My Idea of a Good Time

We had mini celebrations in our workshops yesterday. Both groups decided what problems they wanted to address. The men unanimously decided on addressing the problem of a lack of transportation in the community. Every woman but one voted to pick the problem of poor harvest. Both groups tried to get me to vote, but I told them I wasn't going to have to live with the project; I'd be going back to the U.S. in a couple months, so I shouldn't vote.

 

After the votes were counted and the problems had been chosen everyone in the room seemed to be excited. It had been pretty clear for the past three weeks that transportation and poor harvest were the foremost problems in the community. We had been hearing it from everyone. So we had a mini celebration - a round of applause - and a couple of the women let out some "Yey yey yey"s, which I think you might have to hear to know what I'm talking about. I'm guessing that everyone is relieved to have the needs assessment and problem identification part of the curriculum finished. I can't tell you how many times I said and heard the word "mambo" - "problem" in Swahili - over the past few weeks. Because all the written work we do in the workshops is in Swahili, I now recognize the word for every conceivable community problem in Swahili. We've discussed each problem so many times in so many ways that I think in the past few days it has gotten to the point where it's so repetitive it's almost boring. I have to remember that this is a good thing. It means that we're not forgetting anything.

 

Now comes the exciting work. After the 30 second celebrations, I told the participants that we were going to be diving straight into the next step - ensuring that we have a complete understanding of the problem, its causes, and effects. Today we started to break down the problem and create visual diagrams of them, which help to see identify the different ways in which we can approach the problem with our project. Then we start putting together the details on how the project will really work.

 

When I put it that way, it doesn't sound so exciting. But when you consider that these details have the potential to increase the annual income of the people in the community by up to six fold, it gets a lot more exciting. Imagine increasing your annual income by six times! I know I'd be excited. My calculations are based on people's projections that with good seeds and fertilizer a given area of land will produce three times the amount of corn that it currently does. Transportation will allow the community access to markets where they may be able to sell their corn for three times the price that are currently forced to in Meheba. Of course, some of that extra income will have to pay for the costs of the inputs and transportation, but they should still come out way ahead.

 

Of course, this is all just in our imaginations right now. These are dreams, but slogging away on boring details can make exciting dreams come true if you do it right. Hard work isn't enough though.

 

My graduate advisor - who says wise things every four sentences - once said that hard work is not hard enough. She told us this is something her freshman have difficulty understanding. After receiving Cs or worse, some of them come back and tell her, "but I put more time into this paper than I've ever put into a paper before; I can't get a C." A good paper is a good paper, and a bad paper is a bad paper. It doesn't matter how hard you work on a bad paper. It's still a bad paper.

 

I try to keep that in mind a lot as I work on PACE and teach my participants. There is no doubt that we are all working hard. But hard work guarantees nothing. Many people have worked for much longer than I have and failed miserably or actually made the problems they were trying to fix worse than when they started. The key is good, thoughtful, meticulous planning. For the next month, we will be planning meticulously - examining our problem from every angle and molding a solution. Few people would describe being meticulous as exciting. Some might say downright boring.

 

But success is exciting. And so is having the means to give your children three meals a day, send them to school in nice clothes, and get them to a hospital when they are sick.