As we begin a new, exciting and challenging
year at MHOP with three (yes, three!!) program
pilots planned, we are reflecting more and more
often on our organization's commitment to
remaining community-directed. To share her
thoughts about this difficult task, Alex Harsha
offered to cross-post a blog she wrote in
November during one of the more trying periods
of MHOP's development. For other posts by Alex,
check out her blog, N be taa Mali la..., at
akharsha.blogspot.com!
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When I arrived in September, MHOP was
struggling to reach a consensus
with the CHAG on the issue of their
re-elections. CHAG members were
upset with our team, as the notion of elections
suggested we did not
like the work that they were doing. Some
members even hinted that we
were out to publicly humiliate them. Moreover,
several members
expressed serious concerns that MHOP has not
delivered on its promises
– intimating that the CHAG would unfairly take
the fall for our
failures during their elections. These
conversations distressed us
greatly, primarily because MHOP remains
committed to local
participatory governance and secondarily
because the thought of failing
the community is a difficult one to bear.
As many in “development” circles like to claim,
MHOP is committed to
working with (not for) the community we serve
to ensure that our
solutions are responsive to local needs and
local capacities. But what
does that mean? Buzzwords or not, how do you
give them substance? Aid
blogger
TalesFromeTheHood
has some interesting suggestions and critiques,
here, where he
discusses his experiences working with
international development
agencies. Community-driven projects take on a
whole new meaning when
the community cares less about microloans and
more about securing AK47s
to protect against warring neighbors.
Thankfully here in Bamako we don't have to
tread that particular line,
but that doesn't mean there isn't one to tread.
So what about us? Is it
enough that we have Malian staff in our core
team, and that we have
catalyzed the formation of community groups
(like the CHAG) to assist
in the design and evaluation of our programs?
If we do not work
effectively within those groups, if we fail to
recognize our own biases
or to be vigilant that our intentions match
their interpretations, we
risk trivializing the very core of our
mission.
Now let's be honest for a minute and admit that
in terms of development
NGOs, MHOP doesn't play in the big leagues. We
are not the kind of
organization that can deliver 100,000 bug nets
in under a week, or even
two. We alone cannot provide free care for
everyone, and we certainly
cannot do it yesterday. But with a two-year
CHAG partnership under our
belts, a trained Community Health Worker team
and a new community
clinic receiving its final coat of paint, is it
fair to say we are
keeping up our end of the deal? Yes, most
definitely, yes. We are
working as hard as humanly possible to make our
projects a reality and
we have achieved a lot where others have not.
Yet, part of “our deal”
is to support the community to work for their
own change, and so the
fact that the CHAG has interpreted any of our
project ideas as promises
suggests that we are not fully achieving this
higher goal. To improve,
we decided to begin within our
staff.
I googled “cross-cultural communication
exercises, management, africa”
on Tuesday in a last ditch effort to help Devon
pull together an
intercultural training program for our new MHOP
team. Over the past
three weeks Dramane Diarra (community
coordinator), Awa Ouattara
(intern), and Leona Rosenblum (community health
worker program
coordinator) have joined us, making last week's
team training the
perfect opportunity to begin a conversation
about cross-cultural
collaboration. Unfortunately, the google-verse
contains very little
that addresses inter-cultural communication
between Africans and
Americans. (For future reference, however, if
you are interested in
working in Japan or China, you're in luck!
Hundreds of well-paid
agencies can offer you trainings on bridging
the East-West divide. Go
figure.)
Despite my failed search, our team spent the
day on Wednesday
discussing the many differences between Malian
and American cultures.
Drawing from “
The
Values Americans Live By,”
an interesting piece by L. Robert Kohls, we
shared our views on things
ranging from punctuality, competition, freedom,
and privacy or personal
space. It was an enlightening experience and
offered me the chance to
reflect on the many hidden biases or paradigms
that affect my
interactions with Malians.
One major area of conflict in our office
concerns time. As Americans,
we expect that our time be accounted for or
justified. I, for one, have
always had a job where I punched in or out
because I was being paid by
the hour (or minute, or even second). I am used
to judging my
performance as both a function of its quality
and of the time the task
required. But how often do you think about what
it means – what it
really means – to talk about “spending time” on
something, as if time
was a thing to be used or dispensed as one
pleases?
Sure, everyone knows that “African time” runs
slow; but the cultural
divide is not really about pace. Here, time
just is. The day passes as
you pass the day -- your meals, your loved
ones,
your life
takes precedence over the ticking clock. Thus,
my Malian colleagues
were shocked and appalled by the suggestion
that we log and justify our
“work hours.” From their point of view, a job
well done is a job well
done, regardless of the amount of time it
required. And when it takes
you two hours to travel across town because
your taxi blew its tire, or
a month and a half to track down our clinic
dossier, the logic of this
view becomes clearer.
Of course, the differences in our conceptions
of time has become
somewhat of a trope in stories about Africa.
While true, I want to be
clear that many other things are similarly
confounding and that at
their core, neither “side” is wrong or right.
To illustrate, let me
describe our most recent adventure with the
clinic construction crew.
Mr. Maiga, the construction foreman, visited
our office last week with
a packet of paint chips to decide on the colors
for the interior and
exterior walls of the clinic. Excited that
we're nearing the end of
construction, we happily reached an agreement
that the interior would
be painted in dual tones, with reddish brown on
the bottom and tan on
the top, while the exterior would be a uniform
deep red to help
disguise dirt. We x'ed our preferred paint
colors and he went on his
way, asking that we stop by the clinic later to
see a sample and make
the final decision.
Two days later, Alex Ruby and I trekked up to
the clinic with cameras
in hand, hoping to okay the colors and get the
final painting started
without delay. When we arrived, however, we
were surprised to find dual
tone samples painted both on the outer walls of
the clinic and inside
the clinic rooms, and no deep red color to be
found. After much debate,
we discerned that the “interior” of the
building is considered to be
everything that is covered by the veranda,
regardless of whether it is
actually inside a room or not. Hmmmmm. As we
say in Minnesota, that's
different. But, really, when you are under a
covered area and yet not
in a room, who is to say whether you are
“inside” or “outside”? It is
something I never would have thought to ask but
now serves to remind me
that when working across cultures, there are no
stupid questions.
Making one's own definitions and
interpretations explicit is critical
to avoiding deep misunderstandings.
Cultural differences, however, cause more than
just logistical
friction. And when we work with the CHAG and
evaluate the design of our
projects, we must continue to remember that
values differ and ideals
are often lost in translation. For example, I
recently had to quell
some righteous feminist indignation when Dr.
Diak suggested that the
“health actions” completed by male members of
the household should
count for every child, while those completed by
mothers only count
toward their biological children. (If that's
confusing, remember that
Islamic polygamy is widely practiced in Mali,
therefore households may
include up to four mothers.) Arms crossed,
nostrils flaring, I stopped
him. I was appalled by the sheer iniquity of it
– why should the men's
actions be more valuable than the women's?
Dr. Diak patiently explained to me that asking
men to do more than that
would require they designate their actions
towards specific mothers.
That system could not only create significant
family discord if fathers
favored certain wives over others, but it would
also likely dissuade
men from participating at all. Women are the
primary caregivers in
Malian families and so if it means just as much
for a man to contribute
as it does for a woman, then there is no
incentive for fathers to
participate. My reaction against this design
was instinctive but,
ultimately, I think Dr. Diak is right. To
be successful, our program
must consider carefully the economics of family
life here, working
within the system as it currently exists. If
our ultimate goal is to
encourage community engagement and
co-management of healthcare, then
perhaps my feminist sensibilities will have to
take a back seat on this
particular ride.
Similarly, while we had initially hoped to hold
popular elections for
all CHAG members, in light of their extreme
resistance and our
consultations with Sikoro's
dugutigi
(village chief), we may have to re-evaluate our
designs. When we make a
final decision regarding our selection process,
we will again have to
weigh very difficult issues: is it a compromise
of our values to have
the elected
secteur-tigis choose their
own CHAG
representatives, or is that an expected (and
accepted) form of
community participation in the Malian context?
In navigating these
challenging waters, I trust that we will stay
true to our mission to
both work within the community and to improve
it. And the simple fact
that we are tackling these unsettling questions
gives me hope that we
are who we say we are: a community-driven
organization.
