This week and next I have am pushing myself to get out into the field to try and seek out Dorothy’s perspective and experience. There are two levels that I am investigating, just as I feel there are two levels of clients REP deals with: those who have already started a business and receive business training or financial assistance and those who are trained in a new skill or trade from which they can start up a business.
This week I was in Damongo talking with some of the clients and spending time with them to see how they do their work and the challenges they face and the challenges they have overcome. I spent the day with Rabi, my host mom, as she traveled to a far off village to help establish one of the girls who graduated from her centre with her own empowerment centre. She also was expanding her market by introducing and selling her soap in the villages and towns along the way. It was interesting to see how she has taken the training that she learned from the BAC and become the most dominant producer and seller of soap in the area (aside from the commercial stuff). Another client makes furniture, like the couches we have in our homes in Canada, they are very impressive, and another was a metal worker. I learned many things from these clients, through what they told me, but even more from seeing the amount of work that goes into their product and the quality that is produced
with such basic tools.
I regret that I didn’t take any pictures, but the metal worker started with a single sheet of some rusty metal that used to be the lid of something, and had a model of what he wanted to create, and I thought, there is no way I can see how he will make it without some sort of machine. But, with skillful hammering of sharpened nails and molding around a big old engine, sure enough he had made it!
It was the same with the furniture. I have never seen a couch made before. I have never thought about how it was made, where the materials came from and how they were all connected together (which is shameful because I pride myself on my curiosity about thinking how things work). But to see how each piece of wood is worked to make the curved arm, the frame, how the material is sewn together, how the stuffing and the springs are attached, how all this work is put into a single couch set for a specific family, it blows my mind. I am so used to mass production, to making something that someone will surely need, but you don’t know who it is, and thousands of the same things are made.
It’s the same as the clothing. In Ghana, you go and buy your cloth that you like, take it to the seamstress, pick out a style, they take your measurements and some time later you return for a fitting and final adjustments, and after a few weeks of hard work, you have an original outfit…when in Canada you could buy a dress that many others have for triple the price. I don’t really know how I feel about it, it’s like in Canada we aren’t aware of how all the things we have came to be. I don’t know really what it means, but I know that I appreciate the skillful hard work that goes into just about everything I use in daily life here in Ghana. I appreciate that deciding to start up a business making soap isn’t something you can just half-heartedly decide to do because it will require hard work, commitment and perseverance, an investment beyond money. I feel it is like most things I have experienced in Ghana, life is just a lot harder. Your water isn’t just flowing out of the tap, you are working in 30 degree heat, you can’t just open up a can of soup to heat for dinner, and you wake up early to sweep the dust from your compound and hand wash your clothes…you are just that much more intimate with what you are doing. To help understand, you can think about it this way: think about how many appliances you use in the day, and how much more time it would take to do the things you do without the help of those machines. I am not advocating that one way of life is better or worse than the other, but its important to appreciate the difference.
One other thing that was striking about the businesses, was to see how they started up and built themselves up. All these three clients have been established for long enough to have seen their workshops expand, and have aspirations and goals for future expansion. I couldn’t get a sense though of how passionate they were about their craft. They worked harder than ever at them, into the night and over the weekends, but when I asked them if they enjoyed it, the impression I got was that they didn’t. Maybe it’s a luxury we have at home to choose something to do that we enjoy. Rabi is a good businesswoman, and she saw an opportunity in soap making I believe, and the others, they must have started because they had an interest, or maybe their circumstances led them there, and they became good at it, and you need to earn money, so why not this way?
Anyway, it was great to get into the community and meet some people. I wish I had done it weeks ago! To be honest, I was scared, and didn’t think I could do it. Obviously I can’t do it as well as a local could do, my counterpart for instance, but I think the people I visited were proud that I was interested in what they were doing and taking the time to appreciate their struggles and successes. I hope it made them, in some small way, sit back and feel some pride in their accomplishments.
So with this knowledge from the field, I hope to come up with a work focus that will best contribute to Dorothy, which is a lot harder than I thought it would be! There are so many things that I see could be different, but every idea is based on the information I have at hand, and my knowledge of what is happening changes all the time, the fog clearing bit by bit at its own slow pace to catch a glimpse of the momentary ‘real picture’. I hope that I can contribute something while I am here, at the very least I hope to better understand how development work influences its intended beneficiaries and to touch just a few people. The goal of major institutional changes in REP was quickly suppressed when I realized just how big the world is and how small I am. Not that I have given up on the idea on helping to improve the world, but I am reevaluating how that change can be brought about. I will work tirelessly to try and have impact here at the systemic level and grassroots level...but what can we do in Canada to improve the world? Some changes can happen here in Ghana, but here is not the only place to start the changes. Anyway, some food for thought…the fundamental question: what can we do in Canada to make the world a better place, not just soothe our guilty conscience, but really do to make a difference? It’s unrealistic to think the only place to change the world is in Africa, and unnecessary for all those who want to improve the world to travel here to do it.
This coming week I will be spending in a nearby village, Busunu. There have been three training sessions run there: batik tie and dye, soap making and beekeeping. The clients are in the process of mobilizing themselves, but have yet to start up any businesses. My goal for the week is to learn about their lives and their struggles and learn if and how the training sessions were useful. I hope to come out of it with more of an emotional connection to the clients and understanding of their lives.
This week I was in Damongo talking with some of the clients and spending time with them to see how they do their work and the challenges they face and the challenges they have overcome. I spent the day with Rabi, my host mom, as she traveled to a far off village to help establish one of the girls who graduated from her centre with her own empowerment centre. She also was expanding her market by introducing and selling her soap in the villages and towns along the way. It was interesting to see how she has taken the training that she learned from the BAC and become the most dominant producer and seller of soap in the area (aside from the commercial stuff). Another client makes furniture, like the couches we have in our homes in Canada, they are very impressive, and another was a metal worker. I learned many things from these clients, through what they told me, but even more from seeing the amount of work that goes into their product and the quality that is produced
with such basic tools.I regret that I didn’t take any pictures, but the metal worker started with a single sheet of some rusty metal that used to be the lid of something, and had a model of what he wanted to create, and I thought, there is no way I can see how he will make it without some sort of machine. But, with skillful hammering of sharpened nails and molding around a big old engine, sure enough he had made it!
It was the same with the furniture. I have never seen a couch made before. I have never thought about how it was made, where the materials came from and how they were all connected together (which is shameful because I pride myself on my curiosity about thinking how things work). But to see how each piece of wood is worked to make the curved arm, the frame, how the material is sewn together, how the stuffing and the springs are attached, how all this work is put into a single couch set for a specific family, it blows my mind. I am so used to mass production, to making something that someone will surely need, but you don’t know who it is, and thousands of the same things are made.
It’s the same as the clothing. In Ghana, you go and buy your cloth that you like, take it to the seamstress, pick out a style, they take your measurements and some time later you return for a fitting and final adjustments, and after a few weeks of hard work, you have an original outfit…when in Canada you could buy a dress that many others have for triple the price. I don’t really know how I feel about it, it’s like in Canada we aren’t aware of how all the things we have came to be. I don’t know really what it means, but I know that I appreciate the skillful hard work that goes into just about everything I use in daily life here in Ghana. I appreciate that deciding to start up a business making soap isn’t something you can just half-heartedly decide to do because it will require hard work, commitment and perseverance, an investment beyond money. I feel it is like most things I have experienced in Ghana, life is just a lot harder. Your water isn’t just flowing out of the tap, you are working in 30 degree heat, you can’t just open up a can of soup to heat for dinner, and you wake up early to sweep the dust from your compound and hand wash your clothes…you are just that much more intimate with what you are doing. To help understand, you can think about it this way: think about how many appliances you use in the day, and how much more time it would take to do the things you do without the help of those machines. I am not advocating that one way of life is better or worse than the other, but its important to appreciate the difference.
One other thing that was striking about the businesses, was to see how they started up and built themselves up. All these three clients have been established for long enough to have seen their workshops expand, and have aspirations and goals for future expansion. I couldn’t get a sense though of how passionate they were about their craft. They worked harder than ever at them, into the night and over the weekends, but when I asked them if they enjoyed it, the impression I got was that they didn’t. Maybe it’s a luxury we have at home to choose something to do that we enjoy. Rabi is a good businesswoman, and she saw an opportunity in soap making I believe, and the others, they must have started because they had an interest, or maybe their circumstances led them there, and they became good at it, and you need to earn money, so why not this way?
Anyway, it was great to get into the community and meet some people. I wish I had done it weeks ago! To be honest, I was scared, and didn’t think I could do it. Obviously I can’t do it as well as a local could do, my counterpart for instance, but I think the people I visited were proud that I was interested in what they were doing and taking the time to appreciate their struggles and successes. I hope it made them, in some small way, sit back and feel some pride in their accomplishments.
So with this knowledge from the field, I hope to come up with a work focus that will best contribute to Dorothy, which is a lot harder than I thought it would be! There are so many things that I see could be different, but every idea is based on the information I have at hand, and my knowledge of what is happening changes all the time, the fog clearing bit by bit at its own slow pace to catch a glimpse of the momentary ‘real picture’. I hope that I can contribute something while I am here, at the very least I hope to better understand how development work influences its intended beneficiaries and to touch just a few people. The goal of major institutional changes in REP was quickly suppressed when I realized just how big the world is and how small I am. Not that I have given up on the idea on helping to improve the world, but I am reevaluating how that change can be brought about. I will work tirelessly to try and have impact here at the systemic level and grassroots level...but what can we do in Canada to improve the world? Some changes can happen here in Ghana, but here is not the only place to start the changes. Anyway, some food for thought…the fundamental question: what can we do in Canada to make the world a better place, not just soothe our guilty conscience, but really do to make a difference? It’s unrealistic to think the only place to change the world is in Africa, and unnecessary for all those who want to improve the world to travel here to do it.
This coming week I will be spending in a nearby village, Busunu. There have been three training sessions run there: batik tie and dye, soap making and beekeeping. The clients are in the process of mobilizing themselves, but have yet to start up any businesses. My goal for the week is to learn about their lives and their struggles and learn if and how the training sessions were useful. I hope to come out of it with more of an emotional connection to the clients and understanding of their lives.
1 comment:
Great post Kim!
It seems you are getting some insight on how complicated "development" really is.
How do you feel about your role in the development industry? Do you see international development differently than you did in Canada?
Cheers
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