I was tasked with a Tsunami livelihood rebuilding project in a fishing village called Panama in the eastern province of Sri Lanka. Panama village was worst affected by Tsunami catastrophe but it did not claim any lives. The project was a joint initiative of Practical Action (formerly known as ITDG) and Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in Sri Lanka.
Fishing goes in lagoons, reservoirs and sea in the village. We started talking to fishers to plan the project. The discussions revealed that they had mainly lost their fishing canoes and gear. They insisted that we start rebuilding their canoes and gear. Accordingly, we went on looking for a place to set-up a canoe building yard. To our surprise, we found lots of new lagoon canoes lying near the lagoon. We walked through them counting and realized there were more canoes than the fishers. We felt terribly deceived and soon we called for a meeting with village leaders. When asked about it, one of the leaders replied “It is true that a charity organization donated us 45 lagoon canoes. They look good and are sturdy but we do not really want them”
We were surprised and asked “ Why”
Then he said “We can’t practically use them in the lagoon”
We were flabbergasted and I repeated “You cannot really use them for fishing in the lagoon, how come”. However, inside me, I doubted that they were lying to us.
The same leader answered “We cannot use them in our lagoon, because they are not wide enough. We need a canoe which is wider than the standard size, because lots of crocodiles live in our lagoon and they can easily capsize the standard size ones, but if the it is wider at the bottom, the crocodiles cannot do that. That is why these ones are just lying here and we do not need them.”
I asked them why they had not told the Charity about their requirements. Then he said “The charity never asked us about it nor did they talk to us properly. They just delivered these unworthy ones. Now we have no option but to leave them lying here while some are using them to store water for their kitchen gardens.”
This gave us a lot of insights to plan the project in Panama.
This case still gets me thinking whenever I spot development initiatives that communities really do not need.
- Do we really analyze or understand what the communities need?
- Do participatory analysis tools unfold what their requirements, needs, constraints or aspirations are?
- Or has it something to do with the way we do it ?
- Do such tools go deep into understanding the communities ?
- Or are the tools, methodologies and approaches driven by our objectives or the objectives in our project proposals?
