Today we took a load of materials to the local high school in Candabong where we are setting up a permaculture garden to teach kids how to grow food sustainably using methods that use recycled, organic materials. Because I was a foreigner and didn’t have my own tools, and of course was leading the project, I was resigned to give instruction rather than participate in the actual labour of hammering nails into wood. The two local builders that accompanied me knew how to do things, apparently I did not. Has the development practitioner been relegated to that of an instructor without any practical skills? If so, why do people still listen to them?
Due to the presentation I gave to the school several days prior about the permaculture principles, I am seen as having knowledge, sure, knowledge of a different kind. I was looked up to, revered, put on a pedestal, heeded to, catered for, listened to, comforted and frustratingly, treated differently. My frustration is not directed at anyone specific. They want me to help, they want me to choose their local school as a pilot project, and they want me to guide them. My frustration is with the historical circumstances that have created this unequal, structurally reinforced relationship and those who realise it is there but do nothing to try and dismantle it.
While my new friends Reinaldo and Manuel were hard at work dislodging nails, hand-cutting hardwood timber and sweating in the 36 degree sun, I was offered a chair in the shade and a conversation with the Vice-Principal, questioned about my marital status and offered condolences and praise for being so troubled by the whole ordeal. I had to excuse myself politely to get back down in the dirt with my carpenter friends so as to alleviate the guilt building inside of me. But everything else around me, everything, everyone, the way people acted told me that this is normal. It is normal! This is the “normal” relationship between the Western development practitioner/expert and the local “beneficiary”. People were laughing at the fact that I was involving myself in manual labour.
As development practitioners, if we are indeed to continue on this path, we must confront our own roles within this unequal global system. When we are offered a chair while our equal participants toil and sweat in the sun we must join the toilers and we must also explain why we are doing so. When we are given the platform to speak, we must invite others also to speak and explain that our knowledge is no more important than anyone else’s. And when we are offered soft drinks, biscuits and playful conversation while our local counterparts are cutting timber to make garden beds that make “us” look good, then we must politely refuse the former and join the latter. For we cannot advocate one thing and practice another.
Development “practice” does not become any less imperialistic by merely including a few of the locals in the implementation stage under the guise of participation. Changing the relationships between the developed and developing world may come about by more people beginning to understand the root causes of inequality between them. And we can only get there by having conversations about it. This may put the researcher/practitioner in a slightly uncomfortable position, but it is only uncomfortable the first time we try and do it. It is uncomfortable for ourselves because we start to realise that the way we act, the way we relate to people in every interaction when we are “in the field” either contributes to or diminishes this historical relationship created by colonialism. We can either serve to uphold it, or we can start to become active in helping to break it down. We must recognise this need for change within ourselves and apply it in every circumstance, not just when we feel like it.