Jofacilitator

Because Wayne and I and our family moved so often from one culture to another, and we were there to work side by side with the local people to make a difference in their community, we had to learn how to become trusted, not just as outside “experts”, but as human beings.

What we discovered was that the process is vastly different in different cultures. Mostly we became human beings to the local people by lucky accident.

In Egypt, one day I was visiting a local leader, Sheikh Mustafa, with my Egyptian colleague Ragia. As we were talking with him about the development project, he said, “You don’t know anything about our situation, you are an “abla” – an educated foreigner.

I said in my very limited Arabic, “La, ana felahah!” “No, I’m a farmer!”.

“Mishmumpkin”, he said. Impossible. You are only an educated foreigner.

“La, ana felahah! I can milk a cow!”

“Right,” he responded. “You go in my back room and milk my cow and I’ll give you milk in your tea.” (a real treat in rural Egypt).

So I went in his back room and milked his cow. Not only did he give me milk in my tea, he went to my husband and offered him a buffalo and a cow for me! Sheikh Mustafa was a joker, and this was a joke, but he was saying that I was a valuable human being, and we had made a connection. I was not just a foreigner, but someone that could be treated as a colleague.

With the women in the Egyptian village, I was a human being because I had a son, luckily named Aaron which is Haroon in Arabic, and I was willing to be called “Om Haroon”, in the tradition of calling women “the mother of “ their oldest son.

Wayne became a human being in Egypt by getting his hands dirty side-by-side with other men, and exchanging cigarettes with them in a familiar ritual.

As those who know me will recognize, I’m an extreme extrovert, and usually am the first one to speak and greet someone, and am not shy to insert myself into a conversation. In Murrin Bridge in Aboriginal Australia, there was an elder that I really needed to work with. She had had very bad experiences in residential school, and was wary and prickly with whitefellas. One day, after lunch, I went over to her house to talk with her. Her door was open, but she was intently watching the soap opera on television. Against my usual nature, mostly because I was a bit afraid of her testiness, I stood at her door quietly, not even announcing my presence, for some time. Eventually she looked around and imperiously motioned me to come in and sit down. I did, saying nothing, and watched the rest of the show with her. At the end she started to talk to me, and from then on we were close friends. We were partners in teaching Aboriginal language and culture in the schools. She even shared bush meat with us that her son had brought for her, and the instructions on how to cook it properly. (Tikarpila, or echidna, spiny anteater. You must not cook tikarpila over a flame, because if the fat drops into the fire it will call evil spirits. You must cook it in a hole, that’s its place. An oven can be a stand-in for a hole in modern life.)

By accident, I had stumbled on a cultural pattern that was expected of someone that was a respectful human being – to stand at the edge of the circle or home and wait to be recognized and acknowledged before coming in to become part of the group. Once I understood it, I used this pattern over and over.

In Mexican South Texas, white folks go up to each others’ doors and knock or ring the bell when they want to meet with someone. Mexican folks stay in their cars and honk until someone comes out. Each group thinks the other is rude in their behaviour.

We were reflecting on these practices when we were working in the community, and read a book by Oscar Lewis that provided insight into this pattern. Mexican tradition indicates that no one comes up to your house uninvited except your relatives or your “co-padres”, your children’s baptismal parents. These people are family and allowed free access. So the polite thing to do, if you are not related, is to stay at a distance and let people know you are there. You might be invited in after that. Children are exempt from this expectation, because they don’t understand.

There was a young family across the highway from us that we needed to work with, but they were politically from a different group in the community and were hard to contact. They happened to have a son in kindergarten with Aaron, and one day Aaron asked if he could go across the street to play with Cesar. I said he could, and I walked him across the highway and said, “I’ll come and get you later, because it isn’t safe for you to cross the highway.” Later, I went to get him and was invited in because my son was there.  Once I was invited in, I was treated like family, and we became friends who could work together. The ancient custom worked in reverse – if I was in the house, then I must be part of the extended family.

Now these are distilled stories, picking out the most visible behaviours. It would be a mistake to take these at surface level – they are only indicators. In fact, there were many more subtle ways that we became human to people. In some places we lived, it was harder to discern what was the real key to being trusted as an equal, and in those places we had less success in facilitating participatory community development.

I’ve taken these lessons about becoming human to my work with organizations and individuals. Each organization or group has a different culture, and different (usually unconscious) patterns that give clues of whether you are a trusted human being.

In Aboriginal groups, I suppress my urge to talk, and do a lot of just hanging out and being. Because of my white hair, I often get seen as an elder, so I am very careful that everything I do or say is carefully considered, so I don’t abuse the respect.

In a university group, I happily use my most extensive vocabulary, and either allow or join in with vigourous dialogue and argument.

In a corporate setting, I make sure I pay attention and give appropriate respect to the power structure of the organization, even as I encourage the participation of all levels of the organization together.

With introverted people, I don’t just walk into their office and begin to talk. I stand at the entrance and wait until they recognize me and invite me in.

Again, these could easily be taken as stereotypes at surface level, but they are some of the most visible clues that can catalyze reflection on cultural values at a deeper level.

Becoming a human being not only allows collaborative work, but enriches my understanding of the many different ways of being human.

In the 1970’s, it was radical to believe that villagers had any knowledge about what they needed to develop their community. We began the project with a comprehensive participatory planning process that included a cross-section of villagers as well as some Egyptian and international volunteer “experts”. In the mornings, we visited every house and asked people the question of the day – what they wanted to see in the future, what was blocking that from happening, what strategies they could do to deal with the obstacles and realize their vision. In the late afternoon we held a plenary session to bring all the ideas together. The plenary was held in a tent in the middan (plaza) made of bright red, yellow, and green quilted wall hangings. The first afternoon, the men were gathered at the front of the room, and a few village women in black were huddled at the back, present but saying little. A huge gust of wind blew through and knocked down all the chairs and the blackboard. A little sleight of hand from one of my colleagues and suddenly the front of the room materialized where the back had been, and the women were at the front of the room! Several of those women who had the courage to come to the meeting, participate, and push the boundaries later became my preschool teachers.

It was clear from the consult results that the highest priority for the community was clean water. “Maya fee Bayad” (Water in Bayad) became a rallying cry. Bayad is a village perched on a limestone shelf on the eastern bank of the Nile, in a very narrow strip of land that from ancient times had flooded every year with the Nile cycle. This was the only source of water, since it rarely rains more than an inch in any year. Cavities in the limestone that captured the water were refilled by the Nile every year and were wells used for irrigation. When the Aswan High Dam was built, suddenly there was no more flooding, no more refilling of the wells. For more than 10 years, every drop of water for drinking, cooking and washing or for growing food had to be carried by hand or on heads from the Nile. When irrigation ditches were finally constructed, the stagnant water in the ditches became a wonderful habitat for the snail that is a host of bilharzia, or schistosomiasis. Just walking in the water makes one subject to infection, as the microscopic fluke passes through the skin, then lays its eggs in the liver. People are debilitated for years, before finally the liver is destroyed. When woman and children went to the canal for water, often the donkey carrying the water jugs waded into the water, and water next to him was scooped into the jugs.

Educated people said that village people (fellahin) were ignorant about water-borne disease. Village folk knew exactly what was happening to them. However there are no trees in Egypt, no money to buy extra fuel to boil water, and humans cannot survive without water!

So although we began working on strategies to create solutions to a wide range of challenges in the community, the first focus was on getting clean water. Everyone said it was impossible, that there was only rock under the village.

Gene Boivin was a wild, creative older American on our staff. He and a small group of volunteers, both Muslim and Christian, from the village began together to explore ways to deal with the water problem. Gene found a drawing of a hand water drill in a book on appropriate technology, and went off to Beni Suef to get a welder to create it.

The first try was on the edge of the village. Clunk! The drill immediately hit stone. A few days later, the Omda (traditional mayor) of the village came to Boivin and said, “I have a small plot of land that is right on the edge of the Nile. There is sand and clay there. Why don’t you try your well there?” So the ragtag group of men and boys carried the drill down to the Omda’s land. They began by digging a hole by hand. A few feet down, they hit moist sand. “Khudra!” shouted young Khalil. “Green!” or “Fertile!” The men immediately dropped the drill into the hole and turned it. Clean water bubbled out! Excitement flooded the village.

Boivin and the crew set up a donated diesel pump, and long lines of village women came for water. Next a coordinating body of volunteer village leaders and our staff organized workdays. On the one day of rest, after prayers on Fridays, the men dug a long trench in the limestone with their turias (stout short-handled hoes) toward the village. Women brought tea. Our staff pitched in sifting sand into the bottoms of the trench to protect the pipes. When the men got tired of working every Friday on the trench, and the number working began to dwindle, the women got together and threatened that they would not carry water until the men were back on the job. The next Friday they were all back.

A crew laid donated pipe in the trench, and connected it to a faucet on the edge of the village. City folk cautioned us, “You can’t put copper pipes and faucets in a village. It won’t be long until someone steals them.” But the villagers had built this with their own energy, and guarded their precious water.

Weddings are the main festive events in an Egyptian village, and the drink served is called “sharbot”. It is like English cordial, bright red, yellow or green and thick with sugar and flavor. To celebrate the water, we held a community-wide ceremony and festival, with sharbot made with the fresh water. The excitement was so widespread people charged the tables to get their sharbot, and the event has remained in memory as “the sharbot riots”.

Abdel Hamid was one of the pioneers of the water system. He was a felucca boatman, who worked long hours poling, rowing, and steering his felucca back and forth across the Nile to support his large family. The water was so important to him that he put his work on hold to volunteer full-time for the water project. During that time, one of his children died of complications from malnutrition. I asked Abdel Hamid later if he regretted having given up his work for the project. He looked at me directly and said, “Yes, I lost a child because of this project. But because we have clean water, my other children and my grandchildren will live healthy lives.” Abdel Hamid is one of my heroes.

The first installment of the 3 submissions I made to the writing class on Memoirs and Travel Writing — unedited

It was June, 1970, I had just graduated from university, and I was standing in the living room of my grandparents’ house on our family farm in Iowa. My grandfather asked me what I was going to do now I had finished school. I told him I was going to teach school in inner city Washington, D.C., and volunteer with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, an organization that was doing church renewal and community development. I was going to make a difference in the world. My grandfather, who had lived nearly 90 years in the house where he was born, was skeptical.

“Jo, you can’t change the world by yourself!” he admonished.

“I know, Grandpa. That is why I am joining a group that is doing it.”

Grandpa was not impressed but he let it go.

I didn’t know at the time where my naivité and chutzpah would take me, or what I would learn from the attempt to make a difference.

In 1976, our colleague Fred Buss asked my husband Wayne and I to join a team that was starting a new human development project in Egypt. Since we had both grown up on farms, we had a lot of practical skills, and we were eager to contribute and see the world, so we accepted the invitation.

The first challenge was that we had a 14-month-old son, Aaron. We had no place to stay yet in Egypt, and the village that we were going to did not have clean water or electricity, so it was clear that we could not take an infant with us. When we were successful in getting clean water and a safe place to live, we could send for him. We found a colleague that we trusted deeply, and she agreed to take him for an undetermined period of time. We put him on a plane in Chicago with another colleague, who took him to Houston to Jill and her husband. As we sat in the airport restaurant, my heart was breaking, but I was also excited about the impending assignment. After all, we were going to make a better world for our son to grow up in, weren’t we? Little did I know that we would gain at least as much as we could give.

I remember very little about the first few days in Egypt. We arrived in the evening. The airport was full of Egyptian soldiers in white cotton uniforms, carrying machine guns, as there were tensions with Israel and Sudan, and some kind of incident had happened a few days before we arrived. By the time we left the airport, it was dark. The long road into Cairo proper was lined with little shops with bright strings of coloured lights and hundreds of people milling about happily.   We did not understand then, but was the beginning of Ramadan, and people were out breaking the fast.

Our colleagues greeted us at the tiny dark Windsor hotel in central Cairo that had begun a hundred years before as the British Officers’ Club. Within a few days, we had moved to Bayad.

Bayad was a small village on the east bank of the Nile, in Beni Suef governate. As Salah drove us down the main west bank road, we stared at the mud-brick villages, the green of one tiny irrigated field after another along the canals, the donkeys pulling handmade plows followed by farmers in turbans and long flowing gowns, women swaying gracefully with large clay jars balanced on their heads, and naked little boys diving into the irrigation ditches.

The Coptic Church had invited us to Egypt to do participatory development in a village that was so close to half Coptic and half Muslim that both sides claimed a majority. While we waited for the final government permissions to be in the village, we lived in an ancient Coptic monastery retreat centre on the edge of the Nile, just outside of Bayad. To get there from Beni Suef on the west bank, we took a felucca, an ancient sailboat, across the Nile. When the wind was calm, the passengers all took up oars and rowed the boat against the strong current.

Once we had permission, we began visiting in the village. The homes were mostly made of mud bricks, but a few were made with white limestone blocks from the nearby quarry owned by the Coptic Church – a rarity in rural Egypt. Just inside the front door of each home was a main room for visitors with a mud mastaba or step, for sitting or sleeping. Those who could afford it covered the mastaba with a quilt and pillows. A faded and dusty photo or poster on the wall gave a clue to the identity of the family – a picture of the Virgin Mary signaled a Coptic family, while elegant Arabic calligraphy meant a Muslim family. Farther inside was the kitchen area, which was off-limits to men not of the family. Even farther back was the stable, which might hold a cow, or chickens, or a water buffalo. This room also served as the indoor bathroom, since there was no plumbing.

Each time we visited a house, we were made to sit and drink tea. “Shrop chai?” was the common invitation – “drink tea?” A small kerosene stove would be brought into the room, along with a small saucepan filled with water. As the water began to boil, the host, usually a man, measured loose black tea generously into the water. He added much sugar, and the mixture boiled vigourously for a while. Then he cooled the tea by pouring it back and forth between the pot and a glass until it had cooled enough to pour it into small glasses and hand it out. Often there were not enough glasses to go around, so the first person would gulp down tea at the risk of seriously burning their mouth so that the next person could have some.   I was told that to refuse tea would be an insult. I didn’t really understand this well until one day Ragia and I were visiting a family to talk to them about the project, and the woman of the family went in and out of the house several times as she was preparing to make tea. Ragia told me quietly in English that she was so poor that she did not even own a stove, so she had to borrow the stove, the pot, the tea, and the sugar in order to make us tea. Of course, we drank the tea with deep gratitude for the hospitality.