Stories from the Road
The Oracle
Once upon a time there was a village where the people were hungry
and dissatisfied with their situations and no one knew what to do. The chief of
the village summoned the strongest young man and said, “Go over the mountains,
find the wise Oracle and bring her to us; she will tell us what we need to do”.
So the young man set off and after much hardship and many weeks he found the
Oracle and brought her back to the village.
The Oracle asked, “So I am here, what is the problem?” And the
villagers replied, “Great Oracle we are hungry and unhappy!” and the Oracle
asked them, “So what is the answer to your problem?” and the villages stared at
each other in confusion and one brave villager replied, “We are hungry and
don’t know the answer to all the problems in our village, that is why we sent
for you so that you can tell us the answers.” And the Oracle asked them many
questions about those things that the villagers already knew about their
situation and about the challenges they were facing and the reasons, and then
she said, “ You know a lot about your situation, if you can’t find the answers
in what you already know then I won’t be able to help you”. And slowly she
stood up, picked up her walking staff and without another word began the trek
back over the mountains to her home. The villagers looked at each other in disbelief;
they had expected the Oracle to give them a simple answer that would solve
their problems. Wasn't she the one they had been waiting for, the one they had
put their hopes on, the wise one? Some villagers were disappointed, some were
discouraged and some were even angry.
Some months went by and the poor conditions in the village had
not improved, so the chief consulted with the elders and they agreed, they
would send for the Oracle again to seek her wisdom. They agreed also that this
time when she asked if they knew the answer to their problems, half the village
would say they knew the answer and the other half would say they didn’t and in
this way they would elicit the answer from the Oracle to what they should do to
make their lives better and more successful.
So again the young man was sent to beg the Oracle to visit and
she consented and together they slowly made the journey back to the village of
hungry people. And again she asked if they knew the answer to their problems.
And as they had agreed, half the village said that they knew the answer and
half the village said they did not know and they asked the Oracle what they
should do. The Oracle thought for a moment and then said, “Those who know the
answer tell those who don’t know.” And then she took her walking staff and
without another word left the village.
That night the chief had a dream and the next day he called
everyone together. And he said, “The Oracle did in fact give us the answer but
we didn't have the ears to hear it. The answer is that the solution to our
problem lies within us, because we can only respond to things we already know
to be true. If they were beyond our comprehension we could not respond, so anything
we can do is within our comprehension, so the answers to our problems are
already with us.”
Reflection
I have told this story many times. On one occasion I was
talking with a group of staff in Vietnam about local value chain development. They
had been furiously taking detailed notes and I had the strong sense that they
were expectantly waiting for me to give some miracle solution for what they
should do for producers in their communities. They all had a copy of the ninety
page local value chain manual and they wanted copies of all available
PowerPoint presentations as well.
I could feel the pressure on me to be the expert but was very
aware also that the answers were not in the notes. So I stopped and said
something like:
“Market development is easy, first
you find out what buyers are buying, then you find out what people are
producing, after that, you and the community try to figure out how the market
might work better so that producers can get more for their products. And this
is generally by assisting producers to buy inputs like fertilizers and better seed,
to supply more of what the market is demanding and increase their bargaining
power by selling collectively. And to the extent that it is possible, farmers
work together and partner with other organizations with which they share common
interests. Then you all work together and innovate what seems to be working so
that whatever successes have emerged can be maximized and experiences are shared
about what has been effective. At various times you take a step back to see
what the impact has been and what can be learned and discussed for the future.”
And everyone
agreed that they knew this already and that it was helpful when it was spoken
so simply. And so I told the story of the Oracle above and then said:
“The answers are already with you. And the answers are in the
communities you work in and you must be the Oracle to them; just as I must be
the Oracle to you, the one who helps you see what you already know. And perhaps
helps you fill in some of the missing pieces when you have decided what you
want to do.”
I believe there is something we all need to
learn about our tendency to believe that answers lie outside ourselves or
beyond our ability to find them and our tendency to believe in the power of the
expert to solve problems that only we can solve.
I think as
development professionals we too often fall into the trap of our own need to be
useful, which quickly becomes us wanting to be the experts, to hold the
answers, to want to be of more value in pitiful situations and not to
disappoint the expectations of those we are working alongside.
A less
obvious trap is that those we are engaging with expect us to come up with
simple answers to solve their challenges and put pressure on us “just tell us
what to do”. I have seen this in communities where villagers are effectively
saying “just tell us what to do and we will do it, you are the expert”. But in
fact, between the lines, mostly what the villagers are really saying is “you
commit yourself to us, you tell us what to do and give us what you can and we
will decide what we think and what we will do, and if we do what you say and it doesn't work out then it will be your fault not ours.” I have seen this
tendency when working with field staff as well, “you are the expert, stop
trying to facilitate us and just give us the answers!”
I see this
story of the community and the Oracle as a gateway into one of the fundamental challenges
of international development, namely we being the “experts” and trying to
transmit new knowledge or ways of seeing things beyond the current knowledge of
the community or staff that we are engaging with. We can think, “If others
don’t know the solution that seems clear to us, isn’t it our responsibility to
educate them and tell them what they should do? “
What I have
observed is that too often we introduce new concepts and or language which
becomes appropriated at the hearers own level of understanding. But then often
the words or concepts lose their power, if they are just acted on as a theory
that is not really understood rather than a process of applying different ways
of doing things because we see our situations differently. The way we learn new
ways and worldviews is typically by doing and reflecting. It is a personal
journey of lived experience, not an adopted one belonging to the “expert”.
Many times I
have observed international aid and relief organizations, whose collective
worldview very much revolves around compliance, policies for everything, risk
minimization and staff fitting into the current culture, talking about the organization’s
need for entrepreneurship, creativity and risk taking. Yet the people who are
talking about these things and the recruiters who vainly try to recruit new
creative and entrepreneurial staff, struggle to recognize people who are
creative or entrepreneurial. This is because they have no significant lived
experience of these ways of seeing the world. When these recruiters come across
someone who is genuinely creative or entrepreneurial, they tend to see them as
unsuitable for the organization. The
recruiters have appropriated the language of innovation, creativity and
entrepreneurship, given it new meanings consistent with their compliance driven
world views and in so doing made the words and concepts largely impotent. If creative
people are recruited they tend not to be effective or not to stay with the
organization, as their talents are generally not respected or they are given too
little autonomy and support to be effective.
The question
is whether it is really possible for us or others to conceive of things for
which we have no relevant existing experience to tie the new learning into. And if we do, then potentially we can find the
wisdom in ourselves to take the next steps. In community development the
following saying is often quoted “The wisdom of the local people always exceeds
that of the experts.” But do we, who may be called experts, actually believe
this to be true? Of course there is role for people who know more and who have
more experience. But perhaps this role is
more that of a catalyst, where we can assist in opening up possibilities and allowing others to see
new opportunities, to have new dreams but leaving the answers and the action with
those we walk beside. Like a wise guide on a hiking track that we know well, we
point out the flora fauna and places from which best to view the landscape but the
journey of those we are guiding is always their own. Here it is our job to be
the Oracle and theirs to discover their own next steps. And that is what the
Oracle in the story did; she came to the village with the purpose of helping
the villagers to see their challenges in new ways and that they already held the
answers to many of the problems they were asking her to solve.
Some of my work in Kenya’s Rift Valley is an area we call
Wema , we work with communities in two areas, one is Weseges and the other Maji
tamu and we have combined the two names. Weseges people are primarily Kalenjin
and in Maji tamu the people are mostly Kikuyu. They are traditional rivals and
at times there has been violence between them. We are meeting in a hut with a
tin roof, concrete floor and split log walls. Bright light shines through
spaces between the logs like halogen into the half light of the room. The
windows have no glass but shutters for lock up. It is like the hut in a Wild
West movie and has recently been taken over by the Waseges committee on loan
from the local government and the group has renovated it. They have installed a
2 meter square blackboard at one end and the room is filled with white plastic
molded chairs. The group proudly tells me they purchased the chairs from
membership contributions. I am meeting with around 25 men and women who
comprise management committees from the two economic empowerment groups.
Normally I ask them to tell me what has happened in each of their group’s
during the six or so months since I last visited.
Getting a true sense of what is happening can be awkward
as the achievements for one group in some areas may overshadow the other and
there is an unspoken competitiveness. This time I decided to try something
different. I made a vertical chalk line on the blackboard and at one point put
‘Start’ and the other end I put “Now”. And then I asked all those present to
help me plot the achievements of the last 3 years. And from their own history
it emerged that they saw the first year was about dreaming what might be
possible, the second year was dealt with difficulties and disappointments including
many resignations within the committees and some confusion about direction. And
then when we came to the third year there were so many actions and achievements
that there was hardly space enough to write everything in. And I joked that is
seemed like a marriage; the first year was the honey moon, the second year we
realized the reality of our choices and that our choice to work together was
not going to be easy, commitment and faithfulness were required not just
dreaming. And the third year was when the babies came and now it was our work
to nourish and build what we had created. And there was a great explosion of
laughter and and little speeches by various members about the truth of this.
And I said, “Do you remember when I had first come and
you said “Mzungu, tell us what we should do” and you looked at me expectantly
with you notebooks out and the pens ready? "
Heads nodded and faces lit up, there were embarrassed smiles
and a hum of agreement
And I asked them,
“Does anyone think now this Mzungu can tell you anything
about what you should do?” And we all laughed and laughed, like it was the
silliest thing in the world.
Jock Noble November 2013,
Jock Noble is the Lead of World Visions Economic Development Learning Hub for the Middle East and Eastern Europe. After a career of trying to teach turtles to fly he finally got into the water and is learning to swim with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment