What do I know?

Written on September 26, 2011

Hey y’all,

Happy almost fall! It’s been more than six weeks since I’ve written anything new, so I decided to take a break from my GRE studying – which is what occupies most of my free time these days – and attempt to say something coherent despite the fact that my brain hurts from relearning how to factor equations and drilling myself on the upper end of the multiplication tables. (Where’s Number Munchers when you need it?)

It must be beginning to turn all cool and crisp there about now, at least in New York. I know that because I remember it was just barely starting to hint at fall when I left last year. I’ve been thinking a lot about this time last year in the past few days, because it was one year ago today that I moved out of my apartment in Brooklyn. And on Thursday of this week, it will be my one year anniversary of arriving in Mozambique! That is so weird.

Also, the new group of health volunteers arrived in June and they’re looking at us like we Know Stuff. At first that just seemed ridiculous. “I’ve been here like five minutes longer than you,” I told a new friend of mine from that group. But having spent a little more time with a few of them (and my friend having pointed out that eight months is actually kind of a long time), I’m suddenly realizing that I’m not fresh off the plane anymore…. and what’s more, maybe I actually do Know Stuff!

I remember when I first got to Mabote, I felt completely overwhelmed and the two years in front of me seemed like an eternity. In those first few weeks and months, sometimes even the simplest tasks seemed confusing and impossible. (Perhaps in this blog I failed to mention all my near-meltdowns and existential crises??) Anyway, I remember longing for “one day” when I would wake up and realize that I actually spoke Portuguese, and knew what was going on, and had a real life here.

I know now that it will never be as ideal as I imagined it being, and I will spend my entire two years trying to actually speak Portuguese (well), and figuring out what’s going on and how I can contribute, and building a “real” life here. But despite the inevitable gap between expectations and reality, lately I have been feeling like that “one day” which seemed so far away has actually arrived. “I DO Know Stuff!” I realized. “Woohoooo!! Look at me! Livin’ the dream!” Or something along those lines.

Then one day last week I had a planning meeting scheduled with a couple of people at my association for a food security project we’re hoping to do (teaching people to plant and maintain vegetable gardens at home year-round). A colleague and I started planning it at a Peace Corps project design conference a couple months ago but it had been a few weeks since we’d touched base about it.

I was feeling like the project was lacking direction. What exactly was the problem we were trying to solve? What was our strategy? That’s what I wanted us to clarify, so I spent a couple of hours the day before thinking it through and preparing for the meeting.

I thought it might help if we spent some time analyzing and thinking critically about the situation we were trying to resolve. Something I’ve become convinced of in my time here is that critical thinking is actually a learned skill, not something any of us are born knowing how to do. “Why do you think it’s like that?” “What do you think about this, and why?”

Those seemingly simple questions are hard to know how to answer if you’ve never been asked “why” before. Or if you’re used to being told what to do and made to feel stupid if you dare ask a question. Or if you’re told that there’s only one right way to do everything and that different is bad. Things are rapidly changing, but the vestiges of colonial oppression still loom large, and the rote memorization style of teaching in the schools certainly doesn’t help anything.

So as I prepared for the meeting, I picked out a couple of simple analysis tools to use with them. One is the problem tree, where you draw a tree and write the problem you want to analyze on the trunk. Then you fill in the roots, which are the causes of the problem, and the branches, which are the consequences. The other is the seasonal calendar, where you go through a cyclical period of time like a calendar year, school year, etc. and note when specific things happen in order to analyze and plan.

I had the meeting pictured in my head… me facilitating this analysis and brainstorming session, them walking away feeling all empowered and confident in their ability to analyze and problem solve. It was a beautiful vision of world peace and friendship*… let me tell ya.

That was the plan anyway. But then despite my attempts to explain the benefits of taking the time to think through the problem and our strategy, they weren’t too enthused and seemed to be wondering why we couldn’t just plan the project already. But they humored me and patiently answered my questions about when the fields are planted, and when the rains come, and how long the harvested crops last.

Then as we were looking at the gap on the calendar between the time when the crops from the fields and seasonal vegetable gardens start to run out, and the time when next year’s harvest is ready, I wrote in all caps “TIME OF HUNGER”. They corrected me by saying that hunger exists all year round, but that this was just the time when it was most widespread. “We’re activistas, so we can get food in the shops and pay at the end of the month when our subsidies (from our donor) arrive, but other people aren’t activistas so they go to bed hungry. Lots of people go to bed hungry.”

It may sound obvious, but that moment was the first time it really hit me what we were talking about. We were talking about people in Mabote, in 3 de Fevereiro (my neighborhood) – people who I know and that probably live within 100 feet of my house – going to bed hungry.

And meanwhile, the food I have in my house would probably look like a grocery store to a lot of them. I suddenly felt very self-conscious. Here I was, having spent a couple of hours planning and with my problem tree and seasonal calendar thinking I was going to come in and teach them something. But I’ve never known hunger. They didn’t always have their activista subsidy, and at any time our donor could pull out and they’d no longer have it. They don’t need me to help them locate hunger on a calendar… they know it very well.

It did seem to spark one new idea, which was that my colleague suggested that we should do the trainings in February or March even though that’s the end of the rainy season and only one or two months before the time of year when people plant their seasonal vegetable gardens anyway. The reason was that he said we’d never get people to try something new during the peak time when they were working in the fields. And he thought that once they saw that they had extra income from selling their produce when no one else’s was ready yet, that they’d want to keep it going all year. I hope he’s right.

After we were done with the things on my meeting agenda and I felt sufficiently humbled, I stopped trying to lead the meeting and just let them plan, only interrupting every now and then to ask what I hope were helpful questions.

In short, my meeting did not go as planned. I left feeling like I had learned much more than they had, and like I had been naïve and maybe even arrogant to have been thinking of this as “my” project. What do I know about hunger? Or agriculture? Or how things work here?

As far as me Knowing Stuff, I think one of the main things I know now that I didn’t know a year ago is how much I don’t know. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to contribute, but it does mean I need to know my limits and appreciate that I am not in a good position to be leading anything here. But that’s the whole point, anyway, isn’t it? For THEM to be leading. So when I put my ego aside, I can see now that it was actually a pretty successful meeting.

Anyway, the power has long since gone out so I’m off to bed. Last day in Mabote tomorrow before heading to Vilankulo for the weekend! Lately I’ve been leaving Mabote about every 2-3 weeks, which seems more doable now that I feel at home here and have gotten somewhat used to the harrowing trip down the very long dirt road. (Though I can’t promise more frequent blog updates.)

Speaking of Vilankulo, my friend Camila is losing her house in the CARE compound on the beach – my home away from home – so we’re all in preemptive mourning (especially her) and wondering what her next house will be like. I’m guessing not right on the beach… sigh.

Step on a crunchy leaf for me, if you happen to be near one.

Julie

*I invoke “world peace and friendship” because, believe it or not, that is actually Peace Corps’ stated mission. I know… it sounds like something that should be pulled out of a hat at a beauty pageant. But you have to put in the context of the Kennedy Camelot era.