proper conditions?
- Were the vegetables stored separately to prevent one fungus outbreak from damaging the whole yield?
- Did the recurring storage of a single crop promote this fungus?
- Breaking ties – EWB and MoFA should have worked together to learn from their mistakes and mediate the farmer’s conflict. EWB should have helped MoFA expand its knowledge base.
EWB is currently mainly focused on
MoFA has been operating with these farmers for 4 years, and has a staff of 30 volunteers. However, their work is not well-linked, thus they produce minimal results. MoFA needs to create a long-term strategy, and become much less centralized if it wishes to be successful – they need to make appropriate and effective interventions at the ground level. MoFA used to provide solely information and technical advice, but has been shifting to promoting agriculture as a business. Part of this is helping farmers improve their access to markets. Their methodology has been one of promoting technology, using a participatory approach, coaching farmers and improving linkages between I/O and F.
Silver Bullet for Change
The purpose of this workshop was to improve our ability to understand and influence a complex system, such as society. A system is anything which is made up of many components, an alteration to any one of which will influence the rest of the system. An example of a simple system would be a shoelace. A complicated system would be an airplane. A complex system would be raising a child.
A complex system is unique in that there are many interconnected factors, and no certainty in change. You can be certain doing something differently while tying your laces will have a clear and immediate result. Doing something differently while raising a child may have no result at all.
Essentially, one should learn to recognize and take advantage of times when one may influence society as a system. For instance, when attending a meeting about a company budget, bring up fair trade coffee, organic foods, or other alternatives to whatever the company is doing now. Be aware of other influences on you – why are the bananas you buy green when they’ve been shipped all the way from
John McCall MacBain presentation
M.M. is involved in bringing green electricity to
There are some possible critiques of this project. For one, M.M. expressed his desire to light up the “dark continent.” To some degree this is a valid point – if you were to measure which continent were the most “developed” by the amount of light visible from space, North America and Europe would stand out, and Africa would be dead last. On the other hand, light pollution does have health repercussions, both on humans and other wildlife (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution). Thus, while M.M. may be commended for trying to make his projects carbon-neutral, he is simultaneously bringing another form of pollution to
Cuthbert Baba Kuupiel Presentation
Cuthbert is currently the Ghanaian Project Manager for the Community-Driven Initiatives for Food Security. His presentation focused on how rural communities could work with their government to satisfy development needs through simple local leadership, as well as the importance that African development be lead by
One point that struck me about Cuthbert’s presentation was his description of how the community went about interacting with the local government (the District Assembly). In the west it is often the case that a community will make a demand of its municipal government, and if it doesn’t get what it wants react negatively. In Cuthbert’s case, it was interesting to see that the community instead molded their thinking and saw the issue through the District Assembly’s point of view. This is potentially negative for the community, as the power relationship means that requests are not always translated correctly between the two groups. Many examples exist of this happening, such as a clinic in
Agricultural Development
A panel discussion, this was essentially an informative session on current trends in agricultural development in
Issues affecting agricultural development in the market include:
- Variable food prices (affected by uses of biofuel for electricity and standard supply/demand issues), which can make a market potentially unreliable for providing income.
- Trust issues between producers and retail – traditionally business has been conducted between kinsmen, but the introduction and necessity of new market systems has complicated relationships. People do not always trust one another and this creates complicated market relationships.
Presently about 5% of aid money goes to agriculture, however it is widely believed agriculturally development stands a very good chance of bringing many African countries out of poverty and more money should be spent in this region. Development teams wants to take more practical action on this front, and include African country’s abilities when it comes to emergency response to food crises, and to develop food security. Part of this is to improve production through improved market systems, but also to lobby a right to food as having precedence over tariffs or other economic issues. It seems to be generally agreed that a longer-term approach is required that focuses on protecting a country’s ability to produce food.
Some of the analytical tools used include a look at household livelihood security, assessing a household’s vulnerabilities, its negative or positive assets, etc. Developing a household’s livelihood security involves protection (ensuring the household is productive, healthy, and has early warning of health issues) and promotion (developing assets such as livestock and introducing value chains). This analysis brings up an interesting point – to some degree, some food aid can be seen as a harm – it discourages people from looking for ways to increase their own production and food security.
Some other general points:
- Agriculture in
- Often, simple technology can improve efficiency many times over. A simple ox and plow beats a woman with a hoe, for instance. The difficulty is bringing families to the point of wealth where they can afford an ox.
- It’s important to keep in mind that helping a few does not necessarily mean you are helping a larger population, or solving hunger for very many people at all. A few improved farming communities does not necessarily translate into a revolution in agricultural practice across a region, this is a separate step that requires just as much energy and focus.
The take-away point of this panel seemed to be the feeling that if agricultural development can be made to be efficient (less labour = more food), equitable (a proper share between genders, etc.), and inclusive (a wider market system), it stands a better chance of success.
Building from this, two other points came up during the panel discussion. The first is market failure. Factors that cause a market failure include:
- Blockages
- Failed public institutions
- Weak policies
- Excessive concentration of power (which it should be noted is a feature of value chains)
The question arises; are we developing a sustainable market system in
Appropriate Technology
This was a look at how technology can negatively or positively impact a community. Not every innovation or technology fits a community in a way that improves their livelihood, so it is important in development to ensure the right technology is getting to the right place. Generally, you want to KNOW if something is appropriate, and if it isn’t (or in some cases even if it is), you want to MAKE it appropriate.
e.g. a suction versus lifthand pump – does the community this is being introduced to have the resources to repair one but not the other? Is it small enough that it can be easily transported by them? Set up easily by them? Etc.
It is also useful to develop markers to see if a technology is appropriate – did a farmer double his/her income? Looking for feedback from the customer is useful as well.
In making a technology appropriate, it is important to make a human centered design. This was described as “hear, create, deliver” à know and understand what the customer needs, create it out of resources the customer has, and deliver it in a way the customer can use. Not everyone has a flatbed truck to carry a pump around, so maybe it has to be designed so that it can be mounted on a bicycle. Maybe it needs to have interchangeable parts so that if one side fails it can be replaced with the other. Maybe it needs to be built so that a small failure can be patched up with a bent nail or a piece of rope. Etc.
Paul Polak Presentation
Mr. Polak has engaged in a somewhat controversial form of development in that he runs his projects as a business – selling equipment to communities in
I have some fairly strong critiques of Mr. Polak however. While I agree that his concept and why he is doing it seem very valid and useful, HOW he goes about it might have room for improvement.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher from
Another point worth making is that while a consumer may want a pump that lasts only 2 years because they can’t afford the single lump payment to buy a 7 year pump, and thus Polak company perceives this as a desire of the consumer, the 2 year lifespan pump may actually be serving to prolong their poverty. If a 2 year lifespan pump costs 100 dollars, but a 7 year lifespan pump costs 200 (i.e. significantly less than buying 3.5 2 year pumps) then repeatedly purchasing a 2 year lifespan pump is effectively draining a customer of their income. Instead a system of financing seems much more likely to succeed, or at the very least financing the cost of the product related purely to the profit meant to be made off of its sale, and having the customer pay up front only for the production value.
Leadership is an Inside Job
Stages of Learning:
- unconscious incompetence (you don’t know you can’t ski)
- conscious incompetence (your first attempt at skiing was less than successful)
- conscious competence (you have figured out how to consciously control skis)
- unconscious competence (you can do calculus while skiing)
A successful spirit/leader has passion, which generates a drive to improve, which makes one self aware, which allows one to set goals, thus take action, and because of action be more self aware, repeat ad infinitum.
These two small descriptions come together to form a map for how one may improve any ability one possesses. Most view leadership as an inherent trait, which cannot be impacted by events, training etc. But EWBs philosophy is that leadership is just another skill. Thus becoming a successful leader is simply a matter of training oneself. A successful leader is passionate about what they do, wants to be better at it, and is self aware of what is holding them back from being better. Thus goals are set and action taken. This applies both to the leader individually and to the project the leader is a part of.
Make your campus a “
This was a workshop about how to effectively lobby a university and other stakeholders related to your university to become Fair Trade, although obviously such methods would potentially work with other issues, and thus are fairly valuable as a transferable set of guidelines. Essentially it was a workshop to demonstrate and develop tools to understand and act upon a university.
The first workshop question was what a
Stakeholders:
A stakeholder is anyone affected by and with an interest in what you are doing. Shareholders to fair trade coffee could include: university administration, faculty staff, students, university businesses, community businesses, community members, food suppliers, bookstore, catering, etc. These impacts can be positive or negative. A community business that is successful because it happens to be the only fair trade provider in your university’s community would suffer if students stopped going there for fair trade coffee. Likewise, fair trade might foster a more integrated international perspective in your community and lead to more community action.
It is important to understand stakeholders. The best way to appeal to them is to demonstrate that there is something in it for them to go along with your initiative. It needs to make fiscal sense in most cases, or else it won’t be supported. It is also important to understand how these stakeholders make their policy. Who makes decisions concerning food purchasing? How is their process made? What factors contribute to their decision? It is also important to focus on timing (some decision making bodies may only meet once a year, and you will need to meet that deadline). Support from the surrounding community can be valuable as well – how a stakeholder is perceived in the community can sometimes be more valuable to them than money. If a large number of community groups want a university to do something, its unlikely the university will decline.
It is further important to approach these stakeholders as potential partners, not obstacles to your goal. Remain on good terms with everyone. If previous student/administration relations are not terribly good (i.e. Carleton), try to find a way around it; present yourself as a different kind of student representative. It may also do to keep in account what the mission statement of the university is. Most universities aim to support international issues, which can be a potential in for your cause. Be very specific in your relationship with stakeholders – make it clear what you would like from them. Also be sure that they remain accountable – press them to explain why or why not they are making a decision, and look for alternatives with them rather than leaving it at their flat denial. Be persistent, comprehensive (if possible develop your own plan for what you think a fair trade university should be and present it to them), and integrate yourself into their system. It’s easy to ignore a random student, but much more difficult to ignore something that has become a feature of their social landscape. Be professional, as a good image can go a long way. Lastly, be knowledgable – admit that fair trade isn’t necessarily perfect, but that it doesn’t matter because it is BETTER and that is what is important.
The workshop presenters shared a few tips of what they thought made them successful:
- Outreach:
Don’t be another typical hit and run presenter in the hallway – have conversations with people rather than trying to instantly convert them. Rather than catching them in the hall between classes, go and sit down with them during lunch and begin a conversation about the issue you are lobbying for. Treat them differently than others have treated them. Engage them!
- Build Relationships and Leverage them:
Anyone can potentially help!
- Coalitions:
A coalition with another student group CAN be useful, but it is best to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy and complications in the decision making process. Confer with similar groups and coordinate generally, but don’t get deeply involved unless the benefits are clear.
Neil Turok Presentation
Mr. Turok’s presentation was very intriguing. The point that stood out most for me was his challenge of EWB’s general presumption of “poverty reduction.” He pointed out that this was in fact a double negative – rhetorically it makes sense, but literally one cannot reduce a lack of something. If you were to present this as a business goal, he quite rightly noted that you would be laughed out of the room. Mr. Turok made a number of other points challenging our presumptions and goals as an organization, including our focus on agriculture in the developing world. Again, it does seem perhaps we have become too narrow minded – can agriculture really be a sustainable practice or is it a “development market?” Are we not simply creating another dependency relationship between the west and
Overall it’s very difficult to disagree with the concept –
One critique however goes back to whether or not we are helping individuals, communities, or
Hugh Segal Presentation
Note: I actually missed this presentation, but to my understanding Segal spoke of involving national security in the international development discussion and I think I can comment on that a bit.
Involving national security in the discussion of international development, while potentially very beneficial, is also potentially very dangerous to the country in question. As an example one may point to countries such as
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