What´s my role?

The Mennonite Central Comitte has sent us here to ¨demonstrate God´s love by working among people suffering from poverty, conflict, oppression, and natural disasters." We are charged to create "mutually transformative relationships" That sounds great on paper, but when we're all covered in cement and the beneficiary of the system comes up with an idea completely contrary to where I was going.... What do I do? What’s my role?

We’re constantly referred to as tecnicos, which means I should have some technical knowledge of what we´re doing, and comparatively I usually do. I have read the books on building latrines, pouring cement, and design of water systems. I’m even building a dry latrine and roof-capture water system in my patio so that I can daily interact with the technologies that we’re advocating. However, the way they get things done here often gets the best of me. What’s my role?

As foreigners coming in with our light skin, resources, and college degrees (masters is finished now!!), we by default get to make a lot of decisions. To initiate a water system, the people come to us seeking resources and guidance. What should be my role in the water system? To make sure every part is up to code as the book would have us do it, or to give them ownership in what we’re putting together so that years down the road when something breaks, they have the confidence, the knowhow to fix it themselves?

I hate doing more in one step that might lead to even more work for me or someone else in a future step. I would often rather sit back and think about how to solve the problem than try something that might not work – when I was building my electric car you could often find me on a Saturday afternoon sitting in the truck, pondering where that 18th battery was going to fit… But when the cement is drying or people are supporting a heavy weight and the work has to be done, what's my role? Do I spend time trying to get my ideas across to save them labor or do I accept their ideas, and use my imagination to understand how everything will be just fine with their idea – it almost always is.

An example – We were putting the roof on a latrine – 3 sheets of fiber-cement and the owner had the idea to drill all the holes before we put the sheet of fiber atop the rafters. While I’m no carpenter, I can usually hold my own with handtools, but as I looked at the materials we were working with, I knew it couldn’t be done – with warped tree branches for rafters, we just couldn’t be exact enough for all 6 holes in the rafters to line up with all 6 holes in the fiber board. So I protested, but with a quick look from Cassie, held my tongue from saying anything further. And I was right, we had to redrill 2 holes. What would my further protest have gained? Maybe saved 5 minutes of pleasant work, and the educated guy with the resources got to force his decision. As it was, the owner saw that we had to re-drill, and made the decision on the next one to wait until the sheet was up to drill the holes exactly through the material into the rafter.
I could go on, there are plenty of examples where I’ve assumed I knew best, but luckily held my tongue at the right moment to both give the person ownership in the project, and often learning something myself.

The one additional complicating factor is that there is a pervasive mentality that no project will succeed without resources from outside the comunity. I often observe problems with simple solutions using the resources that are already in place, like simple maintenance, but the people would like a grand solution with bricks, cement, more technical thinking. We try to combat this tendency with more capacitation to fix the problem with the reources available - but that sometimes takes a lot of time and depends on the community all pulling in the same direction - not always easy.

So I´m learning that at times I do need to speak up and protect the resources entrusted to me and aid in the capacitation of the community to fix problems themselves long after we´re gone. But if it's just a matter of a little more work to give them the chance to steer the resources, the fruit of which they’ll be living with, sometimes I need to just be quiet, work and learn.