What would you do if you were a donor? Some Answers from the Field (Office)

Sorry for the radio silence. It's because I wanted to give the utter awesomeness of my last post (or note, as those of you who follow this publication on facebook are wont to say) time to sink in.
...
Kidding.

Actually, Malawi has been having some serious electricity issues these past few weeks, which has been making it a bit challenging to stay caught up. In my case, 'caught up' means trying to type and email a quarterly progress report and a project update without the benefit of a computer to do it on and support my counterparts at Plan Malawi who have been extremely busy with some budget stuff.

During one of the irritatingly frequent blackouts (for Canadian and Malawian residents alike), I had an idle chat with some of the staff at the field office.
At one point in our chatting, the community development facilitator who was part of our group (CDF or field staffer) asked me what I'd do if I were a donor to help (here in Malawi, specifically) - it was as this point that our chatting became less idle.*

*[no less paraphrased though - this was awhile ago, so my recollection might not be exactly accurate. Anyway, you'll get the general idea]

I didn't have an answer for him, so I made a joke (that wasn't very funny) and spun the question back to him.

The field staffer in question said he'd spend on getting HIV/AIDS under control, as it affects everything, from food security to the growing challenge of orphans in Malawi.

The ICT Coordinator said dealing with HIV/AIDS as well.

The office assistant said nutrition and research - into AIDS as well but also into health and disease more generally. That's interesting enough, but it was the way he put it that was really profound (and caused both of the other members of our chat to agree emphatically). He said that developing countries need to invest in research because their priorities (HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition) are different than those of developed countries (heart disease, cancer). He argued that developed countries devote their time and effort to challenges that affect them, and that it would be really positive if development aid were to go to recipient agencies in ways that stimulated the same.

Intrigued, I asked out of NGOs, the private sector and government, which places (if we were to take this question of research, anyway) donors should direct money to. The CDF said, without any hesitation, that it should be NGOs; because, as he put it, "the money we see given to NGOs at least goes directly to the people." The ICT Coordinator said the private sector, and specifically "those companies at the leading edge of whatever field we mean." The office assistant said "not the government."

Things went sideways then, as we were chatting during the week where Presidential candidates to hand in their nomination papers, officially kicking off election season and the mention of the "g word" of course led to a discussion about that.

A bit later the power came on.

The conversation really left me thinking. Now it can do the same for you (I hope).

What Star Trek is Teaching me about Development

I'm no expert on the development sector and I'm certainly no expert on Star Trek, but starting in my first couple of days of pre-departure learning with EWB, these two areas of non-expertise have somehow met up in the strange corners of my mind to share insights with one another.
So far, here are the top 4 things that Star Trek has taught me about development:

4. Technology is the engine by which humanity brings to life its most beautiful dreams and its most terrible nightmares
(to paraphrase another bit of science-fiction on the big screen that I'm a fan of...).

It's a theme throughout all the iterations of Star Trek. Technology is everywhere, and it gives humanity (and humanoid variants) tremendous power, but with tremendous responsibilities.
In the future, (aka Star Trek) hunger is all but eradicated (yay replicators!), transport to and from your starship is instant, and all but the zaniest interstellar diseases are no problem.
But... most of the zaniest interstellar diseases are man-made, and many of the tragedies of the Star Trek universe are man (or species similar enough to human to make the lesson transferrable) made. From Bajoran to the Borg, Star Trek continually comes back to the beauty and the horror that technology puts at our fingertips - both in its existence and in the disparity of access to it.
Technologies (appropriate, integrated into more diverse approaches, and otherwise) are viewed as one of the tools we can use to solve the tragedies of the world in which we live. And being able to "beam me up" would definitely make my life easier as well as solve one of the more ubiquitous challenges faced in development - namely, getting people and supplies from Point A to Point B.
On the other hand, technologies are also a fundamental part of the many, many, many problems we're now trying to address - climate change, war, drug-resistant TB and malaria, and the widening gap between the developed and underdeveloped worlds are all at least partly because of a technology (or several) developed by humankind.

3. Scotty's School of Managing Expectations is where it's at
This one is from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Relics. Don't ask how Scotty and La Forge manage to be in the same room in the same century: it's better if you just accept it and enjoy the wisdom of this little gem.

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you. But the captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours.
Scotty: [thinks about it some time] You mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.
La Forge: Yeah. Well, I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
Scotty: How long would it really take?
La Forge: [annoyed] An hour!
Scotty: [looks unbelieving] Oh. You didn't tell him how long it would REALLY take, did you?
La Forge: Of course I did.
Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

He goes on to explain that, if something will take an hour, you should say that it will take at least two, be really dramatic about how impossible it will be to get it done in an hour, and then deliver it in the 60 minutes alotted, thus guaranteeing that everyone is really impressed with whatever you did instead of accepting it as part of the job you're supposed to do without any fuss.
That's quite possibly the best fundraising advice I've ever heard. I think it also applies to job performance in general... though only if no one else understands what it is you do well enough to hold you accountable. Which is, in a nutshell, the development sector (how long do you think it actually takes to "document lessons learned regarding the implementation of CLTS in the pilot phase, hmmm?).
[Random aside: The CLTS website I linked to there is new! This excites me, and has delayed the publication of this post, as I stopped editing things to spend some time exploring the new site.]

2. If we can dream it, we can "make it so."
Just before I left Canada for Malawi, I was watching the Discovery Channel in the middle of the night and stumbled across a little special called "How William Shatner Changed the World."
While I'm not sure that everything cool invented since Star Trek first aired can actually be attributed to all inventors since then being Trekkies, I like the idea that a fictional universe helped unlock the potential in humankind to dream. I also like the vision of a better world (and strange, new worlds) that Gene Roddenberry gave us a glimpse of in the original Star Trek and in spin-offs since. The power of the human imagination in both cases showed us all that we can boldly go where no man has gone before - a lesson we can and should take especially seriously when we're trying to improve the world we have.


1. The most effective people and the least effective projects in development have one thing in common: a Kirk Complex.
There's a certain exchange in The Wrath of Khan that sums up what I mean when I say "the Kirk Complex." The exchange is regarding Kirk's impossible success on a simulation in Starfleet Academy (the Kobayashi Maru scenario):

McCoy: Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario.
Saavik: How?
Kirk: I reprogrammed the simulation so it was possible to rescue the ship.
Saavik: What?
David Marcus: He cheated.
Kirk: I changed the conditions of the test; got a commendation for original thinking. I don't like to lose.
Saavik: Then you never faced that situation... faced death.
Kirk: I don't believe in the no-win scenario.

In people, this complex is a strength: it is lateral thinking and perserverance and mental agility and ironclad determination, even in the face of impossible odds (in the case of both Kirk and some of the most urgent development work, of death itself). Attributes that, in my limited experience, are critical to success in development work.

In projects, however, it is stubborn fanaticism in the worst sense: clinging to optimism, even when the signs of failure are obvious and crying out to be seen and responded to; perhaps by a person willing to try something else, even something unorthodox, to deliver a success instead of another doomed silver bullet.

The jury's still out for me on what that means for development organizations, which are comprised of both people and projects (and the relationships between).



Anyway, thus concludes our lesson. Live long and prosper.

My house!

And other photos...

That's not a good sound...

I have a story that I’ve been saving for over a month. As I put it to someone who got a sneak preview via text message: what follows is the account of “a small crisis that I’m hoping will turn into a funny story.”

I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not it qualifies as either a crisis or a funny story…

Picture this: it is about 4:30 in the morning on December 13th. A sunny day is just about to dawn in the Warm Heart of Africa. The corn is about 4 inches high and dusted with dew. The muted pre-dawn light is enough to see by, and the smoke from the many cook-fires that will be starting shortly isn’t yet hovering in the air. The doves are though. They’ve already landed on the roof belonging to the hapless star of this story. As for that hapless star, we’ll call her “Namanda.”

Namanda is awake at 4:30 in the morning on December 13th for two reasons. The less compelling of these two reasons is that one of the roosters who lives in her neighborhood has decided to announce sunrise early, and seems to be located somewhere in the immediate vicinity of her window. The second, far more urgent reason is that she needs to use the toilet. The “toilet” in this case is a pit latrine located in the middle of the garden in front of her house. Her house is a nice place made of brick and plaster with a roof of corrugated sheeting. On this fateful morning, she’s been living there for less than 48 hours.

Because Namanda has no furniture yet and therefore nowhere to set things and because she doesn’t understand the rhythm and norms of life in a Malawian town yet, Namanda takes her house keys with her when she goes to use the latrine.

Due to the urgency of the situation on that fateful morning, she does not lock the doors behind her. She drops her keys into the breast pocket of her pajama shirt, slips on a pair of flip-flop sandals (or tropicals as they’re known locally) and hustles out to the latrine.

As she’s doing her business, she thinks, “I’d better be careful not to drop my keys into the pit. That would really suck.” So she puts her hand over her pocket.

She finishes up, makes use of the toilet paper she’s brought with her from the house. With toilet paper in one hand, she turns to replace the pit cover.

There’s a gentle thud – the sound that something metal might make as it glances off of something concrete – followed by the sound of metal clinking against metal and another, more distant thud. Namanda’s hand flies to the previously abandoned pocket, but her brain has already noted the absence of a hitherto comforting weight.

That’s right. On Day 2 in Nkhamenya, I dropped my keys in the latrine.

This unfortunate event in turn precipitated a series of adventures investigating whether or not the house had spare keys (negative), whether I should go through the landlord to replace the locks or if I should take care of it myself (myself, but with substantial assistance from my neighbour), whether or not I could buy the same brand of locks to replace the old ones (negative), and then attempting to purchase the locks and hire the carpenter.

Many a learning experience later, the locks are replaced and I have a shiny new set of skeleton keys.

In retrospect, I strongly advise against dropping keys in the latrine. It's kind of inconvenient.