A few weeks ago, I took a leave of absence due to an unforeseen family emergency. Although the circumstances were not ideal, I was lucky enough to go back to my home town were I grew up as a child. I grew up in Tijuana, Mexico. Tijuana today is notorious for its sketchiness and various forms of drug related crime and violence. While I was there I couldn't help but feel horrible. I live my privileged life in beautiful Berkeley, while the rest of my family struggles daily in a city full or violence and corruption. I constantly thought about my studies in GPP and how I want to help my country. I couldn't help but compare my privilege to their "lack of privilege". Essentially I just started findings things to pick at, Mexico doesn't have clean water, or they cant flush toilet paper down the pipes, Mexico doesn't have Wifi everywhere, etc. I started thinking about all of the stuff that could be improved on, without thinking about the people that actually live in Mexico. I had not noticed that they were ultimately happy and were not complaining about all the stuff that I had complained about. Thats when I felt ashamed about my thoughts and started reflecting on the multiple stories of development work. The story that came to mind was that of the group that was building toilets for a country in the global south and the citizens did not use them. I felt dumb, especially being a GPP student, for trying to impose my ideals on someone else. I didn't see that people didn't complain about the lack of wifi, because that is not a priority there. I just want to state how important it is to take the input of people (via levels of participation) and not just assume that you know what is best, especially in development work.
But you all know that.
I've reflected on such things before as well during my visits to India when I was younger. My grandparents are from a very small village town in India which has poor access to water and sewage systems as well as extremely limited connectivity. i do not even think WiFi exists in this region of India. It is interesting to see how different people's priorities are in such a different part of the world. After taking a few GPP classes, I would agree that it is wrong to impose our ideals onto another society and their living conditions.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this, Miguel! I've thought about these issues, too. Having travelled and worked in many developing countries, I was exposed to issues of poverty and inequality since I was a child. However, only recently I started to question the imposition of policies and different approaches from the people with power. Who are we to decide what's best or not for people that live in a different culture with different ways of living?
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