Getting to the point of development.

When I started this job, my office was a desk in the vestibule. There was no privacy or place for my co-worker and so the enterprising support staff enclosed a veranda, put in carpet and windows and made me an office. It has a beautiful view out to the trees, it is very light and spacious. It is also very poorly sheltered from the weather, so it is currently rather like a solar oven. The same capable support staff then offered to install an air-conditioner. We generally don’t use these, as they don’t fit with our lean operational mentality, but given the location and un-usableness of my office, we agreed.

Well I remember the moment when Z finished installing the AC. He looked at me and said, ‘There, it is installed. Of course, you can’t use it though.’

‘Eh? what do you mean?’

‘We don’t have enough power in the office to run it. If you use it, it will blow all the fuses.”

‘Did you know this when before you installed it?’

‘Yes, but I was told to install it.’

Sure enough, we turned it on and five minutes later, the fuses all blew. I started wondering how this could have transpired, and worked out that it was possible only because of a kind of fragmented thinking, that says, ‘My job is installing X. The point of my job is to install X, not to achieve outcome Y. Outcome Y is someone else’s problem, not really connected to my role.’

Of course, the point of putting in an AC is to cool a room. The point is not its neat installation, but the outcome of a cool room. A well installed air conditioner is pointless, if it cannot be used. Of course, a poorly installed air conditioner may not work also, but the ultimate test of the activity is that the goal be fully reached.

This incident reminded me of when I worked in development projects in the North of Afghanistan. The UN gave a contract to an NGO to dig 50 or so wells in a district. Their engineers had determined that there was water at 40m, so the terms of the contract allowed for drilling the wells to 40m, and all the related costs of pumps, shafts, cement etc.

It soon became clear to the NGO that there was no water at 40m – such surveys have to be done at the right time of year – ie, at the end of summer – September or October, before the rains and the snow-melt. Otherwise you get false high water table readings. The NGO went back to the UN and said, ‘There is no water at 40m, we need to drill to 60m’. The UN staffer (not an Afghan), astonishingly, said, ‘No, the contract you have is to drill and install wells at 40m. That is what you are contracted to do.’

It is exactly the same thinking as occurred around the installing of my air conditioner. The point, according to the UN, was the installation. And logically, if this project had gone ahead on those terms, at the end, a report could be written that would confirm that 50 wells had been drilled to 40m depth and pumps installed, etc. But the real point of a well, is permanent, clean, accessible water. If you don’t have that, you have nothing. Or, you have worse than nothing, you have material waste and deepening cynicism.

The NGO went away and drilled a few more wells to 40m and then couldn’t abide this foolishness and idiocy, stopped, and then from its own budget, made up the difference to drill the wells down to 60m, or however deep was required. They also ensured that the water was useable – not salty or bitter or contaminated. I think they also undertook to do some WASH education and well maintenance amongst the population, something that was also not part of the UN plan.

This story is bad enough that it could be fiction, but it is not. I know the people involved, I know the NGO and a year after that I worked in the UN, and saw how such disconnected, wrong-heading thinking and planning could occur.

So at one level, I have a nicely installed, but pointless AC. In a district in Northern Afghanistan, they almost had nicely installed, pointless wells. And all over this country, I see similarly projects being implemented disconnected from the larger goals of development. The goal of a school is that education take place, but this country has many schools that are well built, but poorly located, and consequently, empty. The goal of job training, is a job, but in Uruzgan, the Australian army has built a wonderful trade school, where local men are being trained as plumbers, carpenters and electricians. There is, however, no market for their skills anywhere in the province. In some of the development projects I manage, there is an assumption that health education activities will lead to improved health, with nothing else needed. Or that building nice latrines means people will use them, and that disease vectors will therefore reduce. Such simplistic, disconnected thinking may apply in some kind of utopian settings, but not in complex environments like this.

Where this occurs, people of initiative find their own solutions. If you travel through the Hazarajat, you can see empty school buildings, and children being taught under a mulberry tree, close to their homes and their families. I leave the doors and windows open, use a small Pakistani fan and sweat.

Relentless

Afghanistan is relentless. It never, ever lets up. You get through one crisis, take a breath, then next hits. They are not all crunchers, you don’t drown every time, but they do keep coming. It is like the hard surf, when the breakers keep coming and they break early, and they peak and roll down on you, and all you can do is dive under each one, the suck of the water pulling at your body, and as you gasp and swim back up to the light, the bubbles and the sand and the foam all fizzing beside you, the next wave hits, and you breathe and go down again.

Now it is housing. We are losing our home. We heard rumours a few months ago, but then there was conflict over who actually owned the house. Two cousins fought it out, and now they have settled and now the urbane, silky voiced Afghan-American one has the deed in his hand, and wants to sell. He has returned from America to settle the deal. We have a contract till March, but that will be voided in the case of a sale (and goodbye to the advance rent we paid, too). We might have to be out in a fortnight, maybe in 6 weeks. We are losing the school, and another house as well. Houses that our organisation has rented now for some 36 years, continuously.

And we have just settled. Pretty much everything now works: I have fixed plumbing and lighting and the heaters are in and the windows seal and the doors lock. And now we will have to move. Where to, I don’t know. Housing is short here, as the new parliament is built, the Members and Representatives are all building houses here. Rents are what you might pay in Manhattan: $6000USD per month. USAID rents 5 houses here, all part of one block, and is paying $35,000 per month for them. We cannot compete with money like that.

Some people we know came to Afghanistan, rented a house 8 years ago and are still there. Their homes have a nice, lived in, warm feel. The first place we had here, I wanted to be like that. I made it work, we planted gardens and built verandas and laid water pipes and gas lines and within 18 months, we were evacuated and it was all over. Since then we have lived in five or six or seven houses here, maybe more. You can tell who has been through evacuations and forced moves here: their houses generally have bare walls. Pictures are put up with pins, not frames. Carpets don’t fit, curtains are too long. It is because we are anticipating the next move. Summoning the energy to make a home gets harder and harder.

*

Now with that cheerful story put down, let me issue an invitation: we need personnel here. Afghanistan is a less and less popular place to work. Post 9/11, suddenly everyone wanted to be here. Afghanistan was a must-have on a serious aid-workers CV. But now it is getting boring and dangerous. Things aren’t better, security is worse. NATO is pulling out, Afghans are getting corrupt, the conflict is at a stalemate. Let the Afghans sort it out. There are new conflicts and crises. Haiti. Pakistan. So people are wanting out. But the needs remain.  The work is long, the rewards few, the pay non-existent. The dangers are real, though not everpresent.

Who will join us?

Potential unrealised

My sister here in Kenya has the usual security paraphrenalia that you would expect in a place like this: 24 hour security guard, perimeter fencing, contracted security company and dedicated alarms. She is in fact more securely set up than we are in Kabul – though I daresay the security package comes with the house. I am not sure how much say she had in it.

Her guard, Caleb, reminds me of Ali, our watchman back in Kabul. They are both bright, sharp-eyed men. They both spend the vast majority of the day doing almost nothing. They are not lazy:  just horrifically underemployed. Sure, it is better than being unemployed, and their salaries keep them, their families and probably several other people alive and well. But I wonder how it would be to do exactly the same job, day after day, with so little variation or challenge.

I would hate it. I am not sure that Caleb or Ali like their jobs much. But probably the weight of responsibility they carry precludes them even contemplating the insecurity of job change. That, and the fact that they work six days a week, 12 hour days. That also precludes much time for job hunting, retraining or reskilling.

They have, I am sure, potential to be much more than guards. But it is not being realised. Something about that unsettles me deeply. I think people tend to be happiest when using ‘more’ or ‘most’ of their potential ( I don’t know how potential is measured). ‘To be fully human, to be fully alive’. Is that just Western psychobabble, or is it something to which we should strive, for all people?

 Most people I guess, are responsible for their own development. But I know many people like Ali, who are more or less structurally blocked from realising more of their potential. What is my role here?