Apologies for the late update, but honestly things have been pretty slow. The compost project has been going pretty well and besides having a little cold for a while I've been fine as well. That's honestly a big thing I've found with Peace Corps service, sometimes things go slowly. However, that's also partially because of the nature of living in Timor-Leste. Things start to slow down around this time of year and the rainy season starts to approach. After thinking about what to talk about in this post I decided to make it a post about changing expectations.
Coming here the first thing I was asked to help with was teaching English (I know big shocker, right). However, after teaching my first few classes I had an issue with people not attending, to the point where I would literally not have a single person in the class, to the point where I eventually stopped the classes at my organization. After this, I discussed the idea of building a server for CDB with the idea of lessening the workload created from people having to manually type up all the reports into excel sheets stored locally on one computer. While this is still a huge issue I want to tackle, I thought back to the English classes and made the call that I would like to determine a better way of implementing this server so as to have it thrive as opposed to dying immediately after I leave.
This was one of the big reasons for creating recycling and composting programs and this was a moment where I learned a very important lesson. Just because something is good for everyone and even if it is made as easy as possible, that does not mean that people will help to make the change required for it to be successful. The only reason the compost project is still running today is that I went around to everyone in my Org and asked them to sign up for a month to help. This was exactly what I wanted to avoid, but after a month of waiting for people to sign up to volunteer, I decided to take matters into my own hand. I do however fully believe people signed up (at least most of them) mostly because I asked them, and as a Malae it would be rude for them to not say yes.
At this part of the post, you may be thinking, "Wait, did he just suggest I force people to volunteer?" What I haven't expressed yet is what I believe would be a better option, because even though I, "voluntold" them to help, it won't be a sustainable project unless they truly want to continue after I leave. My hope with this experiment is that I will be able to show people the benefits of this comporting method first hand, mostly with experience and results that I was unable to physically show them in the class previous to building the pit. Instead, I would like to have more projects that work like my experiment in making fruit wine. My fruit wine has been very popular with people and is something that some of my neighbors would like to learn how to make and sell. The reason it worked, at least in my opinion, is because I had the physical change in my hand and it wasn't a risk for them to try what I already did.
So now what? Well, I have a plan to help develop some better management techniques, but I have to find a way to make them as easy to start as making fruit wine. I wish I could tell you all how I plan to do this, but it's honestly something I'm still trying to plan out myself. What you can look forward to is reading about it in a future post where I can only hope that this attempt will go as well as I'd like it to. At the end of the day changes need to be made hand in hand with the people we are working with, and that's why I titled this post as I did. I don't know the specifics, but whatever project I start in the future will be me and the stakeholders walking hand in hand. Unfortunately, that's where I leave you, but until then, I'll leave you with this!
“Mom always told me, "People will do what they want to do-always. If you don't like how someone is acting or what they are doing, no matter how much you scream yell or cry, you won't change them unless they really want to change.”
~Alison Caiola (The Seeds of a Daisy)
Much Love,
~BW
