you're uninvited, an unfortunte slight...

Today I was working on the manual I am writing and as usual this morning when I opened up my computer and sat down to write up more specifics about the People’s Institutions, I felt a bit useless. I have only been here 12 weeks. Most of those 12 weeks were spent watching and waiting and witnessing a very different kind of democratic system. One I have come to be very frustrated with, as it has robbed me of many opportunities while I’ve been here. And now, with a sparse sampling of field visits under my belt and a stack of translated documents, I am to write up a manual that describes exactly what the People’s Institutions in Bangladesh do. And as usual, the weight of this project combined with my ignorance causes me to stare at the blank page in front of me and wonder how in the world I am to do justice to this challenge.
Then, flipping through the pages and pages of interviews I have typed up, I came across a conversation I had with Gabriel (the director of PARI) just before I left Mymensingh. Other than my few field visits, talking with him has been probably the most helpful and enjoyable time I have spent on this entire project. At the end of this particular conversation he was telling me how self-help development was very new to Bangladesh and rather revolutionary in its thinking. He said to me, “People ask me, ‘how does it happen? How does it work? Do you have some sort of magic, Gabriel?’ And I tell them, YES! It is magic. Come and visit, live with our organization, meet the people and you will see our magic.”
And as I sat there thinking about that, I had this feeling of enormous guilt for the frustration I’ve felt with the government and the angry I’ve felt at ‘missing out’ from seeing all the things I had hoped to. I may have only spent one day in the field with PARI compared to the 3 weeks I was supposed to, but I have – as Gabriel puts it – “seen the magic” happening through the development practices here and the task I have ahead of me, putting together this manual, will take some of that magic and help make it available to other areas.
It is a very small task in the scheme of things. A manual that breaks down the steps of People’s Institutions will not change the world. And maybe I will never get to entirely see first-hand the effects of this development in Bangladesh. But perhaps, someday, I will be in Tanzania or Honduras or Cambodia and get to see the beginnings of self-help development transforming lives there because of the success and encouragement the Bangladesh People’s Institutions have shared.