Great Expectations

On Sunday we moved. It was not a difficult process, from one furnished apartment to another, and it only took one tuk-tuk, or rickshaw ride to carry all of our things to our new home. The new surroundings are quite comfortable by any standards, and I likely have more amenities than a large proportion of Kenya’s population. It is a two bedroom, one bath half of a duplex, larger than any apartment I ever had back in the U.S. Two beds, a couch and two easy chairs, a book shelf, a coffee table, an inconspicuous rug, assorted remarkably tasteful decorations and side tables, and a couple of squeaky fans compliment the recent renovation. Located just a fifteen minute walk from my office, it seems too good to be true.

But not all is so easy, for not all challenges have revealed themselves. On the first night in our new home, we unpack our belongings along with the few new items purchased to fill any gaps in the furnishings. A new water filter, ice trays, and a handful of sponges and soaps all make their way into the kitchen. It is apparent that the stove and small refrigerator are not nearly as new as the paint on the walls. They are chipped and stained with use, and the rubber in the joins has begun to dry and crack. Luckily my misgivings about the refrigerator are calmed when we plug it in and flip the switch on the outlet. It begins to buzz and hum and our recently purchased groceries go in.

Later that evening we look to the stove to prepare for dinner. Three of the four burners have all of their components. One is conspicuously incomplete, missing the black ceramic plate that splits the flow of gas into a wide circle of flame. This fourth may not help with cooking dinner, but if we ever have need of a Bunsen burner, we should be covered. The oven appears to be electric, and also appears to be completely non-functioning, given the jumble of wires hanging uselessly out the back. Neither of these are real problems, as I cannot remember ever needing all four burners, and it never is cool enough to seriously consider baking.

Next to the oven sits the large orange gas tank. It feels heavy, indicating it is almost full. I lift the rubber hose connected to the back of the stove and go to put it over the nozzle of the tank when I notice the white substance plugging the hole where the gas should come out. I am unfamiliar with this particular type of nozzle. Perhaps they put a plug in to guard against leaks. I scrape the white stuff with my fingernail. It feels like chalk or plaster. Perhaps it is some new kind of filter, allowing gas to pass out but nothing to get in and block the flow. That is an unlikely possibility, given the apparent age of the rest of the tank, but I try putting the hose over the end anyway and opening the valves. No gas comes through. I close the valves, pull the hose off and look at the white plug again. Plaster. It has to be plaster, but why would anyone put plaster in the nozzle of a gas tank? My short fingernails can’t reach any further into the opening, so I grab a spare screw and prepare to scratch or drill a hole.

As soon as the screw puts pressure on the chalky white substance, it crumbles and gives way like a paper-thin wall. Out pour a tiny dead spider and an enormous dead grub. I probably killed them when I opened the gas valve. I’m not sure what they were doing in there together, nor which of them constructed the barrier, but at least the gas blockage has been dealt with. Or so I think.

After cleaning out the nozzle and replacing the hose I open the valves again and try to light the stove. Nothing. No gas moving out. Try again. Nothing. I remove the burners and open the top of the stove, checking that all the pipes are going in the right direction and that turning the knobs on the front of the range actually opens another valve. It’s getting late. We’re hungry. The pipes appear to be in the right place. The range gets put back together. The hose is reattached. The valves are opened. No gas comes through, and our first dinner in our new home ends up being two melted and re-cooled candy bars, thanks to our loudly buzzing fridge.

Quite often it seems that our happiness is dependent more upon our expectations than the objective circumstances we find our selves in. Thankfully my girlfriend and I have enough perspective and our senses of humor are strong enough that we were not left devastated by our low-grade chocolate dinner. That said, a working stove would have rounded out an overall better dining experience. The same concept holds true with birthday presents, family vacations, and development projects. It is all too easy to fall into latching on to the latest idea as the cure for the ailments of the developing world. With each iteration of big words and projections, expectations are raised. This may be necessary in the world of fundraising, where once a bandwagon is big enough it reaches the critical mass needed to possibly make an impact on a large scale. For the people targeted by these projects however, such great expectations can create as many problems as opportunities.

Throughout the history of the development industry communication with targeted populations has not been crystal clear. The interpretation of a message will always depend upon the previous experiences of the interpreter. The greater the differences in experience between those creating a message and those hearing it, the greater can be the difference in the interpretation, and hence expectations generated. What you say and what is heard are not always the same things when speaking to your coworker at the water cooler. When the message is generated by the moneyed donor or the scholarly professor, and received by the semi-nomadic tribesman, the orphaned urban youth, or the small farmer the difference in what is said and what is heard is potentially that much greater.

I work for an organization that plants trees with small farmers. This activity holds a great amount of potential to generate income for rural families and to help halt certain environmental woes such as desertification. People should know that the potential impact is great, but it cannot end poverty on its own. Such rhetoric, though perhaps useful in motivating donors, only sets up the targets of development projects for disappointment.

While in the field, I walk a line between the desire to motivate people to be excited about the projects we do, and the need to ensure that we manage the farmers’ expectations fairly. I cannot help but be seen as someone in a position of more power than those people I work to serve. My education, my speech, my nationality, economic background and skin color all point to my being in a position to make changes happen. It is radically unfair that it is so, but so it is. And in that position, it is my responsibility to speak plainly, to explain clearly while not talking down, to motivate without planting false hopes, and to work enthusiastically on a project that will take years to bear fruit.

Despite these responsibilities of good development practice, at the end of the day each individual has the capacity to base their happiness either upon their prior expectations, or upon a more objective idea of their wellbeing. In that light, a stove that does not cook, a refrigerator that can’t make ice, a leaking roof and a rubble filled toilet that will only flush twice a day are things that can either make you pine for those things you don’t have, or remind you of those things you do. A few hundred trees on a small farm plot will never buy someone a Mercedes or cure malaria, but it might pay for a high school education, a clean water system, or keep someone invested enough in their community to have them see options beyond moving to a slum in a major city. Those, at least, are some of my expectations.

The Balancing Act

The soil in much of Palakumi location, Ganze district, is red. It is the red of desert rocks in the American southwest, the red of a sunrise mellowed by a thin layer of clouds in the east, a red that gets in your socks and shoes, and dusts the cuffs of your trousers. As the wind kicks up, the red dust spreads itself over the rest of your clothes, finding seams and pockets in which to deposit itself.

Red color in the earth is usually an indication of an old, weathered soil, with a high proportion of iron oxides and a low nutrient holding capacity. Most of the soil in Palakumi is sandy, like a beach. Sandy soil makes for easy cultivation and tillage, but does not retain much in the way of water or nutrients. The rains do not fall in abundance there. The majority of the vegetation is low bushes and scrub, a few grasses, and some scattered trees. Most of the trees that have been left produce something that was once a cash crop, either coconuts or cashews. They stand in irregular clusters. Buyers no longer come for the cashews since the factory was moved to a different district. A few locals tap the coconuts to make a syrupy alcohol that keeps unemployed young men occupied for the day. The clumps of trees are like little segments of the forest that once spread over the whole region, holding tightly to what is left of the soil. If you pick up a handful of the red sand, it sifts back through your fist without holding any form. It appears, on first analysis, to be relatively devoid of organic material, as if the scattered leaves and grasses break down into nothing and simply disappear.

Soil organic matter is integral to a healthy agro-ecosystem. Organic matter can bind mineral particles together, helping aggregation and increasing porosity. Organic matter can tie up nutrients so they are not immediately available to plants, but it can also build up a long-term store, increasing the overall nutrient holding capacity of the soil. Organic matter provides a balance between the benefits and drawbacks of both sandy and clay soils and a buffer to shifts in soil pH. Without organic matter, sandy soils like those I saw in Palakumi can see nutrients quickly leached away, and crops, without the aid of substantial inputs, will grow poorly.

And yet when Gabriel hears that Ganze or Kilifi districts are the poorest in the country, he disagrees. He tells Benson and I that there are riches waiting to be tapped right here, from the ground under our feet. He, a farmer and retired teacher, sees potential in this dry, red soil. He says the metric that they use to measure wealth is flawed. Benson nods in agreement. He is an extension agent with whom I have been walking across the community, visiting farmers participating in our organization’s program. More than any other element of my first impression of Ganze district, it is the optimism and the belief in the ability to move forward that I find striking and valuable to take with me. Gabriel, Benson and I sit for a couple of hours at the end of a long day, discussing myriad topics, from the upcoming Constitutional Referendum in Kenya to agricultural practices in the United States.

At the end of my stay in Palakumi location, my feelings are mixed. I am optimistic about the participation of the farmers in the program and their enthusiasm. I am eager to begin work in my role of developing training programs for the extension agents with whom I work. At the same time I am concerned about the expectations that are in place already. Managing the expectations of the people who pull their livelihood from that dry, sandy, red soil, may prove to be as much of a challenge as the logistics of delivering trees to our expanding network of farmers and extension workers. If expectations are not managed well, even results that the organization would deem a success could turn out to be a failure in the farmers' eyes.

The challenges facing any development project are innumerable. Creating a problem definition helps in that it gives structure to a project, and yet it hinders in that it allows for the exclusion of elements integral to the human, natural, and agricultural ecologies at work. It is all too easy for the organization, on the path to completing its goals, to ignore those factors that are outside the scope of its problem definition. As in the soil, where a balance of sand, silt, clay, organic material, air and water make a healthy system, a development organization must strive to balance the factors pushing and pulling it in different directions. From the expectations of program participants and donors, to the science and logistics behind the operations, to the mundane details of the budget, it is imperative to allow for a sharp focus on the task at hand without losing that task's place in the broader picture. Looking forward, I try to balance my optimism with caution, my assumptions with an open mind, and the limited scope of my training project with the breadth of Gabriel’s everyday life in Palakumi location, Ganze district. In the end, hoping not to sound too much of a reductionist, I have come to think that balance itself is a goal. When we speak of sustainability, that ill-defined concept so popular in the vocabularies of development, economics, and environmental management, it may be valuable to keep that goal in mind. Balance in the soil, balance in the organization, and balance in development as a whole.