Ready...FIRE...aim.
Read
that again, please...
Ready...fire...aim is the banner
philosophy that lauds efficiency over effectiveness. Even if you've perhaps never heard such a phrase
articulated before, if you're like most people, you've no doubt encountered at
least one or two individuals who've either done or asked you to do that very
thing. I have, unfortunately,
encountered this way of thinking (and doing) more than a few times in my
life. (And, sadly, I’ve operated in
accordance with it at times, too.)
Even
though I probably don't need to write it, I'm going to anyway: "I'm not a huge fan of Ready...fire...aim." Not only is it ineffective but it can, at
times, produce devastating results. When
I was in Nicaragua a few years ago, I saw first-hand the damaging effects just
such a philosophy can have on people. At
the time, I was with Engineers Without Borders, and I was leading a small team
of engineers tasked with evaluating the quantity and quality of drinking water
supplies in Kisilaya, one of several hundred-plus villages that comprise an
autonomous conglomerate of tribal settlements that occupy The Mosquito Coast of northeastern Nicaragua and southern Honduras.
As
we launched in to our evaluation, we discovered that the village of Kisilaya
had three wells, each of which had the capacity to more than adequately supply
the safe drinking water needs of the surrounding villagers. But not everyone was getting his or her water
from one of the wells, and, as a result, several of the adults and about 40% of
the children were suffering from incontinence and the associated dehydration
that results from such a condition.
Why
were they sick? Because many of the people
were drawing their water from a polluted stream that ran through their village.
And
why was the stream polluted? Well, because
varied collections of women in the village took turns washing their clothes and
dishes in the stream throughout each week.
(For those of you who might not be aware of this, this practice provides
a huge social outlet for the women in such villages.) In addition to that, roaming livestock had
unrestricted access to the river, and some of the younger boys played and bathed
in the river almost daily. While the
villagers knew intuitively to draw their water upstream of many of the above
activities, they were seemingly unaware that another village, very similar to
their own and about ten minutes upstream of Kisilaya, was using the river in
similar ways. Without their conscious
awareness, the villagers of Kisilaya were drawing their cooking and drinking water
from what was, in many ways, the waste effluent of an upstream village.
And
why were the people drawing water from the polluted stream instead of from one
of the wells? Well, in addition to the
things about the village that I mention below, they were doing this because the manually-operated well
pumps at two of the three wells were broken.
And
why were the well-pumps broken? As best
as we could determine, the principal reasons for this were as such:
Reason 1
The international agency that installed the wells did
so without the buy-in and understanding of the village.
According
to Rose (our miskitu interpreter), the villagers weren't even asked for their
opinions as to what they wanted or needed or what might nest well within their
centuries-old customs, traditions, and social practices. Rose also said that "once the group who
built the project completed it, they just up and left, and, among all the other
work we needed to do, left us with a big mess to clean up." (It is interesting to note that out of all
the groups who'd visited and done work in the village of Kisalaya, the village
leaders said that ours was the first to actually engage the people in
conversation and then, through repeated back-and-forth dialogue, come to an
understanding of what the people in the village really wanted. Even though this didn't really surprise me,
it saddened me just the same. How rude
and arrogant it is for any of us to just decide for another what that one wants
or needs without even asking.)
Reason 2
The rope-and-piston well pumps were, by our estimation,
constructed with cheap, inadequate materials.
(In fact, if you looked too closely at the pump, the welds on the
support frame broke, and the PVC pipe split or crimped—all on its own. I am, of course, exaggerating, but not overly
so.)
As
it turns out, the lynch-pin of the malfunctioning rope-and-piston system was a $3
rope, which, unfortunately, could not handle the water load. Consequently, it kept snapping after only a
few months' use. After more than a dozen
instances of fixing or replacing the rope, and concurrent with the failing
health of the man who had done his best to keep the two wells nearest him
operational, the villagers gave up on the wells and, not surprisingly, fell
back on their previous ways of doing things.
The man who took care of the third well, which was located in another part of the village, saw
no reason to take care of the other two; after all, "his" well was
working just fine. In fact, he acted as
though the well was his and treated everyone accordingly by erecting a
structure around it and by locking the access.
Those who remained in "good standing" with this man (basically
through curried favors and words of social esteem), were granted limited access
to the well.
After
spending nearly ten days in the area, our team learned a little more about the
context for the above. It seems that
there was very little understanding (by the villagers) concerning the proper operation
and maintenance of the wells. In
addition, no money was being collected to cover the maintenance costs. Thirdly, given the abundance of water that
ran daily through the local stream, there was very little understanding (again
by the villagers) of why the wells were needed in the first place.
What
happened in Kisilaya was, I believe, a good example of the results and
by-products of Ready...fire...aim.
While
I do not wish to disparage the village of Kisilaya or those who conceived of
and implemented the water project, it must be written that the project was, in nearly
every sense of the word, a failure. I'm quite
sure that those who spear-headed the project meant well and intended to do
something good "to help" those who appeared to be in need. In actuality, though, I don't think anyone
was helped. To me, it seemed that the
exact opposite occurred: that which was intended
to bring aid actually caused injury instead.
I share the above story as just one among many perspectives that have arrisen in my own life concerning serving in a developing/rebuilding country. I hope and pray that we're all beginning to learn from some of the mistakes of the past. One of the things I love about The 410 Bridge (410), the umbrella sending agency that we travel under to both Haiti
and Kenya, is that anything done in a partner village, such as Bohoc, Haiti, is initiated,
worked, and completed by the villagers themselves. The village garden project that we will be
working on alongside the villagers over the next few days is THEIR project, meaning, it belongs to the villagers of Bohoc. It's not a 410 project; it's not a newhope church project; it's a Haitian
project and, more specifically, a Bohoc
project. The slogan we keep in the
forefront of our minds as this: An inch wide, a mile deep. In focusing on becoming a more devoted Christ-follower, building relationships, and empowering our friends in Bohoc, things are going deep...and the villagers know it. And thank God for it. We're just glad to be able to be a part of what God's doing in the hearts of our friends.
More
about today in a little while...
Dave
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