Riding on Trust
I am free
falling, no escape. My head in my hands, panic somewhere just below where my
heart should be. I tell myself I have been to this place before and so far it
has always ended alright but right now I am finding this hard to believe.
I have come
to Hanoi to deliver some training to our local staff to share insights and
approaches that will help them to make market systems work better for farmers
who are poor. Last week was a busy one in the office, mind numbing and endless
bureaucracy and meetings and I didn’t, I couldn’t immerse myself, go deeply
into the material and now I am trying to and I realise don’t know what anything
is. I am sure I have nothing to teach that will matter to anyone, no wisdom
that will transform anything, nothing I can think to say that is worth more
than a glass of water and a look up the road. I wonder about faking it but
don’t think I can do this over two solid days of training. I don’t know if I am
authentic or not but I know I don’t have the energy to intentionally fake
anything these days.
I am
bringing myself only; for some time I have seen how to do my work like one of
those clever optical pictures, now you see a witch and now you see the
beautiful woman. At this moment all I can see is the witch. Like the spectrum
where there is a line with realism one side and optimism on the other, and just
a little to the left of realism is pessimism and just a little to the right of optimism
is bullsh*t and I don’t know what the middle is called, nor does it seem that
there is any rest for me there. I feel called to the emergence of spirit and
don’t how that fits into systems and donors and organisational structures.
I have four
PowerPoint presentations open on my computer, great work, dozens perhaps
hundreds of hours in the making, well thought through, well constructed. The total
number of slides is three hundred and three. That is an average of one slide
every 6 minutes for 5 days. I have two days. So I do the only logical thing, I
think which slides are not absolutely necessary to give a thorough two day
competency course on ‘markets development’? And that brought me to the place
that I am at this minute with my head in my hands. I reduced the slides from three hundred and three
slides to zero; I couldn’t find anything that I thought was absolutely
essential in the slides to doing the work in the field. So here I am in Hanoi,
it took me about 16 hours to get here and I don’t have anything that seems
useful to tell anyone about.
I went for a
walk this morning, this whole place is buzzing, everyone seems intent on
something and every square metre of real-estate, footpath and roadway is
crackling like a hot wok. What do I possibly have to tell anyone here about anything
to do with business? Someone’s quote ‘the wisdom of the community always
exceeds that of the experts’, sounds right to me. Maybe I can help them see
things that will make a difference. Yeh right.
Four days
have passed, three very of them in the countryside north of Hanoi being shown activities
of farmers by enthusiastic staff watched over by government minders and
sometimes snake eyed, vacant faced secret police and me watching the
interactions of our staff, who I know will be attending the workshop on
Thursday.
Its Thursday
and I am in the conference room of a two star hotel, the room smells of stale
tobacco and soy sauce, twenty expectant faces waiting for me to impart
knowledge and wisdom that will change their lives and the communities they work
in. The data projector at my table is humming and I turn it off. There are
worried looks, I sense here that training with no PowerPoint’s will be like a
meal with no rice. So I say, don’t worry I have over 300 PowerPoint slides and
you will all get them before I finish. There is relief and smiles.
Once upon a time
there was a village where the people were starving and no one knows what to do.
The chief of the village summons the strongest young man and says “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 sets off and after much hardship and many weeks
he finds the Oracle and brings her back to the village.
The Oracle
asks, so i am here, what is the problem? And the villagers reply, “Great Oracle
we are starving!” and the Oracle asks them “So what is the answer to your
problem?” and the villages stare at each other in confusion and one brave
villager replies “We are starving and don’t know the answer to the problems in
our village, that is why we sent for you so that you can tell us the answers.”
And the Oracle replied, “If you don’t know the answer I won’t be able to help
you”. And slowly she stood up, picked up her walking staff without another word
began the trek back over the mountains to her home. Some months went by and the
chief consulted with the elders and they agreed, they would send for the Oracle
again to seek her wisdom and 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 save themselves.
So again the
brave young man was sent to beg the Oracle to visit again 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
that the chief had a dream and then 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 within us.”
And so I
told this story. And then I said, market development is easy, first you find
out what buyers are buying, then you find out what people are producing, after
that you try to figure out how the market might work better for producers so
that can get more for their products. And this is generally by assisting producers
to buy inputs better or to supply more of what the market is demanding or
increase their bargaining power by selling collectively. Then you work together
innovate what seems to be working so that you can maximise whatever successes
have emerged and you watch and talk and then try communicate what everyone has
been doing and learning to as many producers as possible. As more producers
become involved you offer your support and share experiences about what has
been effective within the value chains they are part of. And at various times
you take a step back to see what the impact has been and what can be learned
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 said the answer is already with you. And the answer is in
the communities you work in, and you must be the Oracle to them. Just as I must
be the Oracle to you. And I am thinking about the belief in the power of the
other, the respect and valuing and what kind of organisational structures might
sustain this better.
And people
nod and faces are expectant and still hungry so I remind everyone that I have
300 slides.
Once upon a
time there was a traveller who walked several days without food and arrived at
dusty village. Two rows of cylindrical, mud walled grass thatched huts each
side of a dusty dirt track. It was hot in the early afternoon and the village
smelled of charcoal fires and cow dung. The villagers sat in slithers of shade on
split logs pressed hard against the walls of the huts or squatted in the pools
of of shade under the few trees in the central common near the Well. The flies
were thick and tried to find moisture in corners of the kid’s eyes and mouths.
And into this village the hungry visitor came. And to the first person he said,
I am hungry can you spare a few mouthfuls of food. But the villager said “We
are too hungry uncle and no one here has any food to spare.” And at the second
hut and the third the villagers said the same. The visitor rested a while under
one of the trees and in the cooler part of afternoon he went to where Well was
and spoke in a voice loud enough to be heard through the whole village. “I see
everyone is hungry, and so am I make a big meal and feed everyone, please come
and join in the feast, this evening we will all eat well.”
The visitor
asked for the biggest pot in the village and someone brought it, he asked for
some fire wood and the kids collected what they could. And the man filled the
huge pot with water and put it on the fire. And when the water was boiling he
took out a large polished stone from his bag and announced. “I will now make
stone soup!”
After some
time the visitor took out a spoon from his bag and took a mouthful of the
steaming liquid. “Ah it is coming along well, I think it just needs a little
salt, can anyone spare a little salt?” and someone brought some. And the pot
bubbled and the villagers chatted amongst themselves and waited expectantly.
And the visitor again tasted the liquid. “Oh wonderful” he said, “Its coming
along well, all we need are one or two onions, can anyone help with two
onions?” and these were supplied. And so the soup bubbled and every so often
the visitor would taste the broth ask for one more ingredient, one time
carrots, the next potatoes, and the next some chilli and the next some maize
and finally a chicken. And when the soup was ready everyone had more than they
could eat and there was plenty left over.
And so I
asked the people in the workshop, what do you think this story about? And
someone said, “It shows how when everyone works together there can be more than
any one person working alone.” And everyone nodded. And I asked what else? And
someone said “The traveller had to trust and believe that the villagers had it
within them to respond, otherwise all they would have had was hot water with a
rock in it and the visitor would have to run for his life. “
And that to
me is the is the wonder of this story, that a visitor to a community would be
prepared to risk himself or herself not based on a belief that their job was to
be an expert or to own a success but to take a risk that other could be shown
they have the answer. To have faith in the possibility that ignited belief in
one person might be the beginning of fire and change a world. And this probably
isn’t going happen through a log frame for soup or a professional Power Point
presentation.
It will be
one person after other taking personal risks, trusting what they can find in
themselves is also in the other. And this is where I came to with the two day workshop;
that it wasn’t about the material to present, as the participants in fact did
know what to do. And that to show slides was likely to steal their own
knowledge from them. That the whole purpose of the workshop was for me to find
ways to show what they know already is really the essential part and for each
one to ask would they take the risk to belive the change in themselves was what
it would take, just as now I was showing how I had confidence in their
knowledge and abilities. I can hear you
asking, “But surely there is new knowledge to impart, new ways of doing things,
technologies that they won’t be aware of?” And yes there are, they are
everywhere like rough diamonds on the ground, but if you don’t have the right
eyes you can’t see the potential wealth around you and you can stay poor with
your hand out.
And I am
reminded again of that quote by Thomas Merton:
"Do
not depend on the hope of results. . . .You may have to face the fact that your
work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not
perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you
start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the
rightness, the truth of the work itself . . . ..You gradually struggle less and
less for an idea and more and more for specific people . . . . In the end, it
is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything[1]
Before the
workshop we were among some ethnic minorities north of Hanoi. And at one point
the road became impassable and so we got out and began to walk, and after some
time one of our staff on a motorcycle came back to get me as the village was
still about 5 kilometres. The motorcycle had an engine the size of my blender
at home and its tires were about as thick as my wrist. My driver is in his mid-twenties,
small and cheerful. The road is slippery shiny red brick clay, in patches there
are deep trenches filled with water where vehicles have recently become bogged.
So we slip slide our way to the village at 30 or 40 km per hour and I feel sure
that these tiny tires will slip from beneath us and there we will be bodies and
mud and motorcycle twisted and broken 50 miles from anywhere. But I think he
has probably been doing this all his life with a family on the back and all I
need to do is become a 100kg sack of potatoes, hang on and believe he knows
what he is doing.
And that
night as a dozen of us sat around over dinner I publically thanked him for his
riding expertise and carrying me so safely. And he shared how scared he was on
that slippery road and that his body was rigid with tension that we would fall
off. And if I had known that, I probably wouldn’t have taken the journey with
him. So it goes.
[1]
Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O.
(January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an Anglo-American Catholic
writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of
Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet,
social activist, and student of comparative religion
