A weekend at Tom's

On Saturday, I went to go see Tom, another education volunteer. A few people had gone to his site right after training ended, so I was going to meet up with them. Unfortunately, it was not exactly smooth traveling.

After bargaining the price of my bus ticket down to 50% more than it should have been, I relaxed for most of the bus ride. Then, when we arrived in Meru, they shuffled all of us off of the bus. Meru is only about 3/4 of the way to Tom's site. In spite of my repeated inquiries about whether or not the bus was going to continue past Meru, they still left me high and dry. I was kinda upset about being gypped and then being lied to (language was not an issue, I asked him in both English and Swahili), but my adventure was only just beginning.

The bus conductor seemed to actually feel a little bad for me, so he helped me catch a taxi to the matatu stage so that I could finish my journey. As with all Kenyan vehicles, we had to fill up completely (6 of us packed like sardines) before we could make the 7 minute drive across town. As we were going up the hill, the matatu in front of us swerved a bit to block the whole road and then stopped. Three men got out of the matatu and came over to the taxi. They pulled three of my fellow passengers out and started hitting them. They didn't have weapons, just punching and using a belt. They opened my door, but I immediately pulled it closed and locked it (it's hard to keep doors locked when you're riding, since people are always getting into and out of vehicles). At this point the matatu had moved out of the way. The taxi just drove on to the matatu stage. I wasn't sure, but it looked like the passengers managed to get away. I wasn't entirely sure what happened, but I think that it had something to do with Mungiki, which is something like a gang that seems to cause a lot of lawlessness in Kenya.

Anyway, the rest of the trip to Tom's was comparatively uneventful, although it was a bit more complicated than I would have liked. Anyway, I arrived and soon after, we ate a wonderful dinner. I hadn't realized that I hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours. Traveling sometimes does that to me. Anyway, Tom has built a wood-fired brick oven (he is a really cool outdoorsy type) so we had hot pizza to eat. He is still working out a few kinks, so the pizza was a bit crunchy (we think that was ash) but it was delicious.

The following day, we went up to the nearby town of Maua. There are some Danish medical students who are working in the hospital there and one of them was having a birthday. We spent most of the day with them. It was a really fun exchange. I hadn't really had occasion to use the three sentences of Danish that I know in the past 5 years, but they really came in handy at the party. We capped the day by eating chocolate banana bread and lots of fruit and singing happy birthday in 5 different languages.

The most exciting part of the day, however, was playing a lawn game called Kubb. The game is apparently Swedish and had been left by some previous volunteers at that hospital. If you have ever played Bocci Ball, it is somewhat similar, but Kubb is way more fun. You have throwing sticks and you try to knock over Kubbs without having your Kubbs knocked over. We taunted each other a lot, and of course, we had to make sure that the birthday girl won. I fully intend to buy a Kubb set when I get back to the States. I imagine wikipedia has a pretty good description of Kubb, so I would definitely recommend reading up on it, since I know that this paragraph has not done it justice.

After that, we went back to Tom's site and he made some amazing chicken soup (with lots of ginger). Then we packed up and got ready to go to our permaculture training the next day. It was a lot of fun being at Tom's site and he was a really great host. Unfortunately, Tom is a lot more in shape than the rest of us, and he made us hike up the hill near his place a whole bunch. Oh well, I guess it was good for us. And it was really refreshing to see so much green everywhere.

Post about permaculture will be coming around May 9th. Books 4.0 will probably be combined with Books 5.0 (I'll write about that on May 31). I have an internet phone again, so you can email me. Also, if you comment on my blog, I usually respond to those (via email) pretty quickly, so please comment to your heart's content. School reopens on May 4, so it's back to teaching soon.

Kibera and more

After the end of training, I got to spend a couple of days shadowing Jackie and seeing a whole different volunteering experience. Jackie is currently volunteering in Nairobi at the Plastics Recycling SACCO and helping them at a variety of sites where they have projects.

On Thursday, we went to Kibera. Due to some transportation issues, I made Jackie and the recycling people wait for me for about 45 minutes. They were incredibly patient, and I am very grateful that they waited. We went over to Kibera, which is a slum community in Nairobi. I believe that it is the 2nd biggest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. I wish I had pictures of everything that we saw, but I think you are used to using your imaginations by now (if you want to see some pictures, you should send me an email and I might be able to help you out).

The biggest issue in the area is probably sanitation. The houses are very closely packed and many people live in each room. Still, there have been some huge strides made to improve sanitation. There have been some latrines installed, and I think awareness campaigns are going on, but that is still the tip of the iceberg. The border of the area is a river. All the waste flows downhill into that river. Which then feeds into the Nairobi River. There's still a lot of work to be done.

The group we were visiting was called the Kibera Youth Self-Help Forum and they also had a business called Beautifier's Cleaning Company. We did some needs assessment work with them and saw some of the work of the company, then we traveled through the slum to see the work they have and just to really appreciate the conditions for the people who live there. I think the most shocking thing was seeing all of the antennae. In spite of everyone's assumptions about the poverty of slums, many of the houses had an antenna to get better reception on their TV. Their TVs were probably powered by stolen electricity. It's all a very interesting situation.

The first place we stopped was one of the group's waste collection sites. There is a huge amount of waste in the area, so groups have started collecting the waste and sorting it. The largest portion is organic waste, so they have started composting projects and are selling the soil as well as setting up urban farms. I may also try to work with them a bit in the future to set up a tree nursery. (I love projects!) Then, they have a lot of scrap metal that they clean and then sell to support their other ventures. They also collect plastics and sort and sell those too, although those can be harder to market. Still, a lot of waste is just burned. I saw a sticker that said something to the effect of "Trash is not waste until it is wasted." I really liked that.

We also got to visit their after school program for children around the slum. As with everything done in a slum, space is a huge constraint. It is the first thing on everyone's mind, but it is really hard to find good solutions, especially with such a short time to work on implementation. All around the school and other places in the slum, people had stenciled the words "Keep Peace". It was really cool to see all of that. Kibera was something of a "smoldering volcano" (that expression comes from my cousin Ray) during the post-election violence. Although crime is not as high as one might expect, there is always fear of ethnic tensions surfacing again. Let's hope that people take those stenciled messages to heart.

On Friday, we had a much less action packed day. We went to the plastics center and I got to see a bit more of the facilities. Then, we went out and visited a much smaller waste recycling center. They are still getting started, and it seems like Jackie will be working with them a bit more on some engineering issues that they are facing. After seeing all of this, I have a new appreciation for plastics recycling and cretaive solutions to really hard problems. Nairobi has lots of litter all over the city, so these are really important issues to address.

Training Part II

Wow, well, the rest of training was definitely a whirlwind. There were really cool speakers. There were not so exciting speakers. There were fun nights out in Nairobi. There were really relaxed nights just hanging out with other volunteers.

First and foremost, I finally met a lot of the other volunteers in country. Most of the volunteers who were here from before we arrived hadn't been able to come to our training, so this was the first time we got to meet them. Some of them seemed really cool and we really clicked. Others of them, I probably just didn't get to know as well. There are two more from the Chicago area, so that was exciting. There was a business volunteer named Grover who has had some pretty amazing adventures here and is an all-around great guy. I met the other two math/science teachers in country right now, and that was pretty cool too. Kristy is teaching 8 lessons a week. Pretty much every problem she encounters, I have the exact opposite problem.

I think the most interesting session had a university professor from Nairobi, a Kenyan university professor who works in Pittsburgh and an NGO worker from Transparency International. The session was conducted as a panel, and they talked primarily about tribalism and corruption in Kenya. Three of us in the audience (myself included) seemed to dominate the debate a bit, and as it turned out, we had comparatively similar views. The one from Pittsburgh really enjoyed playing devil's advocate, which was fun, though at some points, it seemed counter-productive. It was a bit sad that he dominated the conversation from the panelists, because it was clear that the other panelists had some good insights, but he made it hard for them to get a word in. All in all, it was really exciting.

Probably my biggest disappointment was sitting through a poorly planned session while the business volunteers went to a beekeeping project in Nairobi. I had really wanted to learn about beekeeping and hopefully get started on that in Maktau. I had a few futile arguments about it. I went to the Peace Corps office and made sure to check out some books on beekeeping. I guess I will make my training needs more clear the next time we have a training. Being assertive wasn't the problem. That's for sure.

In the middle of training we took a field trip to Kickstart, which does some work with appropriate technology. I was actually really frustrated by a lot of their work there. They have four basic technologies that they distribute. The first is a version of the improved Bielenberg ram press for oil extraction. This was probably the best technology that they had. Unfortunately, the oil press is not the primary focus and they do not devote a lot of energy to promoting it. They have a hay baler that seems way too expensive for a lot of small farmers (over $1000), although I don't know a whole lot about hay baling technology. It seemed to me that they could have reduced the cost by reducing the amount of materials to build it, which would also make it lighter (i.e. more transportable which would make it easier to be used by several households so that they could split the costs). Again, they are not devoting much energy to promoting it. Then, we saw their brick making press. This seemed like a pretty good design, and unless I am mistaken, it is pretty common around east Africa (and possibly a wider region than that). In the work I've done on brick makers (during IDDS), I would have expected this machine to cost $300-500. They were selling it at close to $1000. I was somewhat dismayed by this, although the people showing us around were not able to give any kind of cost breakdown. They also do not spend much energy in promoting their brick makers.

The nadir of the day, however, was seeing what they have been doing with treadle pumps. They devote the largest part of their research and marketing to their water pumps. Treadle pumps are a proven and successful technology all over the world for use with irrigation schemes. Kickstart has done some very impressive work on making less labor-intensive models for people irrigating small farms. They have driven down the cost to make it accessible to more people. They have devoted considerable resources and set up a reliable distribution network so that they can reach people all over the country. And then, in all their literature, they show people spraying the water indiscriminately during broad daylight. I was completely shocked by this. For all their talk about large farms wasting water, it would seem logical that they would actually devote resources to water conservation. Nope. Not at all. They don't seem to care at all about how people use the water after it is pumped. They in fact have a sprayer so that people will waste the water, and they don't have any resources on drip irrigation, irrigation ditches or irrigation schemes of any kind. In a country where water is such a huge issue, you would think that they would have something in place to address water conservation. I think that more than anything, their indifference was what pained me. I am hoping to return to Kickstart at some time during my time here and see if I can work with them on just integrating a social aspect to their business model so that they can truly help people. At this point, I worry that they may actually be doing more harm than good.

After Kickstart, a small subset of us went to a Plastics Recycling SACCO (Savings And Credit Co-operative Organization) where my friend Jackie is volunteering. They collected and prepared materials for a charcoal burn. Peace Corps agreed to allow any volunteers to skip the second NGO they were visiting that day to see the presentation. After hearing me talk about charcoal for 5 months now, I think volunteers were probably pretty tired at that point, but at least they were still curious. While Jackie and I prepared the materials, the staff at the SACCO talked a lot about their work. Then, we went out for the charcoal burn. The corn cobs and corn husks had only sat out for a few days, so they really had not dried out at all. We tried it anyway, and I tried to hit the important points (deforestation, indoor air pollution, economics and all that jazz). I was a little disappointed with my delivery, but far more disappointing was the burn itself. There was way too much moisture, so at the point when we wanted to try to ignite the volatile gases, the water vapor was still too thick. We wound up just sealing the drum and just explaining to people what should happen in theory. All in all, I think that people were impressed, so I was happy about that. At least now everyone appreciates the importance of sufficiently drying the crop residues before carbonizing them.

Thanks to Paula (she's one of the business volunteers and also one of my favorite people) I managed to get Jackie time to make a presentation during training. We stayed up late stealing slides from old D-Lab presentations, and me coaching Jackie on what were some good points to hit during her presentation. I heard that Jackie did really well. It would have been nice if I had been allowed to see it. But that topic probably isn't bloggable.

During training, I took full advantage of Nairobi and drank milkshakes, ate pizza and other cheese products, did some shopping, and went out to clubs for dancing and partying. There was a Japanese/Lebanese (it seemed an odd combination, but I definitely approve) restaurant where we had a gourmet dinner of sushi and hummus. There was a club called Tacos. I didn't see a single taco there, but the music was fun. There is a restaurant called Java House, and I think that I found myself there 6 times for milkshakes and food like tuna melts and burritos. I finally have a cell phone with email again. Sadly, though, I was down with stomach problems for a lot of training. This is the second time that I have had stomach problems since coming to Kenya. Both times after eating Nairobi food.

We had some nights where we stayed in the hotel and just kicked back. We played a lot of music. We watched The Office and other things. There was a lot of talking and bonding and we definitely became a lot closer. We all swapped war stories (there was probably some gossip in there too) and shared a lot of laughs. We played cards (I took everyone's money in poker). One night one of the deaf volunteers showed a documentary about perceptions by deaf people and hearing people
and their perceptions of one another. It was just really nice to see everyone and catch up. Leaving is never fun. :(

Also, I did not manage to find a Cherry Coke.

Training Part 1

Hey readers!

I suppose this post is coming at about my usual schedule, but since I'm not writing every few days, it feels weird, and also things have been pretty whirlwindish.

I am in Nairobi for Peace Corps training (and there's no wireless! WTF! Don't they know that we need our fix?!?) and it's been pretty low-key. Good to see all of the other volunteers and catch up and swap war stories. I've only talked to about a third of them in my first three months at site, so there was a lot of catching up.

I have a lot to update on, but I won't get too detailed. It all starts with visitors from Ethiopia:

Liz (a friend from IDDS) came to my site and we set up a drip irrigation kit from IDE at my school. Should be a good demonstration plot. We also planted some moringa trees with the students (free moringa seeds from the Agriculture Business Development branch of the DANish International Development Association. Yay Danish people and random networking connections). I hope we did that right. I guess I'll know in a few weeks, and I have some extra seeds just in case. No jatropha yet, but I'm planning to start that as soon as I get back from training. After that, we met up with Jackie (from D-Lab Ghana). There was a photo shoot (Liz has lots of pictures, so after your 5 long months of waiting, there will be at least the start of pictures. I also have pictures. Still sitting on my flash disk. I will take care of this. Eventually. I'm sorry :-( .), nicknames were given out, games were taught and learned, water bottles were dented (big time), frisbees were thrown, cooking was done and some really awesome people were met (sorry if you don't like passive voice). In Nairobi, I finally got pizza. It was amazing. A lot. Also, I have learned about two new languages: Espahili and Frahili. Apparently I now intersperse Swahili into my Spanish. And then I met a Kenyan who adds Swahili to his French.

Liz and Jackie got to meet a bunch of volunteers as we got settled in for training. Then Liz went off to continue her travels. Jackie is still in Nairobi working at a Plastics Recycling Sacco. Emily (she went to Harvard with Jackie and is now in Peace Corps with me) apparently finds the phrase "Plastic Sacco" hilarious. I won't comment on that.

Training has had its ups and downs so far. Joseph (the Training Manager) has laid some pretty good logistics, and I always love seeing Joseph. Louis (the Associate Peace Corps Director for Small Enterprise Development and an all around great guy) has led some really great sessions. He even started quoting Schumacher during one of his sessions. Our country director also led a good session. There were other sessions too. One of the most interesting sessions was a fieldtrip to see a beekeeping project. Unfortunately, education volunteers didn't get to go to that. We sat in a completely unplanned session on classroom management that wound up being rather useless. When I went to discuss this with a person, I was told that that is what teachers had requested. I tried to politely explain that my request form included beekeeping as one of my top priorities and did not even touch on classroom management. Sometimes I fail at politely explaining things. Shortly after that, I failed at politely explaining something else to that same person. I should probably work on that.

Catching up with the other volunteers has been really great. One of the business volunteers named Jeff has a potential for a really great charcoal project. I would really like to help him get that under way. Unfortunately, certain Peace Corps policies might make that incredibly difficult. Apparently, we are not allowed to take vacation days during the school term. Certainly a fair policy. However, it sounds like missing two days of school (though leaving assignments and lessons for the time while I'm absent) to work on a community project that I am well suited to work on and has a very high probability of success is usually labelled as vacation. They have maize cobs and coconut husks and cassava. If this doesn't happen it will make me seriously consider what I am doing here in Kenya. Especially since I think that there are several other projects that I could successfully collaborate on. Mmmmmm, vacation policy.

Also, since I'm in Nairobi, I bought myself an Economist. Too bad they don't sell that at the newsstands in Mwakitau. I hear I can also find Cherry Coke here. If that rumor turns out to be untrue, it will be a very sad day.

Pictures

Thanks to Button, there are now pictures of me on facebook. If you are friends with me, just check my profile. More will come. Some time...

Scorpions like my interior decor

Well, I finally decided to put up some decorations in my room. So far, I have a world map (from MSF), a brief profile of Obama's cabinet, the Braille alphabet, a defunct credit card with the American flag, a calendar with pictures related to the MDGs, pictures of Chicago cut out from a magazine for English teachers (not sure why Peace Corps distributed it to me, but those pictures made my day), a Christmas card from Albert, Gail and kids and postcards from Leanne and Iti. It's an interesting mish-mosh, but at least my walls are not blank anymore.

Then, yesterday I found scorpions in my house at two separate times. I felt that this was a violation of our truce, so they both found themselves on the heel of my shoe. Now I'm just hanging out at school and taking care of a few things before my week becomes a bit crazy starting tomorrow!

23

For my birthday, I went to Msau to visit my buddy Nick (probably 40 km away, and traveling can take as much as 4 hours). I got to see his school and meet his fellow teachers. Immediately when I arrive somewhere these days, I start looking for what isn't there. My conclusion is that Mshimba Secondary School in Msau should start a beekeeping project, set up a zero-grazing unit for raising cows, build a biodigester and start a greenhouse. They're also pretty interested in corn shellers and charcoal, so I will definitely have to return there. We also got to see John and his friend "Big Vy" and the four of us fried up some fish fillets (no recipes, and none of us had ever fried fish before) which were rather tasty. We also played some poker using maize kernels for betting (or should I say corn chips? Bad pun, you should just move on.) where I went on quite the lucky streak and won a couple of shillings (I think my winnings were about $2.50, which is a pretty good sum here. Nice of them to let me win for my birthday :-p ). Also, we watched The Prestige, which is one of my favorite movies. Most importantly, however, we got to see his neighbor's 1000 tree moringa plantation. He planted the trees in November and some of them are already 2 meters tall.

Sarah

Happy Birthday Sarah! I didn't forget my promise, now you need to come back to Kenya!

Schumacher

This is E.F. Schumacher's final speech, made in Switzerland in 1976. I know that it is really long, but it is definitely worth reading.

---

The first thing when we think about what we call the Third World or the developing countries, or to put it more simply about the poor, the first thing we ought to realize is that they are real. They are actual people, as real as you and I, except that they can do things which you and I can't do 

Mr. McNamara, the President of the World Bank, published some statistics recently. Something in the order of 500 million people in this world, he said, have less than $50 a year. But they are surviving. They have a know-how that we don't have. They are real, and we must not think of them as poor little souls, and luckily we come along and we are going to develop them. 

No, they are survival artists and it is quite certain that if there should be a real resources crisis, or a real ecological crisis, in this world, these people will survive. Whether you and I will survive is much more doubtful. India will survive, though whether Bombay will survive is more doubtful. That New York will survive is an impossibility. Probably the same applies for London or Tokyo, and an awful number of other cities. 

You cannot help a person if you yourself don't understand how that person manages to exist at all. This came to my attention quite a long time ago, a quarter of a century ago, when I first visited Burma and then India. I realized that they were able to do things that we could not do. But if I, as an economic magician, could double the income, the average income per head, in Burma from the 20 pounds it was at that time to 40 pounds, if I could do that without destroying the secret pattern of life which enabled them to live, then I would have turned Burma, I am sure, into the nearest thing to paradise we know. 

But coming from England I realized that we couldn't even survive on 200 pounds per person. If I doubled the income of Burma from 20 pounds to 40 pounds, whilst changing the pattern from the traditional Burmese pattern to the English pattern, then I would have turned Burma into the world's worst slum. Yet I listened to all the economists, and all the people who talked about development aid, and nobody ever talked about this particular factor, this pattern. They went into these countries like a bull into a china shop. They said, 'Step aside, now we will show you how to live properly when you are really rich.' The poor people of Burma stood on the sidelines and said, 'But we are not rich, so what you are showing us is of no interest to us, except the few people in our own countries who are already rich.'
So in Burma, more than twenty years ago, I concluded that overseas development aid really was a process where you collect money from the poor people in rich countries, to give it to the rich people in poor countries. Nobody intended this, but there was a blindness about this pattern of living which enables the poor to survive. And so we offered our goods which of course only people already rich and powerful could take. 

Then I went to southern India. I was a lucky person because the right question occurred to my mind. Everything begins with a question, and the right question was, 'What sort of technology would be appropriate for rural India?' Surely not the technology of Pittsburgh, of Sheffield, or of Dortmund or of Tokyo. 

Fate has given me the name of a shoemaker. If you want to be a good shoemaker, it is not enough to make good shoes and to know all about making good shoes, you also have to know a lot about feet. Because the aim of the shoe is to fit the foot. But most of us never thought about this. 

There used to be a story about a country that unduly indulged in central planning. They had developed the finest boot the world has ever seen and they ordered 500 million pairs of the boot, all the same size. Well, that is what we tend to do, because we don't really think of the poor being real: we think that we have the answer. 

When I had asked myself this question, 'What would be the appropriate technology for rural India or rural Latin America or maybe the city slums?' I came to a very simple provisional answer. That technology would indeed be really much more intelligent, efficient, scientific if you like, than the low level technology employed there, which kept them very poor. But it should be very, very much simpler, very much cheaper, very much easier to maintain than the highly sophisticated technology of the modern West. In other words it would be an intermediate technology, somewhere in between. And I asked myself another question, 'Why do they not use an intermediate technology? Why do they not use boots that fit their feet?' And then I realized that intermediated technology was not to be found. I realized that in terms of available technology, either it was very very low or it was very very high; but the middle had disappeared. I therefore came to the conclusion that there was a tendency in technological development which I called 'the law of the disappearing middle'. (This only, I am sorry to say, applies to technology, so it is not a hopeful message for middle-aged gentlemen.) 

You can verify this proposition if you go to a bookshop where there you can get the latest publications and you can get the classics. But anything published in 1965 is out of print, it is unobtainable. 

I was a farm labourer in northern England some 35 years ago. We farmed very efficiently a 300-acre farm with mainly animal drawn equipment, which if you were able to buy it today would cost something of the order of $10,000. Not a single piece of that equipment is available today. It has disappeared. It has been replaced by, of course, far more sophisticated, powerful mechanized equipment, which would not cost $10,000 but $150,000. 

And what does this mean? Oh, we say this is progress. Yes, for some people it is progress. But it means that more and more people are excluded because maybe you and I could raise $10,000, once we had a farm, but the number who can raise $150,000 to equip the farm is very much lower. 

Not so long ago I was invited to visit one of the most illustrious research and development institutions in England, where they develop textile machinery. The director showed me everything. These textile machines are so wonderful. They can do anything, at an unbelievable speed. So since there is a little boy in every man, I was utterly astonished and utterly delighted. And I asked, 'How much is such a machine?' I was told, 'Well, that machine would be 100,000 pounds.' And then I said to the director, 'It seems to me that you now can do everything.' He said, 'Yes, we can do everything now.' I said, 'Well then, why do you not stop?' So he said, 'Stop? Go against progress? Stop?' I said, 'This is a very expensive establishment. Why do we not say: Now, basta, enough.' So he said, 'I am surrounded by all these clever young people and they can still make an improvement here and a further refinement there. What is wrong with that?' And I said, 'Nothing is wrong with it except then this machine which now costs 100,000 pounds will cost 150,000 pounds.' 'Are you against progress?' 'No,' I said, 'I am not against progress, but I am worried. Even now most of mankind is excluded. And when it is even more expensive, an even greater proportion is excluded.' 

Our institutions are swarming with people who are wringing their hands about the overwhelming power of multinational companies. And at the same time applauding the technological development which makes production so complex and so colossally costly that only the multinational companies can carry it. This is the predicament not only of the developing countries but also of our own countries now. The middle way, which is also the democratic way that gives the little people some independence and what the you call 'doing one's own thing': that is being destroyed. And therefore we have throughout the world this atmosphere of tension, even of hatred. 

There is little point in attacking the multinationals when the whole of society is bumbling along led by engineers and scientists who then introduce another complication, another speeding up. Well that is their job. But we as a society have not got enough philosophy or humanity to call a stop when a stop is indicated. Or at least to try and counterbalance it. 

Now this fellow who took me through this resource establishment is a very thoughtful man and when I told him what I was worried about, he did then stop walking. And he said, 'But what can I do? If I go to the top man and say, "I think it is time to stop," he will say, "Yes, you have been looking a little bit jaded and you'd better take a holiday," and if I insist he will say, "I am grateful that you have given me notice so early. I already have in mind a very able successor." So I cannot stop.' 

'Of course you cannot stop, but you can realize what you are doing, that this is not simply an interesting and productive and self-creating technological development, but it is a force that forms society, and forms it so that fewer and fewer peopled can be real people. At least you must be concerned with creating some counter-force to balance it up.'
So he said, 'And what would that be?' I said, 'Why do you not at least take 10% of your bright, innovating, creative engineers, and say to them, "do not make this complicated machine even more complicated. Do not make this expensive machine even more expensive. What about the mass of mankind? They have got nothing. Take the simplest textile equipment and see whether you are not clever enough to make a much better job of it. To make it much more productive so that people can make a decent living. This would be enough." ' 

I am afraid he has not done it. But this question has now come up throughout the world. The question is being asked, which I asked myself in another context twenty years ago in southern India, 'What is the appropriate technology to meet the very urgent problems that we are confronted with?' And people are coming to the conclusion: we do not have an appropriate technology for these problems. 

What are these problems? Well, we do not have an appropriate technology for energy. Everybody agrees on that now. We are totally dependent on non-renewable sources of fuel, and that, of course, is really capital which we are consuming, it is not income. If we go along as before there will be an end to it. 

We do not have a technology that is particularly kind to living nature around us, and so we have to take thought and concern about an ecologically sound technology. That has now become generally understood. But more questions are being raised. 'Do we really have an appropriate technology from a human point of view?' Well, I know many countries and I have talked to many people who are exposed to our technology as factory workers and so on. And I have had the experience that it is not very wise to ask them if they enjoy their work, or if you ask them, do not wait for the answer. 

It is interesting to go back in history. Last year was not only the bicentenary of the United states, it was also the bicentenary of the appearance of a book by Adam Smith called The Wealth of Nations -- the basis of economics. Adam Smith said in effect, 'By that which a person does all day long, he is formed. His work forms him. And if you give him mindless work, he becomes a mindless person. And he cannot be a good citizen, he cannot be a good father in the family, or mother for that matter.' And then surprisingly -- or not surprisingly -- Adam smith goes on, 'But to become totally reduced through mindless work is the fate of the great majority of the people in all progressive countries.' 

He did not say, 'This is terrible, they must not do it.' No, he had much the same mentality: 'Well, that is too bad, but that is the price we have to pay.' And we all know that the human being has a marvellous fortitude in tolerating the sufferings of others. And even today we say to one another, 'This is not so bad. Of course most of this work is not enjoyable, but it's got to be done, and they actually enjoy it. Of course, I would not enjoy it.' Well, I was a manual worker for quite a few years, but I did not suffer as much as many of my friends are suffering, because I always could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I always knew I would not have to do it all my life. I can tell you, if I had thought that I would have to do it all my life there would have been trouble. 

No, we have not got an appropriate technology from a human point of view. The sub-title of my book Small is Beautiful was 'Economics as if people mattered'. We do not approach economics primarily from the point of view of people; we approach it from the point of view of the production of goods, and the people as a kind of afterthought. Of course, if they become redundant, well, we have to pay them redundancy pay. If they have no opportunity of using their skills, then we have to retrain them. If the work is so noisy that they lose their hearing, well then we have to put something around their ears. They are factors of production. And this is the kind of industry we are now carrying into the so-called developing countries. 

We are doing it at a time when in our heart of hearts we know that this kind of industry has no future. Nature cannot stand it, the resource endowment of the world cannot stand it, and the human being cannot stand it. 

Already half of all the hospital beds in Britain and the United States are occupied by people whose problems are mental not physical. This kind of industry has no future. If the society that claims to be the biggest and richest and has an income per head twice that of Britain, namely the United States of America, if they have not solved the problems of harmony, of the city, of poverty, they are not on the right road. So what shall we do? 

When we begin to suspect that we are not on the right road, then of course we get a lot of fanatics. And a fanatic is a person who, when he senses that he is doing the wrong thing, redoubles his efforts. We have plenty of those. I call them people of the forward stampede. They have a slogan, and blazoned on their banner is 'a breakthrough a day keeps the crisis away'. They are stampeding us into greater and greater violence. 

But now there is another great ground-swell of people whom I call the 'home-comers', who say, 'Well really, the purpose of our existence on this earth cannot be to destroy it. The purpose of our existence can't be to work ourselves silly and to end up in a lunatic asylum. Let's reconsider it.' 

I want to make the point that these people exist, in my experience, in all societies, and the people of the forward stampede also exist in all societies. I was recently on the other side of the Iron Curtain, where they explained to me at great length that their system was so much better than our system. And finally they said, 'In any case, the Western economies are like an express train hurtling at ever increasing speed towards an abyss.' Then there was a short pause, and they added, ' But we shall overtake you.' 

That is the automatism of 'progress'. That is the rivalry. It is a kind of fraud. And so it is necessary for us to step back and have a new look, and at least to create some sort of counterweight. 

Initially, with regard to the Third World, the so-called developing countries, some friends of mine said, 'Well, let's do something about this', and we set up an organization which we called the Intermediate Technology Development Group Ltd., not to kill off the high technology, because we couldn't do that anyhow, but to fill this gap, this middle that has disappeared. And perhaps thereby to make it possible to overcome the fateful polarization which modern technology has produced, under which the rich become richer and the poor become more desperate, and society disintegrates -- something that you can observe on a world scale, and you can also observe in all big countries. Small countries are more beautiful. 

The polarization is now so great that you can keep the consequences plastered over only with enormous welfare expenditure. Welfare will keep people afloat, but does not integrate them in society. And in the United States, for example, you have many people who are third generation welfare recipients. 

And even the great United States has come to the conclusion that with the present easily available technology, we cannot solve the problem. So they have set up a national centre for appropriate technology, not for the developing countries, but for the United States. They said, 'We must rethink technology, and try to make it appropriate to our actual problems.' These problems are not simply more and more production. The actual problems are the reintegration of a sizable proportion of the total population into the mainstream of society. 

Similar things are happening in all advanced countries. So now we are in the position of talking about appropriate or intermediate technology in a much more convincing way. When people in the Third World say to me, 'Well, if it is such a good thing, why don't you do it?' I say, "Yes, we do do it.' 

What is this new look at technology? We have to ask the right questions. Is it relevant to the real problems we have? I will give an example. Some of my French friends may be hurt by it, and our English friends, but nobody else. Let's ask the question about the appropriateness of technology in connection with Concorde. 

The proper question to ask is, 'Is it a very intelligent development in terms of the energy situation of the world?' You have to give the answer, I don't. Because that is a big problem. Is it a good thing in terms of environmental quality? It may be, of course; people may say the environment is greatly improved by the sonic boom. Is it appropriate technology in terms of fighting world poverty? Does it help the poor? Is it an appropriate technology from a democratic point of view? Perhaps getting a greater equality among people? 

You can take every single problem of this society, and you have to ask, is the technological development appropriate? Or is it some sort of little boy's engineer dream? We can do it, so let's do it. 

These questions now have to be faced, and I am glad to say in more and more counties there are now groups who normally sail under the name of something like 'technology assessment'. They are calling companies to order and asking: 'This development, you have assessed it in terms of power or glory or profitability, but that is not good enough. So let's ask, is it relevant to the real problems of mankind?' 

We could go on for a long, long time talking about this. I just give you the outcome of our work in terms of ideas when we set up this organization twelve years ago. It was created out of nothing. There is no money behind it. Just a few ideas. We have now in Britain something of the order of a thousand people, highly qualified people, working in various parts of society with us on the creation of an appropriate technology. 

You have to go a bit further than the word intermediate. We gradually came to four criteria. What is lacking is a small-scale technology, we know how to do things on a big scale. But if we only know how to do things on a big scale for a big market, then our industry will go into the big cities and we have, as we can observe all over the world, another polarization – vast congestion in a few places and enormous emptiness elsewhere. Again, you only have to look across the Atlantic at countries represented here like Canada or the United States, and you find precisely this polarization. 

Many communities in North America are coming to the Intermediate Technology Group and saying, ‘ We have become colonies of the big metropolitan areas! We don’t want to be colonies, we want to be ourselves. We want to have our own society, not simply provide raw materials for Chicago. We want to have jobs in Montana. We are like a Third World country in Montana. That is a fact. Out of a hundred graduates from our universities, eighty-five cannot find a job in Montana, they have to go to the big cities. Why can’t we have jobs in Montana? Because we haven’t got the appropriate technology. The big technology only fits into the big concentrations of populations. Are we really so limited that we can’t create an appropriate small-scale technology?’ That is question number one. 

Question number two. Of course you have to go to a big city if your processes of production are so complex that you need the highest experts by the hundreds. You can’t find them in Montana or in Regina. So you go to Toronto, you go to Chicago. So can’t we create a technology which is not so complex? It takes better engineers – even a third rate engineer can make a complicated thing even more complicated. It takes a bit of genius to recapture the basics and simplicity. 

The highly complex technology does not fit into the rural areas of the world and so this polarization will go on unless we make it our business to create such a technology.
Number three is what I have already talked about: the cost per workplace. The costliness of capital equipment has been skyrocketing, so, as I said before, there are increasingly only the multinational companies left who can afford to create workplaces, and the little people are left out. And if there are unemployed, it is just too bad. Can’t we make it our business to create a technology which is cheap per worker? This requires entirely new thinking. 

And the fourth point is slightly different. I know I may arouse some opposition when I say this. Modern technology has become increasingly violent. Violence is not just a matter of one person hitting another person over the head, it is employing violent means. We have this in agriculture, where we scatter around very violent chemicals, we call them pesticides, which means killer substances. On this thin living film of the earth on which all life depends we are scattering millions of tons of killer substances. Whatever you may think, it is a violent technology. And the spirit of violent technology has invaded the medical profession. So much so that we claim that a very high percentage of illnesses are induced by the doctor. The only advice we can give anybody is to avoid the doctor when you are ill. 

Of course the greatest readiness to resort to violence we are now experiencing in our attempts to cope with the energy problem, where we are prepared to put into the world large amounts of plutonium, a substance of a really unbelievable ghastliness, which the good Lord never made. He knew where to stop. It is a man-made thing. And it will be there for all time: the half-life radioactivity for plutonium is 24,400 years. In fact, before it is really harmless it takes a matter of 3 million years. 

All this readiness to apply extremely violent processes to that sacred and unbelievably complex system called nature. We don’t know what we are doing. 

Of course we have wonderful scientists, who give us assurance that all is well, don’t worry. This is the blind leading the blind with a vengeance. It is not necessary to be violent. We know that in agriculture, in medicine, in energy, in any other subject you may care to think of, there are people who are very often called, or used to be called cranks, who know how to produce enough food, how to keep healthy, without any violent methods. All this is possible, but it hasn’t had any support at all from governments, and very little either from academia, or business. 

Governments everywhere put a great deal of money into agriculture, which goes into chemicals and mechanization, but the organic farmer who is showing what is possible without chemicals, he gets no help. And when it comes to most academics, they simply get angry when they are told that there are methods that are more elegant than the violence of their chemicals. 

These are the four criteria that have crystallized out of this work. We don’t feel we are unsuccessful, although we don’t represent anything, we don’t have power, we have little money. We have had a certain influence because we are happy to work with everybody or anybody. I am often challenged and asked, ‘Do you work with academia?’ I say, ‘No, not with academia!’ ‘Do you work with business?’ ‘I don’t work with business.’ ‘Do you work with governments?’ ‘No, no! You can’t work with them because they are all committed to that monster technology.’ ‘Well, whom do you work with?’ I work with people from business, academia and government. In the vast and seemingly monolithic structures we have individuals who come to us and say, ‘What you are doing is interesting.’ And they are carrying it into their companies and into government departments, and even into the universities. 

I would say that part of the job we have is to try and persuade people that they should give some thought, some systematic thought to it. In this connection we say, ‘Look, even the most wonderfully designed ocean steamer carries lifeboats, not because some statistician has predicted that the steamer will run into an iceberg, but because icebergs have occasionally been seen. Isn’t it time that the modern world provided some lifeboats?’ Of course you don’t put all your money into the lifeboat, you don’t put all your research and development into the exploration of small, simple and non-violent technology. You have to go on making a living, but 5% or 10% could be so spent. 

Some businesses are doing it. And if a big business comes and says, ‘I will give this thinking a chance,’ they have never felt sorry. They suddenly realized that really the construction of the universe is far more benign than they ever thought. You don’t have to be so violent. We are now quite intelligent enough to create appropriate technologies, if we really think before we act, and think in these wider terms. 

In order to do anything, we find that it is necessary, as I said before to take a very co-operative attitude in the various panels and working parties we have set up in the Intermediate Technology Development Group. We try to achieve in every one of these organizations what we call the ABCD combination. 

That is just so that you should remember it more easily. A stands for the administration, people from government. Let’s have some of them on the working group, as persons, not representing governments. They know how to pull the strings, and they control a lot of money; they are the tax-gatherers and spenders. That is the A factor, Administrators. 

B stands for business. Now the business intelligence is the intelligence, the discipline, to make things viable so that they can survive. To create a thing that cannot survive is a waste of time. We need this intelligence. 

The C factor are the communicators. The people of the word, research people, people who have got time to think and to write. They solve problems, and there are plenty to be solved. But never let them act alone, because they are playful little souls. They like a problem, whether it be a chess problem or a problem that means something, and when they have solved it they mark it ‘top secret’ and file it away somewhere and turn to the next problem. But if the B factor is sitting next to them, the business man, he says, ‘We spent money on this. We must now bring it out and make it viable.’ So this is a very healthy combination. 

And D are the democratic organizations of society, they are the labour union people, the women’s organizations, the ecological people; happily every country is full of them. You don’t want to do this in an elitist way, and wherever you succeed in getting ABCD together, as persons, they have a good time. They really enjoy it, because initially they have a very low opinion of each other, very low. And then they realize that they are actually all quite intelligent and useful people. Wherever we succeeded in getting the ABCD combination we found that things became possible that everybody thought were quite impossible. 

All I can say is, the whole thing doesn’t cost a great deal of money, and people who join it enjoy it.

Spring Break

Well, we closed the school today for the month of April. Technically, we finished yesterday, but there were a few loose ends to handle today. Paperwork was a nightmare, since I was simultaneously doing everything on the computer to teach the rest of the staff how it works and writing everything out by hand. I'm glad that's over. I nearly lost my temper with one of my colleagues (it's always the same one) but I managed to hold on for the day. I haven't lost my temper since January. Let's try to keep that streak alive.

Anyway, I am on break for April. I will do some work in my community. Liz is also coming here soon and she will also do some work in my community (Yay IDDS reunion!). Then I have some training in Nairobi then a week of freedom and then training outside Nairobi on permaculture (awesome!). I'll have to see Jackie at some point in there too.

Books 3.0

Hmmmm, I kinda moved to lighter reading...

*** Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. The book is an account of growing up as a white colonial family in British colonies during the era of independence. She is able to relate her experiences watching Rhodesia become Zimbabwe as well as the state of affairs in independent Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) describing the totalitarianism through the eyes of an adolescent. The book does very well in its tone, narrated through the eyes of one growing up with these expereinces. For much of the book, the racism is unapologetic, which makes it more genuine. My biggest complaint was that it seemed like she skipped over large swathes of her childhood that were not related to her family life, but I think that they would have provided better context for some of the episodes she narrated. I may be way off on this interpretation, but the chronology made it a bit hard to follow at times.

**** - Running a Biogas Program by David Fulford. I am really glad that I took this book from the Peace Corps library before I came to site. With the importance of livestock in my community, biogas is a very interesting possibility. The book was organised and clear, and I hope to work on this possibility in the future. The one thing that I thought was underemphasized was the need for water, which is definitely going to be the limiting factor for my work here. However, since the book based a lot of its research on work in India, Nepal and China, they certainly had other constraints to consider.

***** - Renewable Energy in Kenya by Mark Hankins (when I first saw the author, I thought it was the 8.03 demo guy). The book looked at wind, solar, biogas, hydro-power (very little mention of bio-diesel, sadly) as well as current practices involving non-renewable resources. The book clearly and effectively describes the energy situation here and gave me some good ideas for work that I can do within my community. He presented his data clearly and convincingly and tried to consider the challenges from many angles. Like most of the books that I got from the Peace Corps library, the book is about 20 years old, and I am interested in finding resources that are a bit more current.

*** - An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen. The national exam in English for students finishing secondary school here involves some analysis of the play, so while I was proctoring exams, I decided to borrow from a student. I wound up having a hard time putting it down. The play is very politically charged, and certainly paints a grim picture of society as the antagonist (though the protagonist is not the most sympathetic character). I found myself envisioning the play in the LT (maybe Mr. Noble for the director). Anyway, I found it interesting that the play heavily emphasizes the need to question and challenge authority and popular opinion, while that attitude is not very common in some schools here.