A Learning Experience

This blog represents the first installment in a series of short essays and journal entries I have been preparing over the last couple of weeks and months. I had been intending to send them out over email, but I believe this medium may prove far easier and more effective.

A Learning Experience
I am personally of the mind that the only time you really know you’re learning something is when you come to realize that everything you thought you knew about a given topic or situation turns out to be largely wrong. Nothing could be truer than what is occurring with my experiences of being here in Lao and that of development generally. I remember when I was preparing to come over here and take this position as the “Community Planning Facilitator” for the Provincial Oudomxay Science Technology and Environment Agency (PSTEO), Garnet asked me a simple yet very poignant question, “How exactly are you going to be of any help to the people of Lao?” He of course did not mean to be sarcastic in any way, but simply wanted to know how I, a person who had never lived in a developing country, who had very little experience in development or in environmental or community planning, could expect to provide any insight or “expertise” to people who had been living and dealing with the issues of poverty and development for their entire lives? What knowledge or skills could I possibly offer that they didn’t possess already? Leave it to Garnet to stump me with such a seemingly simple inquiry. And stump me it did. I remember sitting across from him in the office of his home, looking at him as he awaited my answer, with a feeling of terror creeping up my spine. Why terror? Because I realized immediately that I didn’t have an answer. I had less than a month to go before my scheduled departure and I had absolutely no real idea of what I was supposed to do once I got there. How could I possibly “help” anyone?

Stay tuned more to come.