The people who live along the road have certain advantages. It is easier to travel, and as a result transport their products to sell and buy thing and bring them to their houses. (This is something I really appreciate, even if it mean listening to engine braking all night. At least that occasionally drowns out the sound of crying babies all around me?) It is easier – and, in times when the streams are swollen with rain, less dangerous – to send their children to school. It is easier to organize, neighbors live closer, it is easier to know when something is going on, to attend meetings, to get information, to communicate. And the people who live along the road have the first access to help.
For example: of the latrines that were constructed with the help of the first Peace Corps Volunteer, the vast majority went to people who live along the road – there are maybe 5 of the 25 located more than a 10 minute walk from the school, which is the center of the community, right on the road. Of the existing aqueducts, the one built by the government to serve the school also serves all the houses around the school, and 2 of the 3 built with the help of the second Peace Corps Volunteer are also located farther along the road.
The remaining latrines from the first Volunteer's project tended to go to the houses of the most put-together people in the other parts of the community – the people who are the most hard-working, ambitious, “with it,” and otherwise capable of pursuing help.
This raises an interesting and troubling point. Do I help the people who actually showed up at my mandatory training session? Or do I try to help the people who wanted to but can't?
So far in my work here, I have striven to be absolutely fair. When I was advertising these two current projects (building a ferrocement rainwater catchment tank, building a pit latrine), I walked to every single house in the community to let them know what was going on. And I made sure to send out invitations, so that every household was reminded. Everyone is expected to do exactly the same things to participate in the project – attend two mandatory trainings, pay for the materials, and do the construction work for themselves and for those in their work group who helped them. Every group that is interested in pursuing an aqueduct project has been given the same set of instructions and the same offers for my assistance in getting organized so that they can advance towards the production of a design and the solicitation of funds. I have tried very hard not to make special exceptions, seeking ways within the rules I have laid down to help people meet the demands.
Working in this manner has a few observable effects. First, I will only help people who want my help. I am making an equal amount of effort to offer my help, and then only continue to extend that effort when they return the effort in a show of seeking my help. Peace Corps only works with communities that solicit our help – and I only work with people who show that they want my help. But second, this method of fairness is to the advantage of those who are most on-the-ball. The people who are best able to pursue help are the ones who get the help. This method speaks of justice but not of mercy. What about the people who need my help, who want my help, but who don't have it enough together – in terms of organization, or free time, or health – to get it? What about the people who are still so much living day-to-day that they can't sacrifice the time spent working for their food or tending to their children, or dealing with their illness to come to my meetings?
These are the hardest people the help. The people who always get skipped over. The ambitious, motivated, hardworking people might be able to make things happen for themselves even without my help. I'm just providing a little boost.
We talked in training about going after the “low-hanging fruit.” Our time here is limited – Volunteers themselves are the limited resources, as are the trained skills we have to offer. We must make the most of the time that we have, try to have the greatest and most effective and most sustainable impact possible. So we can't spend our time on people who don't want our help, who are not able to maintain the projects that we help them attain. It is a better use of resources to go after the easier targets, to make an impact on the first ones who ask for it and can handle it. But this is a tough thing to deal with. We want to help the people who need it most – but sometimes, we are not able to offer the kind of help that they need. That might better be a role for the Panamanian government, or their families – a more permanent fixture in their lives than a two-year stint. Then, maybe they will be ready to build themselves tanks and latrines and learn about handwashing.
I still don't know if I have this conflict settled in my mind, but there is another issue that came to my attention this week, as well, which is remarkably clear.
We finally began surveying the school and central aqueduct – surveying data of the as-built (and modified since its original construction) system will be useful to help me better understand the hydraulics and diagnose its problems and where to focus the solutions. Only Willy (the new Water Committee president, and my host “dad”) and Eduberto (another member of the Water Committee) showed up to help, the bare minimum for doing this effectively.
I decided to use an Abney level to do the surveying – a nifty little tool that measures the angle off of level so that you can use basic trigonometry to calculate the change in elevation – even though it is significantly more complicated to use and understand than a water level, because it is a heck of a lot faster (if only we had a total station…). We were advised during training that we probably needed to work with other volunteers rather than our community members to use the Abney level, but I decided that I could do it alone, or even offer to teach any interested Water Committee members
Willy was fascinated to learn how to use the Abney level. He's a smart guy, and when I showed him how to use it, it only took a couple practices before he was making the exact same readings I was. So, naturally, as is his nature, he took over the whole business, took control of my pen and notebook to write the measurement, took all the measurements, and even started bossing me around!
I was a bit struck by this. First of all, this is a Peace Corps Volunteer's dream come true – I had just empowered Willy to do this himself. He was learning how to do the work necessary to improve his aqueduct, was taking control of the situation, was making it his own, taking responsibility for it. I only had to step back and let it happen, to teach and then not get in the way, to work less instead of more, to hand over the responsibility and the ownership. All of this was exactly as it is supposed to be. I should be thrilled!
And yet… the tiniest little prideful part of me was hurt. I mean, they told us Peace Corps would be humbling, but... What is doing bossing me around? Who is the engineer here? I taught him how to use this thing not 15 minutes ago, and already he is the boss?
And that's the lesson. We're not here to be the boss. We're not here to take the credit. We're not here to be the “lead engineer,” to feel smart and important, to have our names written on things.
We're here to give all of those things to our communities.
Pictures:
Pretty flowers!
Measuring flow – yet another potential aqueduct
Building the platform for my rainwater catchment tank
Kittens!
Pretty soon they'll be catching rats instead of cockroaches...
... If they can escape the children
...or don't just fall asleep.
Adventure to the mangroves – we didn't get to go fishing, but we found lots of cool stuff! And had lots of fun. It felt like the first few months all over again, with the sense of fun and adventure and newness and unexpectedness…
Children love my map
Surveying!
Still finding big bugs amusing...
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