Panama Ponderings: Sustainable Development = Empowerment

Celio, Enrique, and Roberto were standing at the bus stop when I approached. I greeted them, asked Celio if he would be attending the Water Committee Seminar, and when he demurred, I turned to Enrique and asked why his neighborhood and family never chose a date to have a meeting with me to discuss a latrine project.

“It’s because we do not agree with your project.”

And then Roberto launched into a soliloquy about how asking the people to pay for their own latrines out of their own pockets was what everyone disagreed with. The previous volunteers only ever asked for the people to provide labor; someone else paid for the materials. Why not this time?

“But, Roberto,” I replied, “you built a latrine for yourself and for your son. Who paid for those materials?”

“Well, I did, but Enrique isn’t capable of doing that. Some people can but most people can’t.”

This had been the theme all the month of March – we’re just not capable. We need to wait for someone else to help us. And even when someone – like Roberto – is actually able to do something without waiting for him, he – and everyone else – assumes he is exceptional, and that no one else should expect to be able to do that.

This sentiment, this sense of helplessness and inability to take control in improving things themselves, this is what I am fighting. The role of a Peace Corps Volunteer, in our model of Sustainable Development, is Empowerment.

Which is not to say that this role is easy. In fact, we often find ourselves at odds with other aid workers. Aid can come in many forms, but one way to look at it is to divide it into three categories: Relief, Rehabilitation, and Development. For example, provide Relief for tsunami victims – get them food, water, and shelter immediately to save their lives. Provide Rehabilitation to rebuild cities destroyed by flooding – bring in help to work with the people in the rebuilding process. And do Development to empower people to make improvements themselves; the responsibility is on them to make the changes, and the help comes mostly in the form of teaching skills, of facilitating, of organizing.

However, aid groups often do Relief tasks to solve Development problems. Last month, a group arrived in Quebrada Pastor – they handed out free medication, they did an activity with the children in the school, and they installed an 800 gallon plastic water storage tank and rainwater catchment system at one house.

They were very nice people with good intentions, but giving away a giant plastic tank to one family completely opposes the message I have been trying to send to my people for the last eight months. The message of the tank is: “If you wait around long enough, maybe some nice gringos will give you a tank so that you don’t have to fetch water from the stream anymore.” I message I have been saying is: “You can build your own tank using concrete. If it breaks, you can fix it. You don’t even have to save up nearly as much money as a plastic tank costs. You can treat the water to make sure it’s clean. You have the ability to save yourself time and improve your health – you only need to learn how to build a tank.” The message is not, “You are dependent upon the good will of richer people to make your life better.”

The thing is – the people of Quebrada Pastor have been living without water in their houses for generations. They are probably not going to die tomorrow without a giant plastic tank. So giving away stuff – a Relief tactic – is not really necessary here. Better that they find a way to make water in their house happen for themselves, or that they work alongside someone to seek out a way of doing so – a way that works for them, where they have a say, where they know what to do if it has a problem. After all, what happens when the tank or piping breaks? And there are other issues – What message does this send to the rest of the community? Why did this family get chosen instead of any of the 40-some other families that don’t have water in their house? (Answer: there was not really any strategic planning toward that end – they house was off by itself, making it not useful for sharing the 800 gallons of water with other families; the family was not the poorest or the largest or the sickest or the most capable of maintaining the tank. I know of at least 4 other families in that area alone who would better fit those descriptions. This family was chosen because the boat driver, translator, and guide for the aid group is related to the family.)

Now I better understand why, when I am walking around proposing projects that involve input on the part of the people – all the preparation to build an aqueduct, or buying the materials and building your own tank – the response is often, “Well, why don’t you just get us a plastic tank? Like that other house?”

I have been mulling over all of these issues – how I am going to try again with the message that my people are capable of so much more than they themselves believe, when, two weeks ago, I was presented with an amazing opportunity.

My boss (the head of the Environmental Health program for Peace Corps-Panamá) asked if I would host Tech Week in Quebrada Pastor.

I think I posted about Tech Week last June when I attended, as a trainee, in the Comarca – a week of hands-on learning (my favorite!) held at a current Volunteer’s site – experiencing an indigenous host family and work on construction projects much in the way that we eventually would in our own sites.

This is a really cool opportunity for me to try again at my message – “Look, guys, we are so capable of being organized and working together and doing projects – like y’all did with the previous two Volunteers – and we’ve made so much progress toward new projects, that Peace Corps actually wants to come HERE – bringing all of their 26 new trainees – to learn from US about how to do Environmental Health projects! And as a benefit, we get their labor to help with what we’re doing, even though they don’t know anything – so WE’RE the bosses!”

Well, that’s how I’ve been trying to frame the whole thing when I speak to individuals and when I made an announcement to everyone at the last Assembly at the school.

It really is a neat thing to get to do – it will be a lot of planning and organizing and logistical work, but a really cool opportunity for me, and for my people. Maybe it will help motivate them out of their feelings of inability.

Despite this great opportunity, I realize that the effort for empowerment is still going to be a hard fight, because in the end, all I can do is offer help, but I can’t force my help to be accepted. I encounter the same sense of helplessness, of resignation to accepting the way things are, permeating every aspect of life. The other day I hiked an hour up the hill looking for Rubén in his house – he is a member of my Committee for Community Projects – because I wanted to invite him to a meeting and hadn’t seen him in a while. He was so sick he could barely walk – and he had been like this for two weeks with no sign of getting better.

When I asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, he told me he couldn’t because he didn’t have the money to buy any prescribed medication. I offered to lend him money – not something I normally do, but this was a special case since he is my friend and works a lot with me – and he refused any borrowed money, saying he would not be able to pay it back. His mom told me that the moment the family gets money, they immediately spend it on food, and that they would never hold onto it to honor a debt (an incredibly self-aware observation). I offered everything I could think of as alternative methods to pay back the debt: giving me food from the farm, helping me paint the house, machete-ing my yard to clean up the vegetation. They turned down everything.

I was pretty worried about him and tried everything possible to communicate that – how will he be able to provide for the family if he is too sick to work? Finally I offered to personally take Rubén to the hospital to figure out what was wrong and worry about the money later. I said I could take him the next day, since I was leaving for Panama City anyway. His response was that he needed to go to church that afternoon, so he couldn’t go to the hospital. Yes, going to the hospital is important, he told me, but God comes first.

I was at a loss. I tried to suggest that perhaps God would want him to get better, and that perhaps this was an opportunity to do so, but there was nothing I could do to convince him. He was decided. He told me that maybe, with the help of his brothers from the church, he would be able to go to the hospital within a week.

I left feeling very frustrated – it felt very urgent to me that Rubén get better and I couldn’t understand why he refused all efforts on my part. And I realized that the real source of frustration was how impotent I felt – there was simply nothing I could do to change this situation. It was very humbling, and a good lesson. I can only help those who want my help.

Pictures:

The current three participants in the latrine project, working on sorting out the order of construction steps as part of the second mandatory charla.