“It is not enough to give fish to a man, you must teach him how to fish”, proclaims a popular saying in America. The message of this proverb usually targets various donor-driven initiatives, which pump billion of dollars into the poor areas of Africa, S. E. Asia, South America, etc. Just as most other bumper stickers, this messages is simplistic enough to be quickly understood and accepted by the proud Westerners, who fancy themselves as excellent fishermen as well as fishing instructors.
“No, it is not enough to teach a man how to fish,” says Sandy Somerville, the owner of a folk craft gallery in Vilankulo, Mozambique. “You must first teach him how to make the fishing rod, attach a string and a hook. Then you must ensure that the man continues to fish, once you go home at the end of your assignment in the field.”
Sandy is a South African expat, who had moved to Mozambique about 15 years ago to start a new life on a forested patch of land, some 20 km away from the nearest town. She and her husband built a house in the bush, drilled a well, created a somewhat drivable road for their 4×4, and planted organic vegetables in order to feed the growing family. Oh, yeah, Sandy had also given birth to both of their children, right there in the wilderness!
Given these credentials, Sandy is well qualified to describe the up’s and down’s of the daily life in central Mozambique, including many efforts by the international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) to address the long standing problems of this country.
The list of local problems is long and typical of the countries located on the poorest continent on the planet. It includes a slow recovery from the painful civil war and foreign military intervention, devastating HIV / AIDS epidemic, debilitating corruption at every level of the society, lack of any meaningful health care and education, high rate of childbirth combined with the extremely low life expectancy, suffocating poverty, especially in the countryside where families live on less than $1 per day… the tragic list goes on and on, unfortunately.
The international community is trying to assist Mozambique via a number of NGO’s and their humanitarian aid initiatives. However, most of them either fail completely or provide only a temporary relief. Sandy thinks that the main reason for the low rate of success is explained by the fundamental differences of the core values of the Europeans and N. Americans and the people they are trying to help.
Most of the time the donor countries and the NGO’s are solving the local problems by employing fairly modern solutions. They require electricity, fuel, spare parts and some technical expertise to operate and provide the on-going support. In this scenario a team of Western specialists arrives, implements a solution, trains a few local people on how to operate the equipment and leaves shortly thereafter. Their job is done – the donor money are spent, the solution is in place and the reports are written. A typical donor initiative lasts anywhere between one and two years and seems to be fairly effective in its early stages.
The problems usually start after the experts leave and a donor-supplied tractor gets a flat tire or the local community runs out of funds to buy the fuel to run it. There is no one around to fix the tractor and there are no spare parts or money to buy them. After a few days of sitting idly in the field, the tractor is vandalized and can never operate again.
Something similar happens when the local farmers are encouraged to plant genetically modified (GM) crops, which are supplied to them by the NGO’s. Yes, the GM crops can successfully fight insects, drought, and produce good harvest, but they don’t reproduce. The farmers must buy more GM seeds from a distributor in order to plant the new harvest, but they do not have any money to spend on the modern seed, while the old natural grain is no longer available.
A shining modern hospital was built by the NGO’s in the town of Vilankulo and was equipped with the modern high-tech medical gadgetry. However, only 5% of the local nurses even know how to measure blood pressure and there is no one around to run an x-ray machine. The expensive equipment sits around unplugged and is eventually taken home by the hospital personnel.
The same fate awaited a large cache of medicine, which was donated to the hospital. As of right now, the hospital doesn’t have any medicine to give to the sick people, yet one can procure what’s needed via a private transaction, if one knows the right hospital employees to talk to. Their homes are loaded with stacks of sophisticated modern medicine, including the Schedule 5 drugs, all of which were “liberated” from the hospital by its own personnel.
Sandy told me a tragic story of her friend, a local artist, who had recently died from meningitis simply because the needed medicine wasn’t available in Vilankulo. Sandy was desperate to help and asked an airline pilot to fly the drug from S. Africa, but it was too late – the young man had died shortly before the medicine had finally arrived.
During our recent visit to a Namibian middle school, one of our group members gave 100 kits of toothbrushes and toothpaste to the head teacher and asked her to distribute them among the children. The teacher gave out 30 kits to the best students and told us that she will give the other 70 to her staff. She didn’t see anything wrong with this distribution formula, even though she knew that our gift was meant for the children.
We also realized that the children were thirsty as many of them kept on asking us for our water bottles. The school of 150 students didn’t have running water, even though it is located close to a major river. Apparently, a nearby tourist lodge had donated the pipes and a pump to bring the river water to the school. The local community was to provide the labor in order to install the equipment, but the project was never even started due to all kinds of bickering between the school staff, government officials, tribal chiefs, etc. Someone had drilled a few wells away from the school and the buckets of water mixed with sand are carried to the school on women’s heads.
Sandy has offered some practical advice for the NGO’s and the donor community in their effort to help the people of Mozambique and the rest of Africa – keep it simple, stay around longer, and train the local people as much as possible.
To illustrate the last point, Sandy describes her own gallery, Machilla Magic, where she trains and employs the local artists. She helps many people to develop their natural talents, while enabling them to earn supplemental income and have hope for the future.
Another great example of the long-range planning was offered by an NGO, which set up a facility in Vilankulo to train the automobile mechanics and other technicians. The graduates of this program will continue to help their community long after the NGO itself had pulled out from the area.
Many prominent donor organizations are starting to pay attention to the strategy called “Capacity Development” and focus on the training and employment of the local resources. The company I work for (ITG Health, based in Agoura Hills, California) is playing an active role in introducing local resources to the donor initiatives, who can employ them. The matching is done via a powerful website and the knowledge-based repository called www.HingX.org.
The poor Mozambican fishermen continue to pull their nets from the beach during the morning low-tide. Their wives and children pull on the long ropes right next to the men. They know how to fish, but there is less and less fish to be caught off the overfished coast of south-eastern Africa. Sandy Somerville wants the locals to supplement their monotonous diets by setting up organic vegetable plots and growing multiple cultures, in addition to the traditional maize, peanuts and .
Sandy knows that the best way to help people is by enabling them to help themselves and she is there for the longest run possible – for the rest of her life!
You can learn more about Sandy’s work, as well as view and purchase the locally hand-made art on her website – www.MachillaMagic.com.
Igor Yasno,
Keep on traveling!
Thank you for bringing this familiar story to public attention. The ‘mismatch’ between the giver and the receiver, despite the best intentions, often leads to disappointment, and little if any change in development. Those who work at grassroots levels and who know what happens in local communities, like Sandy, are a small part of a bigger story. The whole concept of international development needs a radical shift and re-make. Local concepts, experience and culture are of pivotal importance and so long as donors and internationals gloss over it international ‘help’ will not help. If things are to work, the adaptation and change are not just expected from those who are at the receiving end but equally from those who offer help. The compromise is sometimes hard as it feels like ‘going back’ and some of it may be difficult to sell to Western political leaders and institutions. Governance is of critical importance, but we need a new basic system of accountability, and incentive schemes, to make it work in places where life and institutions bear little resemblance to those where donors and international NGOs come from. Your story highlights the divide between ‘global’ power and capacity (often insufficiently able to adapt to local conditions) on the one hand, and the results at the local level – with some benefit but also with heightened corruption, failed projects, disappointment and cynicism. And then despite all this, there are positive and encouraging stories of individual, small scale initiatives based on common sense, belief and hard work which can bring palpable benefits. The question is: how can we spread them around sufficiently so they can influence ‘bigger’ players.