A Breach in the Wall

This is the first of two stories that help give rise to how I think about missionary activity.
See second blog here.

I was chatting with Abel, discussing how we could prevent some soil erosion and increase productivity in his gardens. We were standing on a steep hillside in central Haiti. On the ravine across from us were remnants of an old soil conservation project. Using a food for work program, the agriculture ministry had paid people in food to build stone walls on the contour. Me Sek, they were called in the Haitian language. In English they are sometimes called stone wall terraces. The idea was that rain would wash soil down slope and fill in behind the stone walls. Eventually there would be a less steep area of soil behind the wall, which would result in less erosion and increased productivity.

The problem was that in many places the walls had broken through, and the resulting gullies meant that the land was worse off than before the walls were put in. I asked Abel why the walls weren't maintained. He said that the walls were the government's walls and the government did not pay for them to maintain them, only to build them.

Ownership.

It's not that the walls were a bad idea, In fact, given the terrain and the quantity of rocks on the surface of the heavily eroded soil, it was quite a good idea. These kinds of things were used quite successfully in similar environments in other parts of the country. But it wasn't the idea of the people. They either did not see the need for the walls or understand why they were building the walls or both. They only knew that the government gave them remuneration for building them. In short, they didn't own the concept.

Functional Contour Stone Walls Near Fermathe, Haiti

It's not that the people couldn't come to the point where they would own the concept of building these walls to maintain soil productivity. But before one builds walls one must first build relationships and trust, along with some education about the whole thing. All of that takes time, and if you're in a rush, it won't happen. All over Haiti there were examples of broken down projects—things that weren't maintained because the people did not own the project or the process of doing it.

Stone Wall Terraces Across the Canyon From Fermathe, Haiti

At the time these conversations with Abel took place, we were in Haiti doing medical and development work. This was back in the 80's and 90's. Now we are working in Thailand, where we are working with Thai people to help start churches and train leaders. Even in this more religious-oriented work, I see examples of things failing for lack of local ownership. The outsider comes in with all their great ideas and grandiose plans. This outsider may be a foreigner or a Thai person. The outsider pushes their ideas on the people without involving them in the process of coming up with a plan. I remember one person complaining about why people weren't engaging in a certain activity. He said, "I gave them a detailed plan, all they have to do is follow it." At other times, plans never come to fruition because of resistance by the locals.

Sometimes these outsider-generated plans are enacted because they are funded by the outsider, but then they fail because the locals don't maintain what is done. This is what happened with the stone-wall terraces in Haiti. If the projects fail, the locals will typically blame the outsider. Worse than the failed projects, though, are relationships that are broken because the locals will not trust the outsider who brought the idea. It hurts me when I see this happen because these fractured relationships take a great deal of effort to mend.

There are times I end up participating in some of these activities because a person over me is doing it. In these cases, I often don't have great hopes for the project because of lack of local ownership, but I always figure I can use it as a teaching tool afterwards if things go awry.

Whether it be starting churches or training leaders or trying to keep hillsides from washing into the ocean, the key working with people to start things that will last is trusting relationships. It takes time to develop the relational connections necessary for long-term success. It also takes really listening to the people you are working with with. It makes no sense to try to fix a problem that people don't think that they have. We can help by guiding them as they figure out what the key issues are. And we may need to help educate the people we are working with as to why we are doing what we are doing and how to go about it.

Back in Haiti, I had some ideas how Abel could acheive his goals for his hillside garden. I took him, along some others on a overnight road trip to to the Central Plateau where I knew others had developed solutions to the kinds of issues he faced. It wasn't very far, pershpas 60 miles, but it took all day to get to the location because the roads were so bad. Abel listened to other Haitians and saw the projects they were doing. In the end, I had very little to do. I only needed to show him a few techniques, but after that, he did all the work on his own. He owned the idea.

Using an A-Level to Mark Out a Contour

Abel Digging a Trench on the Contour for Planting a Hedgerow

At the end of the next cropping season, he was all excited: he was able to grow beans on that hillside for the first time. I no longer had to try to sell anyone on these ideas, Abel was so pleased, that he couldn't help but tell others.

For another example of where locals had ownership of a project, see the story about capping a spring on this page.