To act or not to act? To fund or not to fund?

Thursday, Oct 31, 2013

There are some questions that I think cross the minds of all Volunteers at some point during their service, if not sporadically throughout it. Will what I’m doing will leave any lasting impact? Am I helping my “community” or exacerbating an existing mentality of dependence and expectations of handouts from outsiders? To fund, or not to fund? To act, or not to act?

I always get the encouragement from people back home to “keep doing all the good work”. And while I know the comments are well meant (and often well received during particularly depressing moments), they often leave me wondering, “am I doing good work? Will any of it last? Is there not a better course of action?”

For instance, my official counterpart and several community health agents are pushing me to find funding to build household latrines in my village. An essential component of any village public health plan, no doubt, but my impression is that latrines seem to be valued more as an expression of wealth and status than as a way to improve public health. There are many ways to deal with excrement that involve little to no external funding, and yet no one does them. No one builds traditional pit latrines, no one even digs holes when they do their business. Its just left in the open and maybe covered with a rock or a couple of teak leaves. Yet everyone wants a fancy concrete structure of any kind in their compound to show off to guests.

My counterparts say that everyone in the village wants to improve public health, they want to reduce diarrhea and protect water sources but they “lack the means” to do so and they need me, the outsider, to come in and give them the resources. He expressed his desire for a large, two to three stall concrete structure in each household, expecting me to dish out bucket loads of money from the land of never-ending wealth. They had no expectation of doing something that could be expanded without external funding, of doing something economically feasible for their community, because the foreigners are there to give handouts and we keep on giving.

I’ve refused to do anything that couldn’t feasibly be expanded upon to reach other households. So I showed some other methods of excrement disposal that are within the means of most households in my community and the most accepted by a focus group of villagers was the Arborloo, a traditional pit latrine with a concrete floor that can be moved to a new pit when the original is full. The original pit is then covered and a tree is planted over the decomposing excrement . The project plan is to provide the concrete floor and a tin roof for 20-30 households who dig the pit and participate in sanitation trainings before the end of January.

Yet I fear that even by purchasing a few sacks of cement and building solid floors for the simple arborloos we plan to build, that I’m taking away from my partners’ seeming limited perception of self-reliance. Could they not be motivated to do this project entirely off their own means? Would that not promote a greater sense of ownership and value?

On the other side, organizing this project with them and reducing the financial burden ever so slightly for the first households who will adopt these latrines may encourage them to build the latrines faster and to educate others on their construction. Knowing that they will only receive the improved floor (which we plan will cost $15-20) if they dig the pit before the end of January and participate in at least a certain number of sanitation trainings may push the recipients to take action quicker than they would if left by their own means. Using financial assistance as a means for encouragement towards further action instead of an end in itself. At least this is the course I hope the project will take.

Then there’s the egg-laying hen project another counterpart and I have been pursuing, which hosts a different range of worries for me. Bernard, my neighbor and one of my most motivated counterparts, has been raising turkeys, ducks and chickens for the last 5 years. He learned some simple methods to improve his animal husbandry from local Togolese extension agents and has adopted nearly all the advice. He built cages to protect the young chicks from hawks, snakes and shrews and he warms the cage with jars of charcoal to compensate for the warmth of the missing mother hen. He prepares feed from a mix of corn, soy, fish powder and the scraps leftover after a day of grinding things at his mill. He vaccinates according to the recommendations from the Togolese Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries. In essence, he is a model student who apply each bit of advice he learns. A Peace Corps Volunteer couldn’t ask for more from a counterpart (but unfortunately, partners like this are rare).

 So when Bernard asked me to help him improve his animal husbandry, I wanted to find a way to do so. At first, it was clear all he wanted was money and I was avoidant. He said he wanted to build a fence, and he wanted me to find the money to help him do it. I suggested that he could do this with his own means but didn’t expect him to do so (I anticipated he’d be like others and just wait for a handout from the foreigner). Yet less than a week later, I returned to Bernard’s house and saw a fence being built with bamboo from the stand by the river and old chicken wire he’d collected. That’s when I saw he was serious and could manage a larger project.

So I connected him with a poultry raiser in a neighboring village who raises improved breed hens for egg production. Together we have developed a project to bring 150 egg-laying hens to Solla. The hope is that this will provide the village with a quality source of protein and nutrition without needing to travel 35km to find eggs. But also, it was to encourage a motivated community member to take the next step to improve animal husbandry practices and increase commerce in his community.

So where are my worries here? First off, it’s a large project with a budget of nearly $2000 and there is only one man who is directly benefiting from this aid. He has a couple “apprentices” who will help him, but he is largely in charge and will reap most of the direct benefits from the project. Would it not have been better if we’d developed a project that had direct benefits for a larger number of people?

To remedy this, we are planning to organize trainings with various community groups to teach some of the basic principals of improved animal husbandry, such as building cages and preparing feed. But I worry that they will expect financial assistance to do this and since they are not receiving it that jealousies towards Bernard’s large project will arise.

I can already sense the jealousies coming, and the chickens haven’t even arrived yet.  Why did I choose to help this one man so much? Why does he get the benefits? Isn’t this supposed to be a “community” project, so shouldn’t the “community” share everything?

I have responses to all these questions when they arise, but it won’t make the challenges any easier. I chose to help this man because he had already taken so many steps to help himself that I could trust him to manage a large project and let it evolve once I am gone. He gets to reap the benefits because he does the work and will realize the project and help it expand so that it can include other producers as well. The “community” will be seeing the benefits, although they may not be as direct and may take time. The local shops will see proceeds from egg sales, revenue that will stay in Solla instead of going to outside communities. Students who will help Bernard sell the eggs in neighboring towns and markets will receive an income to help pay their school fees. The gardeners neighboring the chicken coop will benefit from rich, organic chicken manure to fertilize their gardens. Others will benefit from the advice Bernard gives on how to take basic steps to improve their poultry raising.

I have fears and doubts about the perception of this project and my role in it. If it will be perceived as the foreigner taking preferential treatment towards one friend and handing him all this money from El Dorado while neglecting all others. If they will say that because I am a volunteer for “the whole community”, then the project benefits must belong to “the whole community”. But it is precisely the stress from these doubts that motivates me to find ways that the project can impact others so that they can see its value for the population of Solla as a whole.

This is the internal conflict of every volunteer before, during and maybe even after a project. But it is this stress of self-reflection on projects that pushes us to create approaches that will have the greatest impact. If we do not recognize the potential drawbacks, such as discouraging self-reliance or igniting jealousies, we are bound to cause some level of harm in any project we pursue. If we recognize these drawbacks, but do not respond to the stress they cause, then nothing changes. But if the internal conflict that seems to arises when considering to fund or not to fund, to act or not to act, is respected and given the space and time to develop, I think we can find solutions to address most of our worries.

Then when people back home say “thanks for all the hard work”, we can simply say “Thanks” and not feel such doubt about the authenticity of the question or the response.

Peace Corps Goals

From April 7, 2013 (more than 6months late... I know...)

 

For the last week I’ve been involved in several meetings about organizing, monitoring and reporting the work of Peace Corps Volunteers in collaboration with host country partners. Peace Corps is apparently trying to move towards being a more official development organization with more organized volunteers and efficient reporting. While I see the value of such a change, of reporting the impact that volunteers have and transmitting our work to donors and future volunteers, I fear that such a systematic approach may neglect the most valuable impact of volunteers: the change we can bring simply by being ourselves and being present. The everyday interactions are what makes Peace Corps, not the number of people who attend some training on nutrition or benefit from building latrines.

The English teacher at my village’s high school told me about the Volunteer who helped run an English club in his hometown when he was in middle school. His greatest memories weren’t the lessons he planned but the attitude he brought. The Volunteer would speak of places in the world that the students had never seen, see their own culture through a perspective they had never had, play music on his guitar that they had never heard and lived life with such vibrant enthusiasm and willingness to explore and share his findings. The teacher told me how it was his interactions with the young volunteer that motivated him to continue school, to study American Literature at university and to embody what he called “American values” such as curiosity, open-mindedness and respect for others.

It is beautiful to me that this is the impression we leave in the hearts and minds of the Togolese. I only wish that all Americans actually embodied these values instead of the bickering hatred that I find every time I read American news. Perhaps this is why I’ve nearly abandoned following the news; I prefer to keep the Togolese image of America. Not that they always have a perfect image of us. The Togolese know very well about our history of slavery and racism, about our military presence around the world and about our hesitation to accept immigrants. But they also understand that not all Americans are responsible for nor accept these unfortunate truths.

But Peace Corps isn’t solely about cultural exchange. Afterall, providing technical assistance to host countries is our first goal. But in my experience, this too is most valuable when it comes from personal interactions verses formal trainings. A couple weeks ago I was roasting and cracking cashew nuts with some kids in my village and we started talking environment. One of the kids was asking me if in the US we have a dry season like here or a time when the wells and rivers dry up. I explained that in my hometown in California there is a time when we can expect more rains and a time when we can expect less, but our problem of dried up wells (or at least reduced production) is often caused by a different culprit, overdrawing water so that the aquifer cannot replenish the well quickly. I used the example to explain water cycles and how if the processes that remove water from a system exceed the processes that replenish it, problems will arise. For instance salt water can be drawn into the groundwater and the water from wells can become briny. I used an example from the coastal city of Cotonou, Benin where this is a developing problem. One of the kids recalled when he visited family there and the water out of their well was salty. He asked his family if they had added salt but they responded that the water from the pump near their house has been like that for years. The kid, and likely his family, didn’t think of the likely connection between Cotonou’s growing population, development and thus water use and the increasing salinity of their well water. This led to our conclusion that while we should encourage development in Togo and throughout the world, its important to reflect on the actions we take, recognize the potential consequences and proceed cautiously.

Of course, this is easier said than done. How do we balance economic development with environmental security? I’d like to say that I’m hopeful Togo can find a way to develop harmoniously, but that hope is nearly wiped away when I see the congested Lome streets, the Kara riverbanks overflowing with garbage and the huge consumption of single-use plastics even in the village setting. But all these changes are so recent in the history of Togo that maybe there is still hope.