I’ve never wanted to go for any other reason than to just go – to learn the language, the culture, read about the history, eat the food, see the sights – to know a country. Not to change it or to fix it, not to alleviate poverty, not to help anyone. Morocco is what it is.

I went from Granada. I flew into Malaga, Spain, then spent 2 days at the Alhambra in Granada, before taking a bus to Algeciras, and from there a ferry across the little stretch of water that separates ‘Europe’ from ‘Africa’ to land in tangier, commonly called the ‘gate way to africa’.

Having already been in Africa proper – Sub Saharan Africa, where Arabs are generally foreigners, I was not convinced tangier was much of a gateway, or at least, not to ‘Africa’. But as my African friends remind me, what really is Africa, anyways?

Of course, one of the first things that hits you, in making that journey, is how similar the city you left from and the city where you are going are, regardless of which way you are traveling. Muslim women with little children and their husbands/fathers/brothers filled the boats both ways, as did tourists from Europe. The two cities bear a resemblence to one another, and I could still feel the memory of a time when they were part of the same empire, not the great divides between Europe and Africa that shape so much of the modern psyche.

Tangier has its own beauty, and my heart was thrilled at the Arabic/french signs, and I was determined that my brief vacation would accomplish two things: to remember the Arabic alphabet and to practice my french. Both were easily accomplished; I was surrounded by people eager to help me remember the alphabet through which Allah speaks to his people. Who are, as I was constantly reminded, all people, for Allah is a god of Peace.

My partner and I made our way to the bus station, and I was reminded of so much of being in the third world that I had, in my year studying development, forgotten: how long it takes to get things going, the continual ‘network problems’ that lead to hours of delays, the smell of dust in offices and old computers and sweat, the old men who sit and wait while others find things to do, the small relationships that I did not understand, so many little things that reminded me that I was a foreigner. And, I soon realized, that I had arrived in the middle of Ramadan. A time most Westerners choose not to travel in Morocco, as much is closed, and food is not as accessible as it normally is.

We met up with a young man we’d met on the boat, and, eventually, found ourselves a restaurant while we waited for our bus to a small town in the mountains recommended by my trusty and already well-used Lonely Planet. The restaurant was busy preparing for the breaking of the fast, setting out plates of eggs, sweet things, dates, and bowls for soup and orange drinks (sometimes orange juice, sometimes a fizzier, sweeter, not-real orange colored drink). And that began what was to become a fascination for me during my time there – watching the entire country break its fast with (more or less) the same food.

I’d always been fascinated with Islam – since at least 11 years old, when I built a mosque out of paper meche in Ms Woody’s history class, and painted it bright blue and green, and wondered what a real mosque was like, outside of the national geographic photos that was my muse.  And in a world where young girls were expected to want to flaunt their ‘stuff’, my insecure self was intrigued with the foreigness of a world where girls my age were encouraged to hide their hair and their bodies.

It was that fascination, that has long since matured into respect tinged with sadness, that won me some of the best conversations I had. But that first night, as the sun set over the Megreb, I watched for the first time the heart of the country come to life as the colors shone brilliantly against the sky before coming to dusk. And with dusk, came the noise and laughter of people eating. Women in bright veils and men in worn jeans sat at plastic tables up and down the street, drinking orange-colored liquid first, then eating the dates (the sweetness of Allah) and then the soup, which I would later learn had many variations, from simple vegetable to a simple grain. Some people had cake, everyone had the staple bread. Nutritionally, it is a great meal to break a fast with.

On that first night, I had a kebab. It was good- but it was the salad that was thrown hastily onto the plate that was better, and the olives, perfectly ripened, that delighted the most.

We took a four hour bus ride to Chef Chauoun, what the lonely planet called ‘the prettiest town in morocco’. We arrived late at night, but we found a young man, maybe thirty, in a sweater and jeans, ready to take us to our hotel – even though we didn’t have a hotel. He clearly had done this before. Lost, tired, and needing a guide, we said yes.

I had known the town was at the foot of the mountains, but I had not appreciated that meant a kilometer hike with our heavy backpacks (not real backpacking packs, just ‘regular’ packs stuffed to the brim).  In the dark, I was quickly turned around as we entered into the medina, and not particularly re-assured by our guide’s talk of ‘we are good people, this is a safe place, don’t be afraid’. It took nearly an hour to find the hotel, and then it was full, and so were the next two. But at least it was Ramadan, so the streets were alive with people – children, women shoping, a few tourists having a late meal.  And even in the darkness I loved the Medina, the narrow streets, the occaisional donkeys, the screaming children. Finally we found a hotel, blue, like all the other buildings in this town, and a older man greeted us with an attractive price: $12/night.  yes, that was definately in my price range!

Later, he and I sat and talked in my broken french about the changes the town had gone through. He’d been a teacher of Arabic and French. His daughter, about my age, spoke no english, but I knew that, had I stayed longer, we could have become friends; she had the same lively banter with her father that I had with mine, and was clearly strong willed, determined, intelligent, very social and loved her life.

Over the next few days, we explored the town, ate some of the best olives and tagines I would have during my trip, climbed around a river, and explored the casbah before moving, almost relentlessly, for another bus (a cheaper one this time) to Fez.

At Fez, my partner, who has worked throughout Africa and southeast asia and so is no newcomer to travel, had his wallet stolen within 10 minutes of getting off the bus. Thankfully, it was not his passport. And, oddly enough, that is where much of the real adventure began. Because he lost his wallet, we tried to find it. which led to us meeting ‘Joseph’ who led us on a wild chase around the New Town (only 800 years old) with a taxi driver who was worth his weight in saffron to find the bus, right before it left town. not surprisingly, the wallet was not on the bus. that led him to take us to his house to break the fast with his family in Fez, which was my first taste of the ‘breakfast’ and my first visit with a family, which, eventually, led us, a few hours later, being put on another bus to the Sahara, where we would go on a camel ride, where he just happened to have some friends who ran a company that took people into the desert. overnight. for a good price for a good friend who had just lost his wallet.

later, i learned the price was not so great. but that’s a different story. that 10 hour bus ride was terrible. i arrived wondering if i should do any camel riding at all. but as soon as we got out of Risani and into the ‘hotel’, I felt better – as soon as I saw the dunes rising out of the flat, gritty and rather ugly landscape, I knew I had to go there.

We spent several hours at the hotel, just looking at the dunes, before finally getting on our camels and going out there. Nothing can explain the beauty of entering the dunes, which rise slowly and then suddenly before you, like tall mountains. the camels were sweet to us, and it was less than two hours before we were at our campsite.  But those two hours transfixed us into a new world, one made of the simplest of elements: sand, air, sun, wind, a bit of water. The lines of calculus rose and fell around us, so simple. When we arrived at our camp dusk was falling, a thunder storm was brewing and a sand storm was rising. Our guide dressed me in the ‘proper’ dress of the berber, the people of that area, in a long thick woolen outer garment similar to a basic dress, worn more by men than by women. It was perfectly suited to the climate: neither the sand nor the gentle rain got through, and I  took off my shoes and climbed a small dune and watched the sand storm in the distance change the peaks of the dunes around us.

We were lucky – there were almost no other tourists around us, just a few ‘locals’ – nomadic families who’d stay in this area for a while until their goats ate what they could find (and yes, there is vegetation out there, usually at the base of the taller dunes) and they moved on. They are, all of them, strong.

Our cook was an older black man – the first black man we’d really seen. He told stories in Berber (his Arabic was limited and his French almost nonexistant), and I enjoyed listning to them, even though I could only understand a few words. He used to work in the archaeological digs, where they found the old sea creatures, small fossils they sold for small amounts of money in town. well, the big men who owned the business sold them. Hard, back backing work in the hot sun along the border, where border guards were not always friendly. It was hard to imagine wars being faught amongst these sandy lands, hard to imagine people not just falling down the dunes, much less firing a gun accurately.  But these men were strong, and tough, and told long stories, and many battles had been fought in the sands that soon wiped away much of that memory with the simple blowing of the wind.

The stars were amazing, and my partner and I lie beneith them, and watched shooting stars, until it got too windy and too cold, and then we went inside the tent, whose carpeted walls protected well against the wind, and ate the delicious chicken tagine, and slept well, and were woken early – way too early – to watch the sun rise.

Nothing can explain the sun rise over the sahara. The sand changes colors more times than you can imagine- silvers and grays and golds and pinks and tans.  I knew, then, that I will return to the dunes, and the people who live there.

We soon went back to our ‘hotel’, leaving the simplicity and the quiet and the serenity of the small sahara behind us, following a path that I could not discern. I enjoyed the camel ride.

We went that night to Marrakesh – a terrible bus ride that left me badly sick. My partner returned to San Francisco, and I stayed on in Marrakesh. There, I met a family who took me ‘in’, and showed me the baths, and taught me to make cuscus and tagines. I also went to the ocean adn galloped along the sea shore and dove into the atlantic ocean (cold) and bought spices in the souks of Marrakesh. And while I probably loved Marrakesh more than any other city, (well, I wasn’t so keen on Fez but I was only there for a few hours), and while I loved riding horseback, the best part of the trip was that camel ride through the dunes, and watching the stars, and listening to stories I didn’t understand, and hearing drumming music, at night, music with a rythm that I recognized, a rhythm from further south, below the sarhaha, where people had black skin and only sometimes spoke Arabic. It was that music, heard from within my tent, that made me feel, more than anything else that yes, indeed, I was back on the African continent.

What, exactly, is a crisis, anyways? Who defines it? A crisis-  for whom? For me? For the bankers? Who benefits when we label something a crisis? Who looses? Why are some things deemed crisis – and other chronic conditions (global hunger) not? And why am I so fascinated by them?

The last question is quite interesting. At least to me.

The answer is not hard to find. I’m sure it has to do with my own experience of myself as being in a crisis. For several years. Not now – now I feel I’m ‘merely’ developing (as if development is separate from crisis). More or less normal fears and concerns. But it wasn’t long ago that my concerns were not precisely normal. Or at least I didn’t think so. And I felt I was in a crisis and it took me quite a lot of flailing about before I moved out of it.

Is there something about how I moved out of it that can help me understand these social crises? Can our personal experience of crises support our social understanding and reaction to crisis? Maybe. It’s worth a shot. that’s one of the great things about crises – you become willing to try new things.

Why did  I suddenly think that I was in a crisis? (though I am not sure if I used that word at that time).

The world as I knew it – ‘me’, my identity, was no longer working as I thought it would. Outside manifestations: poor sleeping patterns; strange/regressive eating patterns (usually too much but sometimes nothing at all); minimal to no income; difficulty in finding work;  snapping at friends and family; and, when it was really acute, sitting and staring at the wall and doing nothing for long periods of time. Yes, I was depressed. But it was not just depression.  Internally, I felt that what I knew worked – my understanding of myself and of god – no longer held up or passed muster.

Eventually, I had to create a new understanding of myself. But before I did that, I had to want a new understanding of myself. and in order to want that, I had to own something – that my life was mine, not someone else’s.

I’m reminded of a friend’s story of a crisis in his life. Among other things, a close friend of his had died.he went to a shrink who prescribed him pills. he said to the shrink, look, people die. i don’t want pills. i want a way of dealing with death and sadness in my life. And he walked out of the therapists’ office. He says now that was a defining moment in his road to recovery – for him, that was owning his own pain and his own life, and actively choosing life- with all its grittiness and pain.

I did something similar, though not in such a clear manner. Mine was slower and very subtle. But eventually, I took ownership of my life in a way I had not done before.

Is that part of the ‘answer’ now? How much do we need to start taking ownership of our life – and of our world?

What would ‘ownership’ look like on a societal level? Well, it might look like people saying that they took responsibility for their leaders. As in, if leaders are not giving people what they need (for example, with climate change negotiations), then those leaders don’t get re-elected. Or if leaders need support from people (for, say, budget reforms, or digging out corruption) then they get that support.  It might look like people taking ownership of the banks, and not letting bankers make the rules about finance- which effects the lives of millions of everyday Americans.

How do we create a real ‘ownership society’?

I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that until we do, until we get our hands dirty with the messiness of politics, it will be hard for us to steer our planet away from crisis and into the relatively more ‘simple’ process of development. Of course – that is also perpetuating a false dichotomy: crisis is an inherent part of development.

Actually, the British CAN cook. And they can cook very, very well.

They just don’t have a big repetoire, there is a different sense of ‘done’ than  picky Californian cusine-artists like myself consider proper and they rarely make use of all the ingredients at their disposal.

The great british dish is the Roast. This can be with veal, pork, beef, chicken, nut-roast, etc; sliced meat, with vegetables (brussel sprouts, carrots, cabbage) and crispy potatoes and gravy. Followed by a ‘pudding’ (desert); my favorite are fruit puddings (bread soaked in fruit and filled with fresh fruit) and Sticky Toffee Pudding that melts in your mouth, topped (always) with custard (or creme – like  unwhipped-whipping cream). When done well, english standards such as shepards pie, fish and chips, jacket potato (baked potato filled with anything from beans and cheese to tuna fish salad), layered paninis, trifles (a layered desert with cream, fruit and bread), tea’n'scones and chutneys, jams, and jellies; they do very well. Their chutneys, in particular, are known and respected even on the continent. They have good butter, milk, and basic bread. Sometimes you can find good local cheese; occaisionally there is a nice local chocolate place.

Then there are the less appealing dishes – over-boiled vegetables, over-done pasta, a lack of spice (even in indian food), and, outside of the ‘good’, a lack of interesting main meals. Baguettes that would make the French cry, and not a bagel in site. Very few salads and lots of parsnips (of course, we are in winter). Plenty of mayonaise. At a potluck I went to recently, on top of the other dishes there was a heap of backed potatoes, and these were passed around near the end of the meal – and many people took one (though I was full). It reminded me of those cultures where you can’t have a meal without a certain carbohydrate!

So I cook for myself, and miss the variety of food and flavors found in San Francisco.

The UNA, when it first starte,d was a vibrant international body of citizens who care deeply for the cuase and values and visions of the UN. The UNA-UK describes itself as ‘ the UK’s leading independent policy authority on the UN…. critical of its decisions and activities when (needed) and can call for the organisation to be reformed so that it is better equipped to fulfil its fundamental functions: to maintain international peace and security, to promote development and to uphold human rights around the world.’ (www.una-uk.org)

They campaign and educate, working with UK ministers, parliamentarians and the media.

In many ways, it is a highly impressive organization: it is one of hte largest, far reaching intelligent  secular platforms around; it has people who have lived in and worked around the world next to local citizens and has an incrediable network, a basic structure for youth involvement (including a young professionals association) and can be both supportive and critical of global governance.  It is, in short, the ideal place to build informal relationships that are necessary for formal procedures to take place effectively and to learn on a global scale.

However, it is struggling.  It is rarely visionaries membership is steadily declining, and is increasingly composed of an older generation. Their meetings can be boring.

But their potential is huge. So I was thrilled to be able to speak with them about the MDGs – the question posed to us was, why do international agreements fail?  I mentioned the Hypocrasy Theory (what people do, say and decide are in no way inherently co-related) but focused on the inherent flaws in the MDGS: their formation and their execution. Their formation was not done by the people themselves; it was done by international heads of state. That just does not work.  We are not corporations. Our roles are not so clearly defined.  Also, implementation has not included co-ordination or sufficient capacity building. Aid agencies have different processes and objectives, even within the UN system, much less between the UN system and other systems. Ngoni and I agreed that while developed countries have failed to meet their target numbers for aid, lack of good process, co-ordination and ownership are perhaps more fundamental.

So can we deal with MDGs in a time of financial crisis and Climate change? We must; to not do so will mean a disastrous future for the children of developed and developing countries alike. But we must a)learn from our mistakes and find ways of developing global ownership and co-operation and b) revitalize organizational structures such as the UN A to educate, advocate and pull together diverse voices in informal conversations that can serve formal processes  that are needed to effect change.

]]> http://sarajwolcott.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/united-nations-association-and-development/feed/ 0 sarajwolcott http://sarajwolcott.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/16/ http://sarajwolcott.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/16/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:01:12 +0000 sarajwolcott http://sarajwolcott.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/16/ ]]> I just finished reading ‘A Crisis for Financial Journalism’ from Polis (check them out!) and found it interesting in many ways, not least that I had not asked the question, ‘have journalists failed to put the financial system under enough scrutiny?’ – and realized that I had not asked the question because I had not expected them to do so. I assumed they would serve the ‘powers that be’ – and that their accountability was to their niche, not to the rest of society. As a former journalist (not in the financial world), I am embarrassed to admit this.  But it follows a general theme I have recently noticed about myself and many others – that as the world of finance has become increasingly complex, I and others have let ourselves ignore it, and not aim to understand, explain and re-embed it into our society. This is the fault of the profession in which I currently train,. development studies, as much as anyone else. Collectively, we must recognize that we let one part of our system (a very, very important part) go off into its own world – as if that world was somehow disconnected from the ‘real world’ in which we live.

On that last part, I would have to agree: the HDR, which is often an eloquent and inspirational document, puts forth policy proposals and blunt, risky statements hard to find elsewhere. My concerns with it are not in the realm of its value in comparison to where it comes from but the extent to which it a) focuses on individual choice as the end all of human development; b) doesn’t really look into the why of the way things are (and whose interests are being served by maintaining the current system); c) it focuses too much on the individual without recognizing the social dynamic of development; d) it is not developmental.

Without going in-depth on these concerns, let me out line a few points.

On choice: It is easiest to make this one personal. Yes, I want more choice – I want to be able to choose my job and to choose where I am going to live and to choose whom I shall marry.  Freedom and choice are inherently linked. But I want more than choice – dare I say I want more than freedom (though perhaps I am only beginning to understand freedom.) I want unity through diversity. I want harmony, synergy, wisdom, serenity. These things are not merely about choice. But they are about development.

Why are things the way they are? It is not random that some people have choice and others do not. This fact is a reflection of essential concepts of choice and freedom, and we can not hope to tackle these issues until we reconceptualize what it means to develop – and the nature of social development, and the basic tent of freedom so eloquently described in the old freedom song: none of us are free until all of us are free.

Society: related to the last point, this focuses too much on the individual and what the society can do to support individual freedom. But we are not merely individuals. To return to Aristotle, it is only the realization of the polis that the individual can be fully realized.

Developmental: for too long developmental discourse has forgotten that development is developmental.  We can not realize education before we have realized greater health. We can not expect that the process of economic democratization that succeeded in Brazil will be successful in the Congo – the two countries are at radically different stages of development. We need not only to rank countries (something Americans are slightly obsessed with) but to re-think how it is that societies and inidviuals, together, can develop – as a process.

These here are questions of philosophy – the philosophy of the political flesh, where what we think will change everything.

I had been under the impression that the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and IMF) had something to do with development and developing countries. After all, the original name of the Bank was ‘International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’. What I had not realized (though I am sure I must have read or heard this somewhere) was that the Bretton Woods Institutions were originally founded to secure a global financial order and thus bring the potential of peace to the world. To quote from Padoa-Schioppa:

“BW was a system of multilateral institutions and rules designed for nation-states pursuing full employment and economic stabilization in a world with strong political leadership and limited trade adn financial integration. The system was intended to provide a response to a long period of economic isolationism that had culminated in a global war. As the end of the war was nearing, the governments of hte winning arket-oriented powers….decided to make a drastic turn toward an open and managed multilateral system, in which trade and monetary relations would be subject of formal  rules  for exchange rate and trade policies aiming at noninlationary growth in conditions of ‘economic peace’ ” (237).

Nothing there about developing countries.  Of course, they were in the background; international finance and the flow of private capital had been a key element of the industrialization (development) of Britain and the States for well over a century.  The key issues of the BWIs were a)free trade to encourage growth and b) monetary regulation. WHile the bombs were still falling in Britain, Keynes was drawing up a blue print of a system that would lead to global economic stability.

This is a far cry from my first introduction to the BWIs, when I was at the World Social Forum in Kenya and listening to horror stories about Structural Adjustment Programs, or hearing my Indian colleagues bemoan the 80-98% (depending on which numbers you used) failure rate of World Bank water projects in South East Asia.

It’s a far cry because the BWI ‘era’ as it is now called really came to an end in 1971-3, following the United States separating the dollar from the gold standard and thus introducing  international floating currencies. With that largely unilateral decision, the multi-lateral approach to monetary finance collapsed, and global finance was no longer globally managed, except by ad-hoc and informal agreements by the G7 and G8 and the ‘natural’ regulations of the Free Market. Recent months have shown how successful that approach has been over the long term.

What struck me the most, however, was not feeling sorry that the IMF essentially got demoted to ‘only’ dealing with developing countries, nor that policy makers have been largely satisfied with having one of the most important aspects of the world largely unmanaged by any publically-held accountable institution or government. It was realizing that BWI, which I consider to be ‘development’ institutions were made for the purpose of managing global finance. and the global finance needed to be managed in order to promote global peace. Because Keynes and others recognized the dangers of isolationist policies. Because countries could not successfully develop alone without endangering other countries and their own internal processes. Because mutuality, not pure independence or pure dependency, was needed to secure long term peace adn the potential for growth. Because the development of any one country depended on the development and co-operation of all countries.

I realized I was reading a strong statement about development that had little to do with North versus South – not least because Keynes and the others were working in a world view that appreciated the natural resources and human capital the South had given the North (or had stolen from them, as many accurately report) and were far more concerned about rebuilding and restabilizing Europe. But for peace and human development – understood broadly here, but Sen’s emphasis on freedom and choice is a good start – to be successful, it was necessary to regulate international finance, and this is something that can not be done alone.

I saw once again that development and international finance are intricately connected, and the moral framework around which we understand them is essential to ensure that financial markets serve human development, and not the other way around. As climate change worsens, ensuring that we get these priorities right will be increasingly (and devestatingly?) important.

So when Jamie Drummond, head of One.org, and the first person I’ve met with direct access to the G8 leaders said he would welcome IDS students’ responses to how to approach the financial crisis, I said, ok, we’ll write you a letter.  I put a call out for responses, collated the responses, presented them to a few students and faculty, and then wrote and sent a letter. it became apparent in doing this that most students didn’t really know what was going on – and how the fin crisis related to development. So I organized a teach-in, bringing together 6 of the major luminaries of macro finance at IDS and beyond, including Stephany Griffith Jones, who just ‘happened’ to be in Brighton (she is currently based in NY with Stiglitz). 60 people showed up and listened with acute attentiveness. I’ll post a video of the event later on. Stephany and I are now in conversation about what it means to build relationships between IDS and her institute (ipd) around the G20 meeting in the UK. And I’m working on the next steps – increasing student learning and engagement.

As always, there are content and process learnings. In this post, let me touch on the process.

This event was successful because it was based on building relationships, had a shared goal-value (learning/education), emerged through many different people’s participation and input (I didn’t have a strong pre-conceived notion of what it should look like before I started making it happen), and because I had very good follow-through with the people I was working with (and made sure my ideas were based in research/facts).  I wouldn’t say it was a fully democratic process. It was my idea, others agreed it was important, and worked with me to make it possible. None of it would have happened without my team, but I was never elected or pushed into this position – I just took it. Which is fine, but I must now be careful that others do not see me as ‘representing’ students. I am keenly aware of how I only speak for myself. But I do listen. So the boundary between self and other is fluid. No surprise there.

That said – I had an original vision that was not realized, and the fact that it was not realized is quite interesting and worth sharing.

I originally wanted a highly participatory workshop – I wanted something where people could feel less distance between themselves and the experts. Where they were not overwhelmed by a sense of being unable to engage with the material – which is quite the common experience. Our financial illiteracy is ridiculous. I was surprised at how many professors of different disciplines felt completely unable to speak about this in public. Students were even worse – they got so lost in the financial language that they didn’t know how to even begin to evaluate the proposals coming out of various elvels of civil society. With that level of illiteracy, it is no surprise that the Powers that Be stay in control and do not engage us in these conversations. Our lack of knowledge stops us from participating in the decisions that effect our lives.

It was this sense of subtle victimhood which urged me to do this workshop – that, and I wanted to seriously engage with this question of creating a moral economy, and this seemed like a good time to do it.

But that is not what happened. Instead we had a very traditional, expert panel with questions from the floor approach. That I, a student, acted as facilitator and frequently summarized what people were saying was the principle (and significant) difference. And it was that which people commented on the most.

So why did that vision not happen? Some was the nature of the topic – there was a lot of history and basic information that needed to be given, and presentations are an easy way to do it. Some was that I had so many people to speak, and so didn’t have enough time to do more participatory work. Some was because my team mates were less confident about more group/pair-work – and they wanted to respect the fellows.

But I would be remiss to not admit that power played a powerful role – power, and my slight reluctance to carve out space for alternative forms of power to emerge because I was a) afraid of what would happen b) afraid of what people would think of me if I pushed for a more innovative, participatory style. The format I used fits into traditional modes of power… and while people enjoyed the workshop, I doubt that they really walked away more confident in their ability to challenge the common assumption that ‘they don’t know enough’ to really make a difference in discussions about finance.

This is not to say that I am not pleased with the workshop. I am. It was, as my team mates said, a very good beginning. And I hope it is just that – a beginning to a much larger discussion and some serious action.

His comment confirmed my own observations, and something that I had felt ever since coming here (and perhaps before, but it’s particularly pronounced in graduate school). I seem to hear everything with two interpretations. One is, what is interesting/what will help people on the ground/what is theoretically or practically useful/what needs to be done? the other is, what will help me get a job? I find myself leaning towards political economy rather than anthropology not because political economy is a better field or better suited to my own interests but because I see how rarely people listen to Anthropologists (with some noted exceptions) and how few job opportunities are out there for Anthropologists. I’ve heard many people wish they had chosen law or business, not because they are more interested in it but because the career trajectories are easier. Development Studies offers no clear career path.

The two perspectives are like uneasy dance partners. I say – and I feel passionately – that I want to work myself out of a job. If there was no need for development, that would be wonderful. But I also believe that a) that is unlikely in my lifetime and b) if we were to transform the understanding of development, it would be a ridiculous assumption. Once we begin to understand that no country or person is ever fully developed, we can see how many jobs and careers are really about ‘development’ though they never call themselves such. And not just social work and teaching – though those aid in human development tremendously. Good politicians (Lincoln, for one) are key to the development of any country or region, as are good lawyers, peace keepers, businesswomen, journalists, and others which assist with the process of individual and group systemic self reflection and the growth of a powerful, dynamic citizenry. These days, more and more people are recognizing the ‘profit’ of ‘doing good’ – from environmental businesses to triple bottom lines to socially responsible investing.

But I can’t say that most development career paths are based on our ability to make a difference and reduce poverty or achieve MDG goals. We are accountable to our bosses and the funders, not necessarily to the people we serve. They do not write our quarterly evaluations. And some of us make a very handsome profit. Which is not bad – but is it ethical to take on salaries that are 100 to 500 times greater than the people we are ‘serving’? Do we not make our living off of their poverty – or the image of their poverty? Of course, this is not to say it is right to do nothing. But maybe we could make a greater effort to be with the people we are serving and not wall ourselves away in our temperature controlled mini-palaces that so often are associated with the development practitioners ‘lifestyle’. IT’s definately a good profit – but for whom? And at the cost of what?

That said, career paths are and should be about more than making money. It’s about developing – as a human being and as part of a larger community/institution/organization. There can be multiple dimensions to profit just as there are multiple dimensions to poverty. If we see development more wholistically, we might even go so far as to say that all good career paths are about development.

I took great pleasure in dressing this morning – I have a new pair of shiny brown boots and a new pair of (warm!) trousers. I knew I would enjoy the day: workshops with Robert Chambers are one of the highlights for students at IDS. Highly participatory, and people learn a lot without being exhausted.

We were talking about poor people. Of course. It’s development. We talk a great deal about poor people. What it’s like to be poor – and why so many policies and interventions fail. Miserably. Generally, it’s easy to summarize: it sucks to be poor, and professionals are not very good at dealing with the roots of the problem.

Today we were looking at seasonality and the body. It’s not that difficult to grasp the essence of the problem. Imagine you live in a village not that far from the equator. When it rains, and rains for a long period of time (along the equator, there are usually one or two cycles of long rains), almost everything gets harder. Sometimes it is hot, humid and wet. Sometimes it’s cold and wet. Someone in your hut gets diarhea. They have to go to the bathroom all the time, but the bathroom is far away, and since its cold and wet, they don’t want to/can’t go very far. So they ‘go’ near the hut. It’s raining, and the ‘stuff’ mixes around with the dirt and the trash outside. In the morning, barefooted children go out to fetch water. They walk through the infected feces. They get sick. Their parents are busy – in the wet season, there is a great deal of hard labor and not much food. The stores from the last harvest have faded (or molded, or been eaten by rats). People walk through the mud to the fields to do the labor-intensive planting. Because of the rain, snakes are flooded from their burrows and come out and bite people with grater frequency. The roads are bad, the parents are exhausted and neighbors, etc can’t look after the children (because they are also working in the fields and not getting enough to eat) so the snake bite is not taken to the clinic which is 5 miles away. With the snake bite and the people with diarhea, it is not long before fewer people can work in the fields, meaning less money meaning less food meaning the sickness gets worse, etc.  Children can’t go to school (transportation/needing to work in the fields/take care of sick family members/help support the family). People are forced to borrow money to buy food (the poorest families don’t have much access to food). Food prices are high, so they borrow a high amount of money. Rich people are happy to lend – with a high interest rate. In the wet season, wealthy families often get wealthier and poor families get poorer – they won’t be able to pay it of for several months, and the debt cycle continues. Again. And again.

The body gets sick so easily. It’s hard not to get diarhea in the conditions described above. When I lived in villages I got it. And people took care of me. Which means they didn’t do something else, like earn money that day.

The body is the greatest asset most people have. Coal miners, loggers, fishers, farmers, carpenters, healers, cooks, day laborers, goat tenders, camel herders, tourist guides, bicycle taxis, mothers, home-makers, maids – for most people in this world, their body is their livelihood and, sometimes, their only chance of improving their own and their family’s material well being.

Unlike all other assets (natural resources, land, companies, stocks, schools, NGOs, etc.) the body can not be divided. When we loose a hand we can not grow another one. It is so vulnerable. No wonder children in some villages pool together some of their meager earnings into a savings account so that if any one of them gets injured, they can afford the best medical treatment available.  No wonder chambers says the first thing to do to help people get out of poverty is to make sure they don’t get poorer – and the best way to do that is to make sure they don’t get sick. Free and common health clinics become the most important things to reduce poverty – far more important than education. Health comes first.

I looked around at our class. We differ greatly in size and shape and skin color, but we are all young and reasonably well educated and, from the looks of it, quite healthy.  I thought of Chambers’ comment earlier in the day: When women in the slums of Kabira – where I once spent some time at the very cool radio station there – were asked what they wanted, they answered, enclosed spaces for bathing. Such a simple desire – to be able to wash without the men watching. I have a private bathroom in my single room. So do many of my classmates.

I remembered the other thing he said, when we were talking about the multiple dimensions of poverty. A woman who worked in the fields was once asked what she really wanted. Her answer: to have an afternoon off to have a cup of tea with her friends in town.

I looked down at my new boots, somewhat disgusted with myself. I never lack for tea with friends.

At times like this I wonder what we are doing, sitting in classrooms talking about poverty. What am I doing here? With a Masters, many of us hope our careers will take off; that we will be able to get positions we wouldn’t get without one. Not that all these ‘Masters’ seem to make that much difference for those who still live in slave-like conditions.

They call  it the seasonality of hunger. They call the response of development practictioners ‘seasonal blindness’ because we often don’t see it – consultants and other practictioners don’t tend to travel in the rainy season. We generally don’t live with the people we are supposed to help.

We asked Robert at the end what we should do about this. He said we should go and live in the villages and ask people what they needed – to not shield ourselves from seasonality, the hunger that precludes famine.

There are so many times when ‘being with people’ seems like such a small response to such a big problem. I am not satisfied. And I do not want to go shopping.