Playing the Game
Another weekend comes round and I find myself wandering round an ex-pat party in one of Kigali's posh suburbs, where most people seem exceedingly bored with themselves and with others. The air stinks of what the English language has borrowed a term for, ennui. Everyone knows everything about the people they know and seem to have little interest in finding out about people they don't know, it feels horribly cliquish, even the Rwandans there are only present for the free drink I suspect. I find the atmosphere inconduisive to being my usual social self, I pine to be back home, wherever home is...at least among people who are capable of appreciating me.
Later, a German women I know comes in, she is usually good fun and prospects for the evening are looking up, even if the party appeared to be clearing out. I join a discussion about musical icons, its so refreshing not to start a conversation with people along the usual "who-are-you-here-with-what-do-you-do-and-for-how-long" lines.
Later again I continued talking to one of the group who seemed to have been in development for many years and I told him of some of my reservations about VSO and the aid industry in general. I liked Steve, I could see he was trying to see where I was coming from and said he had made mistakes by speaking out when he shouldn't have. "You have to admit though, two months is very little", he said
I told him I wasn't a development worker I was simply someone who saw a system with inefficiencies. To my mind these needed to be explained or changed and in any case he wasn't the first to trot out the old "you don't have experience" line. When, I wondered, were my opinions valid? two months? six months? a year? ten years?
I asked if we were supposed to be here as change agents or not, he argued the point that perhaps i didn't have enough experience to know what an effective change agent was and that was true. However most of the things I truly had a problem with related to VSO, which although they seem to have forgotten it, is a first world entity and I do have experience trying to change things in a non development context.
Still though the question of validity of opinions is an important one : Once you start on a slippery slope for saying someone's opinion isn't valid because they don't have enough experience in this or that, where does it end? He didn't seem to have an answer but the implicit response was that my opinions counted when I had been in the industry long enough to know not to shout about its inherent inadequacies or when I had learned that this got you nowhere. In essence my opinions counted as soon as I had reached the established consensus. I wondered how any industry could adapt with such a structure and how on earth you could be expected to stay radical long enough for anyone too listen to you? If you leave a baby to cry for long enough, it realises that crying is wasted effort and keeps quiet. This is no doubt, a better state of affairs for all concerned but it doesn't mean that what the baby was crying about in the first place wasn't a legitimate concern. Perhaps I'm just not used to not being listened to or worse being condescended to - if I'm wrong show me how I'm wrong, don't tell me I'll know better with more experience. I'm not egotistical enough to think I know better than those with more experience, there are reasons why things are done they way they are - but there is, to my mind an important difference between approaching a new area with humility and obsequiousness. It seems in the development circles nothing is explained in a rational way, you are told merely to accept that fact that you know nothing and to do what you are told. If that's the way they treat their own workers, how do they treat the people they work with? How can fledging third work governments who look to foreigners with all their power and money as a source of inspiration on get things done, be expected to act? Its a very top down, i-know-better-than-you culture and the process of being accepted into the club seems frighteningly similar to being fitted with a mental straight jacket.
Of course the way to maneuver in such structure is to play the game, get inside the beast and know your enemy well before you strike. But what if you have to spend so long getting into the swing of things that you forgot why you were playing the game in the first place? That question troubled me a lot...
As I was reading an obituary for Sheik Yassin killed recently by the Israeli defense forces. A few days later I thought about the above question in terms of armed struggles the world over from Palestine to Rwanda to Ireland. At the point of mounting an armed struggle you must surely be convinced that you will not be listened to unless you kill, that there are no political inroads for your concerns. Here I am limiting my discussion to well defined groups with specific grievances rather than armed despots wishing only to have power for its own sake. How one might distinguish between these two is another days work. So you take up weapons in a desperate attempt to get noticed and eventually you either run out of funds or you do get noticed. The longer this process takes, the longer it will be to persuade you to give an armed struggle. Now your goal is no longer merely to get noticed but to get what you want without compromise, and why not since you are the one with you finger on the trigger? Another case being so long in the mould you forgot why you went into it in the first place?
I'm not very good at the playing the game and I'm quite happy with this state of affairs. I came here because I felt uncomfortable about the advantages I've had, merely by accident of birthplace, not to become some odious political being. I'm beginning to think if development circles want to keep clapping themselves on the back and presenting the face that all is rosy then to hell with them - I'm out for all I can get!
Later, a German women I know comes in, she is usually good fun and prospects for the evening are looking up, even if the party appeared to be clearing out. I join a discussion about musical icons, its so refreshing not to start a conversation with people along the usual "who-are-you-here-with-what-do-you-do-and-for-how-long" lines.
Later again I continued talking to one of the group who seemed to have been in development for many years and I told him of some of my reservations about VSO and the aid industry in general. I liked Steve, I could see he was trying to see where I was coming from and said he had made mistakes by speaking out when he shouldn't have. "You have to admit though, two months is very little", he said
I told him I wasn't a development worker I was simply someone who saw a system with inefficiencies. To my mind these needed to be explained or changed and in any case he wasn't the first to trot out the old "you don't have experience" line. When, I wondered, were my opinions valid? two months? six months? a year? ten years?
I asked if we were supposed to be here as change agents or not, he argued the point that perhaps i didn't have enough experience to know what an effective change agent was and that was true. However most of the things I truly had a problem with related to VSO, which although they seem to have forgotten it, is a first world entity and I do have experience trying to change things in a non development context.
Still though the question of validity of opinions is an important one : Once you start on a slippery slope for saying someone's opinion isn't valid because they don't have enough experience in this or that, where does it end? He didn't seem to have an answer but the implicit response was that my opinions counted when I had been in the industry long enough to know not to shout about its inherent inadequacies or when I had learned that this got you nowhere. In essence my opinions counted as soon as I had reached the established consensus. I wondered how any industry could adapt with such a structure and how on earth you could be expected to stay radical long enough for anyone too listen to you? If you leave a baby to cry for long enough, it realises that crying is wasted effort and keeps quiet. This is no doubt, a better state of affairs for all concerned but it doesn't mean that what the baby was crying about in the first place wasn't a legitimate concern. Perhaps I'm just not used to not being listened to or worse being condescended to - if I'm wrong show me how I'm wrong, don't tell me I'll know better with more experience. I'm not egotistical enough to think I know better than those with more experience, there are reasons why things are done they way they are - but there is, to my mind an important difference between approaching a new area with humility and obsequiousness. It seems in the development circles nothing is explained in a rational way, you are told merely to accept that fact that you know nothing and to do what you are told. If that's the way they treat their own workers, how do they treat the people they work with? How can fledging third work governments who look to foreigners with all their power and money as a source of inspiration on get things done, be expected to act? Its a very top down, i-know-better-than-you culture and the process of being accepted into the club seems frighteningly similar to being fitted with a mental straight jacket.
Of course the way to maneuver in such structure is to play the game, get inside the beast and know your enemy well before you strike. But what if you have to spend so long getting into the swing of things that you forgot why you were playing the game in the first place? That question troubled me a lot...
As I was reading an obituary for Sheik Yassin killed recently by the Israeli defense forces. A few days later I thought about the above question in terms of armed struggles the world over from Palestine to Rwanda to Ireland. At the point of mounting an armed struggle you must surely be convinced that you will not be listened to unless you kill, that there are no political inroads for your concerns. Here I am limiting my discussion to well defined groups with specific grievances rather than armed despots wishing only to have power for its own sake. How one might distinguish between these two is another days work. So you take up weapons in a desperate attempt to get noticed and eventually you either run out of funds or you do get noticed. The longer this process takes, the longer it will be to persuade you to give an armed struggle. Now your goal is no longer merely to get noticed but to get what you want without compromise, and why not since you are the one with you finger on the trigger? Another case being so long in the mould you forgot why you went into it in the first place?
I'm not very good at the playing the game and I'm quite happy with this state of affairs. I came here because I felt uncomfortable about the advantages I've had, merely by accident of birthplace, not to become some odious political being. I'm beginning to think if development circles want to keep clapping themselves on the back and presenting the face that all is rosy then to hell with them - I'm out for all I can get!
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