Apropriate Development

I am not sure how I feel about Oprah's school in South Africa. She's gotten lots of publicity for it, and I have held off writing about it until I could come to some conclusion, but I still haven't been able to. When I watched a story about it during primetime television, I was moved. And when I caught part of one of the episodes of her talk show telling about the school and the girls, I again was moved. But something continued to make me cautious. I haven't figured out what it is, but my RPCV friend Deidre sent me a link to an article in the Jamaica Gleaner yesterday. Give it a read if you have time: http://www.jamaicagleaner.com/gleaner/20070529/news/news7.html The author talks briefly about how the white residents of the town are happy to have the school and think it's a good asset to the town, while a couple of black men sitting on the side of the road and smoking ganja felt otherwise. They felt that no one local benefited because all jobs were given to outsiders.

I was pointed today to a story on the appropriateness of a small Indian village having its own web site. The town doesn't have an internet connection yet, but it has a web site of its own. Read the story written by Shailaja Neelakantan at http://gigaom.com/2006/08/14/indian-villages-internet-and-crazy-headline.... Maybe the town doesn't have an internet connection, and maybe the people of the community have aspirations for the web site and use of the internet far beyond what they are able to do now, but aren't aspirations the beginning of development. And as I have seen, often a web site isn't for the person writing the web site about the little village, but for the thinker, the traveler, the researcher, the person interested in what's going on back in his little village. Just because it doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.

For those who are interested in the Peace Corps or are returned volunteers, check out www.peacecorpsonline.org. Also, if you are on Facebook, you can do a search for Peace Corps groups - there are a bunch - or you can join the PeaceCorpsConnect group which is with the National Peace Corps Association. They are saying that according to their partner Social Edge, the Peace Corps Entrepreneurs podcast series is now in the top ten on iTunes non-profits list. Check it out!

Still adjusting - even two years out. Readjustment to your "home" culture is difficult, and it doesn't seem to get easier. When I first returned, friends said, "You've changed so much!" I couldn't figure out how. I didn't feel or seem any different. After two years, I thought that I had lost my confidence. In work and social situations, I no longer take a lead. I no longer "know" the answers, all the answers, and I don't have the same "confidence" that I had before. (And I was a coxswain for a men's rowing team in university!) After struggling a lot in the last couple of months, and beginning to think that I had been negatively affected, become lazy, not confident in social conversation, even in making phone calls at work, I realized that it's not that I am lazy or not confident, it's that I am different. I am very different from who I was before and from those around me now.

I watched a National Geographic short segment last night on China's One Child policy. We watched it off the internet so I am not sure of the production or airing date, but I am sure you could find it if you wanted to. It was really interesting and as usual, I started thinking. What sparked more of a debate in me and maybe even a pessimistic streak (yes, I do have one of those too!) was that the narrarator said that when the policy was implemented that no one thought of these long term effects that are now coming to fruition like more violence, women being kidnapped for marriages, many baby girls being killed, and many men not being able to find wives. I find it highly unlikely that no one thought forward about these things. I am sure someone did and someone posed all of the possibilities, but the benefits outweighed the possible negatives, or so they felt at the time.