The content of this post was written mostly while I was still in Botswana, reflecting my sentiments in attempting the impossible task of comprehensively processing or conclusively summarizing my experience as my 8 months overseas came to an end. I also apologize for its lengthiness, but again, filtering through 8 months of life is no easy task, and I promise you it is worth the read.
Perhaps one of the most eye-opening experiences and moments of cognisance came early on in my 8 months, when we went on one of our harrowing driving adventures with our coworkers to be shown notable places in Shakawe. On the way I got to see a whole other side of Shakawe that I had not yet seen just from walking back and forth down the one and only main road every day: it was what my coworkers referred to as the “village”, and a village it was - a very quaint community, with people and families out and about and full of life, going about their lives. Our noisy truck bumping along the makeshift roads between the little clusters of huts and fences, getting stuck numerous times in the sand, seemed to be disturbing the normal daily activity of all the people who stopped what they were doing and stared as we jounced by.
I felt at once both humbled and extremely out of place. My initial thought was that this is more or less what I was picturing when I knew I would be going to a town in rural Botswana. Fortunately or unfortunately for the perpetuation of the stereotypes, the image of “rural Africa” that many people, including myself, have in their head is exactly what I witnessed. Except that instead of feeling like there were things wrong with the scenario and that I needed to do something to help these impoverished people, I was in awe - impressed with the way these people lived, the simplicity of their lives, people living and working together, the fact that things seemed to be working and life carried on as it had for many decades before, the feeling of community and harmony, and of course, the contentedness.
This made me question my role in development. Seeing all these people that are supposedly poor and living in substandard conditions, as a development practitioner should I not want to do something to remedy the situation and improve these people’s lives? If I can drive by this village and not be deeply moved to take action, what is it then that I am setting out to do? Who am I trying to help? Is my help even needed? What does “helping” mean? And what, then, is the purpose of the entire field of development?
Taking a step back, here are some of the things I learned and observed while living and working in Shakawe that may serve to answer these questions.
- People are so much richer than we think. Yes, all of Shakawe is not living in abject poverty and Botswana as a whole is fairly well-off, but the images we often see portraying life in rural villages usually don’t tell the full story. You see the huts, some with their cracked walls and sagging thatch roofs, and assume the people inside are poor. But this is not always the case, at least not in Shakawe. Most people have access to water and electricity, and everyone walks around with a cell phone, if not two or three. There is an established infrastructure and set of institutions and processes. Whether through the formal or informal economy, people are earning an income and contributing to supporting themselves and their families. But the richness also comes from the quality of interactions among people in the community and the ability to be happy or to find light in any situation.
- No matter how different people or societies may appear and no matter how confusing adapting to another culture may seem, I found that there are more similarities than there are differences between life in Botswana and life in Canada. I constantly struggled to define what it was that made Botswana different from Canada, but every time I would find myself picking out just as many similarities as differences. There are the obvious differences, like the landscapes and the languages and the appearance of processes (or seeming lack thereof), but beneath the surface things are really the same, because at the core of it, people are people. We all have the same desires for our lives. We all have the same basic needs. We all have families. We all belong in a community. We all play, grow, learn, share, and feel emotions.
- People have incredible capacities for innovation and coming up with solutions to help themselves. This could be in terms of working collectively for the greater good of the community, coming up with small businesses to help earn an alternate source of income, or even coming up with creative ways to fix something that is broken or substitute for a material that is not available. It is in our nature not just to make do with what we have, but to make the most of it.
- Not everything needs changing and I am not the one who needs to change everything. Yes, others may need help, and morally one might feel obligated to help others to be able to live a happy life with opportunities and free from vulnerabilities, but maybe my help or that of other foreigners is not the best answer. Ideas of what doesn’t work or what needs fixing are often largely based on external perceptions, which can overlook or misjudge the real issues, and make incorrect assumptions about things that might actually work within the context.
- But most of all, it seems the Batswana are most suited to helping themselves “do their own development”. I do not feel like I am needed to do development in Botswana. I am not denouncing the entire purpose of the development field and the aims of reducing inequalities and improving lives of my fellow people; rather I am putting trust in the capacities of others; those who have the knowledge, skills and resources relevant within the cultural context to better be able to come up with appropriate solutions than I am able to do.
To back up some of these statements, I will provide a little bit of context to the nature of development in Botswana.
Generally, the Batswana people are content with the way things are and how things work in their country. In a conversation I had with a 14-year-old girl from Shakawe, she emphasized her contentment with her country and said what she likes about Botswana is that it is peaceful and everyone lives equally. There is a sense of resourcefulness, and a desire to live together in harmony, working with each other to improve the situation for everyone. Identifying and solving their own problems as they see fit gives them a sense of pride and ownership.
Yet, there are still many challenges with development in Botswana, a lot of which stem from this same attitude - sometimes more effort is put into going through the formalities of community decision-making and showing off this harmonious working relationship that the image becomes more important than the intended goals. This could be a whole other post in itself, but briefly, some of the challenges to development in Botswana include a lack of funding from external donors, as Botswana is considered an upper-middle-income country, a lack of motivation, dependency on depleting natural resources for personal and national income, and a divide between local and large-scale initiatives. Nevertheless, despite these challenges, the ability of the people to work together and help themselves has been key to the way development is done in Botswana, and I believe it has been an important component to the country’s success seen in its history.
Not only are the Batswana keen on helping themselves, but from observing locals and working with my co-workers it is evident that the Batswana are much better equipped in their roles than I am; they are much better able to help communities in Botswana because they have a greater understanding of the people, problems and processes of the country and how to get things done. In February, I participated in a three-day staff training workshop on the topic of community development with my co-workers at TOCaDI. I realized that development is taking place on two different levels: I am not directly helping beneficiaries of the projects, as I had envisioned at the start of this placement, but instead I am helping to build the capacity of just a handful of people at TOCaDI, as well as the capacity of the organisation as a whole, who then in their own capacity work to improve the lives of their beneficiaries. In other words, I am helping other people help other people. In some ways, I find this two-tiered process of development unnecessary. My co-workers are learning the same things about development that I have learned in school; they are development workers just as I am learning to be a development worker, and we are both outside entities coming to work with and learn from those who are less well-off than we are. So again, am I or is this extra step needed?
Furthermore, while I am providing support for development practitioners, such as my co-workers, to be able to carry out their work helping others, this same kind of support exists already within Botswana. The Batswana have access to training in development, learning similar concepts about participatory development and bottom-up approaches that I have learned in this program. They have similar discussions about development in Botswana as in Canada: meetings, conferences, workshops and other gatherings of people from the country and the region where people talk about the development agenda and ways to link government, civil society and the private sector within Botswana. Local donors, funds, councils and organisations also exist for support within their own country.
So then based on all of this knowledge and the relevance of my skills in their contexts, am I, or other outside entities, really needed to “do development” in Botswana?
I still do not have all the answers and I do not know exactly where I fit in within the development field. But spending eight months in the small village of Shakawe has been an extremely humbling experience. There is so much to be learned from other people and everyone is an expert in their own right.
My purpose kept changing while I was there - I would think I had it figured out, but then when I would try to explain to people what I was doing in Shakawe anything that came out of my mouth sounded so wrong; I wasn’t actually behind it. In the end, my purpose wasn’t exactly to make a difference in a developing country or to get experience working “in the field”. Instead, my purpose became to learn, about myself and the world. At TOCaDI, I learned that my role was to facilitate and support, contributing where I could, and not to interfere or impose my ideas and ways of doing things. As a result, at times I felt I was being useless or that the work I was doing was not meaningful or there were things which I could not change or understand, which often became very frustrating, but the praise I received for my work was plentiful. I realized that I could not place my Western notions of success or progress onto TOCaDI’s work, and to them, I was being extremely helpful. In the end, it was more important for me to use my strengths and skills in a way that met their objectives and perceived needs, helping TOCaDI move forward in their own way based on their own timeline and resources.
A lot can happen in 8 months, as it did, but there is no question that at the end of it all there is a lot that is learned and there is a tremendous amount of personal growth, both topics which could again be blog posts themselves. I have learned more than can be expressed in words or on paper as a series of tickable boxes. There were of course innumerous ups and downs, and many difficult or challenging experiences, but nothing was wasted. At the very least, at the end of the day I can be proud of the fact that I made a life for myself in a small, rural town in Botswana for 8 months and have many memories to take from the whole experience.
Sometimes in a world where it seems there is so much wrong, we can’t help but wonder if we are doing anything right. I still don’t know if I was anywhere close to changing the world or anyone’s lives with the efforts I put forth while on placement, but I do know that a little bit of knowledge and humanity was exchanged between cultures with me being in Shakawe.
I call myself a hopeful realist. While being very practical and logical, I have faith that the right things will come to the right people and that things will always work out in the end. Still, the road to get there may not be easy, but trusting in the capabilities of others and respecting and appreciating other cultures is a step in the right direction.