More Thoughts

Yesterday I covered the big-picture issues that make it hard to judge how much we've really accomplished, and whether the rather substantial achievements of this PRT in particular are sustainable and significant in the long-term view of this country.

This post is the short-term, day-to-day view, and it's probably going to seem pessimistic (again). The last two days have been especially frustrating, and have highlighted the three primary reasons I'm counting down the days until I get on a plane and go home. Here they are:

1.) "You promised."

2.) "That's not good enough."

3.) Massive, staggering, incomprehensible ingratitude.

Everywhere we go, we're told that we have promised things to people. At first I thought this might have been a translation issue, and that "you promised..." was a convenient way of expressing a possibility. However, after a year of hearing it, and several conversations with interpreters to clarify the fact that yes, they do mean to say that we have supposedly made promises, it has become clear that it is more than a figure of speech.

I have some degree of sympathy for this one, because I understand that we're Americans, and Americans are supposed to have money and resources. There's no way for most of the local population to have any grasp of the long, slow, restrictive, and inefficient process required for us to get projects funded, so I can easily understand excessively high expectations about what we can actually accomplish. Still, being told that we have promised to build projects, provide money, or give out food (to name a few) has gotten quite old. Without exaggerating, I can comfortably say that we hear about the promises we have supposedly made during at least 75% of the meetings we have with local villagers or government officials.

We make a point of never promising anything, to avoid exactly this type of problem. Unfortunately, we have discovered that simply showing up on a site or having a discussion with a villager constitutes a promise. The most extreme example of this that I have encountered occurred yesterday. At a site with a significant amount of flood damage, several villagers were demanding assistance in building new walls and digging out a riverbed. At one point, the village elder leading the discussion pulled out a sheet of paper, signed by all the locals, the district manager, and the governor. It also had two notes written in English, both from the PRT commander. The first said, in essence, "Please come back after November, when we will find out if any funding is available". The second, dated November 28th, 2007, said that no money was available, and that the PRT could not support the requested projects. You may have guessed already where this is going. The man pointed at these notes from the commander and emphatically told our interpreter, "You promised to build this for us!"

Obviously the man doesn't read or speak English, but I know that those notes were explained when they were written, signed, and handed to him. The fact of the matter is that our presence on a site is seen as a promise by many people around here, even if we specifically and clearly explain or document the fact that we cannot and do not promise to be able to help. It's understandable (to a certain extent) given the high expectations people have about our ability to help. Still, it gets old after a while.

"That's not good enough" is a harder issue for me to rationalize. Token Crazy Guy was an example, since the basic idea is that if we can't do everything they ask for, we might as well not do anything at all. I ran into this again today. We have a small project getting ready to start that will repair a health clinic. The doctor in charge of the clinic changed his mind about what he wanted done, but he never told us that, so we signed a contract for a bunch of work that he no longer claims to need. We got his new priorities, negotiated with the contractor to complete as much as possible with the fixed amount of money in the contract, and thought we were ready to start work. Instead, the doctor told us that if we can't build everything he wants, we shouldn't do any of it. I find this absolutely incomprehensible, but it's a common enough attitude around here that I'm writing a blog post about it. To me, it's a simple equation: Something is better than nothing, even if it doesn't amount to perfection.

Massive ingratitude is the third issue, and the hardest for me to deal with. It's a more extreme version of "That's not good enough", but tends to be more malicious. Completing the trifecta, I also ran into this today. During the summer we completed a building that serves as a printing press. We renovated the building, furnished it with a printing press and computers, and provided maintenance and training for the equipment operators. The Director of Communications has not shown a great deal of competence or motivation, but he occasionally produces decent newspapers for distribution around the province.

Yesterday, a beam came loose in the roof of the building and knocked a piece of suspended ceiling down inside the building. Nobody was hurt, and even if somebody had been standing underneath it when it happened, nobody would have been hurt. It was an unfortunate accident that caused minor damage, which will probably be fixed in a few hours by the contractor, since the building is still under warranty.

Rather than finding the PRT and telling us about it, the Director of Communications decided to take a picture, publish it in the most recent newspaper (possibly the fastest issue ever to roll off the presses, by the way), and include a story highlighting the fact that the PRT was responsible for this catastrophe. Apparently for lack of other subject matter, he also decided to include a half-page picture of himself in another section of this particular issue.

Let me rephrase this situation in the terms that I see it in: The PRT (and more generally, the United States) provided all of the tools necessary for this man to do his job, including the building, the printing equipment, and the training to operate the equipment. When one minor event occurred, this man then used the tools we provided for him, and proceeded to publicize a story about our supposed failures and shortcomings. I have seen villagers reject offers for help, I have seen them accuse us of not doing anything for them, and I have been told regularly that what we are doing is not nearly enough. Today though, the Director of Communications won the prize.

He is not representative of most of the local government or most of the local population. Most people want more, but they also appreciate whatever help we can provide. A lack of gratitude goes hand-in-hand with aid work, but it is an issue that has worn on me the longer I have stayed here. The past two days have been unique; I don't generally encounter so many negative issues all at once. It's also possible at this point that my threshold for these sorts of things is critically low. I do know that a year is definitely enough; many people on the team feel the same way, and we saw the same issues with the previous team as they got ready to leave last year. The new team will arrive soon with a fresh perspective, and hopefully they will continue the progress we have been able to make this year.

My next post will be more upbeat, don't worry. It may take another week, but I'm going to try to document the progression of a new school building, as a sort of construction success story. Keep nagging me about it, because if it takes any more than a week to write the next post, it may never get done, since at that point our replacements should be almost here. That, by the way, is the best news I've heard all year.