Message-ID: <32C3ECA6.5A05@uniontel.net> Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 07:35:02 -0800 From: David Johnson <mailto:pinefarm@UNIONTEL.NET> Subject: Re: Pumps that don't work To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Barbara Kerr wrote: >
> Brace up, David. No hunkering down needed. I appreciate these
> comments. Yet we all do come from different places. For
> instance, I see a semantic problem here. And I see the
> psychological situation from a different perspective which relates
> closely, I believe, to where some people are in the developing
> areas.
>
> By saying that people must "own" a device for it to be spread
> within that group, I was not thinking of economics, but of a
> psychological condition...a sense of what is appropriate for the
> particular person. This might be extrapolated to what is
> appropriate for a whole community or tribe.
>
> In my teens, I remember someone buying me a coat -- a brand new,
> pretty, well-fitting coat and I remember the awkwardness I felt in
> the shop and my emotional discomfort. I took it off and tried to
> put it back on the rack several times. I clearly remember that I
> felt I was not a person to have such a coat. They did persist and
> I was forced to wear it for quite few months before this feeling
> left.
>
> I also realize that I missed some very good opportunities because
> there were doors that did not seem like I "should" open them. I
> literally looked at the door of the University of Chicago Billings
> Hospital, shortly after I became an undergraduate student there. I
> turned away and never pursued that chance, although I was a
> registered nurse with an outstanding scholastic record and had an
> introduction to a pediatrician there which would have opened an
> interesting opportunity. Just looking at it, I felt it was not for
> me.
>
> I am white, was considered very smart, conscientious and a good
> worker, etc. But there were many things that seemed "off limits"
> to a young girl from the southern mountains. Psychologically it
> would have taken a lot of preparation before I would have used a
> solar cooker or let myself be seen with one at that stage of my
> life.
>
> What a long time ago! But there are definitely psychological
> barriers to accepting things outside one's own culture even if
> they work for others. It is in this sense that I think usually
> isolated people need to be given enough experience and group
> support to "own" a technology before they will independently use
> it. Yet, sometimes strangeness can be overcome with considerable
> speed when the person is desperate, as when the refugee women in
> Kenya accepted solar cooking within a few days because they had
> little wood and no other way to look forward to cooking until they
> saw solar cookers doing it.
>
> Change into new ways is not as easy as some people from the
> mainline Western culture and modern "developed" areas may believe.
> Careful technology introduction efforts may be justified. In my
> humble opinion...well, maybe not so humble any more.
>
> Barbara
I agree that if we say "feel responsibility for" rather than "own" we clarify what we mean and I go along. A lot of people cite the failure of people to care for the water systems furninshed by the World Bank in Nepal as an example of how "giving things to people" doesn't work. My experience suggests to me that the fault in these situations is not that the system was not built by the people but that not enough follow up was done. You can't just install such a thing and walk away. I think if proper training is done after the system is in operation people will appreciate it and care for it regardless of whether they had any part in installing it or not. In line with your comments on not accepting something because it was too strange to you let me tell you a bit more about the water system. The system ran water lines up to each person's property line and ended with a faucet at about waist height. In most cases this outlet was quite a walk from the house. In the year or so I observed the system, nobody ran any piping any further than that. The women who used to walk out to the well to get buckets of water now walked out to the faucet and got buckets of water. Plastic pipe was available and cheap and the men had done all of the piping to the houses so, they surely knew how to work with it yet, they did nothing. The Peace Corps Volunteer who moved into the village, in almost his first act, ran pipe up to his shack, dug a drain pit and installed a shower. His neighbor used to come over and use his shower yet, nobody followed his example. I don't know why that was. Its been about 4 years since I was there and I will venture a guess that at least some of the villagers have now piped their houses. I puzzled over this and finally came to feel that it simply was going to take a long time for the people to absorb what must have seemed a miracle to them and then to move on to the next step. I think that they will move to the next step but, it may take a long time. It may be that, for some reason I don't understand, the villagers are reluctant to step out in front of their neighbors. Possibly there are social pressures at work that I can't understand. Maybe if one does it, they will all try it. Then again, maybe not. I've seen it go the other way ie: one person in a village will adopt some technique which all the other villagers will readily agree is vastly better than their old ways and yet none of them will follow suit. That is probably why a lot of ag. demonstration plots fail. It is not enough to show a person a better way. That's pretty easy. To get him to adopt that better way is much harder. The old cliche about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish doesn't always work out. In Sri Lanka, some agency gave outboard motors to fishermen who used to have to spend all day rowing out in the surf to get a meager catch of fish to feed their families. With the new motors, they still settle for about the same meager catch, it just doesn't take as long. They don't, as it was hoped, catch fish for market and raise their standards of living. Possibly they feel that simply working less for the same living standard is pay-off enough. Maybe they are right. Then again, if we all felt that way, we wouldn't care much about all of the things we fill these postings with. Again, we judge others by much less stringent standards than we judge ourselves. We don't expect much from them. When they do little, we don't push them to do more, we simply try to understand why they do as they do. Dave Johnson