A Learning Experience Part 3

A Confused Do-Gooder

Like many development workers I was attracted to the prospect of living in a developing country and “helping” people for many years. My interested began as far back my social studies classes in junior high school. Sitting in class, looking at text books that showed Canadians working abroad, rural settings in Africa or South America, amicable, smiling, invariably sun burnt individuals standing next to groups of locals looking over one development project or another: perhaps an irrigation project or a water pump. In this context, Canadians were cast as a heroic humanitarian lot who were out changing things, making improvements, small yet effective contributions towards global problems that often seemed overwhelming and elusive to a young teenager. These images provided a small yet powerful glimpses of hope, of opportunities to travel, to have life altering experiences, and to change the world for the better, all something I wanted terribly to be a part of. That feeling never went away, and guided all my choices through seven years of post-secondary education: college and university. I always had it in the back of my mind that I was going to get “out there”, that I was going to “help”. With this position in Laos, the opportunity had finally arrived, yet here I was, staring at a one-way plan ticket and a two-year contract, realizing I had no real idea what any of it meant.

So what happened?

I’ve been in Lao already for one year. How would I answer Garnet now after all that I’ve been through? And I have been through quite a bit already. Two months of language studies in Savanakhet and now eleven months at my placement in Oudomxay. As many of you know I have managed to facilitate and implement a community based development initiative in a small ethnic Khmu village, Ban Tan Nguey, not far from the town of Oudomxay where I am stationed. The project, which involved introducing and training village residents in the construction, use and maintenance of a technology called the BioSand Water filter to provide clean drinking water, repairs and upgrades to the village gravity fed water system that would bring water into the village, and the construction of sanitation and toiletry facilities for the village primary school, was in many ways everything I had always thought development was about. Improving the lives of people living in poverty. Providing much needed infrastructure and enhancing their health and well-being. I recall, upon the completion of this pilot project, an immense feeling of satisfaction. I could experience the direct benefits of my presence and see the happiness and improvements brought into the lives of the people in the village. I could have left my placement right then, gone back to Canada and claimed the entire experience a success. I had “helped”. Or had I?