A Messy Business

Just when you think you are beginning to understand how development works the proverbial spanner smacks you on the back of the head knocking another piece of the puzzle from the picture. Then at some stage you give up trying to understand how it ALL works and end up concentrating on the detail of one specific issue, this is no better, and you might develop a repetitive tick if you continue. Development is a messy business and although the intentions are genuine, the final result is not always what was required.

Here are some common examples of how it all doesn’t work.

• A remote village has a new water supply system installed from a source several kilometres away. The main pipe is cracked; it is patched up with a coca cola bottle and a plastic bag. It leaks, in fact it pours like a power shower. This phenomenon is repeated the length of the pipe which is haemorrhaging water and carving erosion gullies. However, when the water the reaches the stand points, the locals decided to concrete the taps so they are permanently on’ the excess water cascades down the unpaved roads rendering them impassable.

• The provision of heavy duty Chinese bore-hole pumps. They lasted less than a year resulting in the water supply for 15,000 being affected. Finally, they resorted to reinstalling Russian pumps and fixing them periodically until they burnt out.

• Planting of trees is an old favourite, however if they are planted on an imminent land slide, or not protected from herds of hungry animals, or planted at the wrong time of year, or on a place dry as a bone, or not sheltered from icy winds, they either are eaten, washed away or whither into a pitiful stick.

• Extra payments to government officials to complete work that is really already part of their job description.

• The inability for a native Tajik person to present his information to a Tajik Committee in his country’s language because most the donors and implementers speak Russian and English.

• The distribution of posters to women who cannot read.

• The building of a new school due to irreparable damage to the old school, only for the old school to be repaired sometime later by another NGO.

• Large agricultural warehouse facilities remain empty and unused.

• 3 hours work, 6 man hours chasing invoice template, 15 emails, and 2 months (still) waiting for $80.

The list is endless, in fact; maybe there will be a part two. I suppose on reflection, small scale, long term, self help sustainable capacity building incorporating self governance and gender empowerment to people in community based organisations through a participatory approach still needs some refining.

I will leave you with this one. The Chinese have invested heavily in the road infrastructure, lending money to the Tajik government (who then are obliged to use a Chinese contractor so the money flows back into China) to construct a network for the future.

A Chinese Road After 1 Year of use by Cars, Lorries and Goats (Obi Garm, Rogun)

Natural Disasters

In Tajikistan, unlike the majority of natural disasters that occur in the west, many natural disasters are natural disasters, and not a by-product of over ambitious development and poor settlement planning, resulting in a fundamental lack of respect for the forces of nature.

If you read any project proposal, or brief on Tajikistan it starts with ‘Tajikistan is a mountainous country with only 7% of it land cover used for agriculture’. It usually goes onto say that the lowlands are at 600m and from there the only way is up all the way to 6000m peaks. That's a great height for a lot to fall. As Tajikistan is billed as the top of the world herein lies the root of the problem, nothing has ever sat on it and squashed it. Subsequently, it is covered in ‘loess’, lightly compacted weathered chocolate soil that crumbles in your hand and magically turns into mud with the first splash of rain. It washes through the valleys and suffocates the rivers (see photo Rasht) resulting in the inhabitants living in constant fear from floods, landslides, mudflows.

The ‘CAMP’ team has just revisited some villages literally living in the valley of death.

The fate of the inhabitants is known, but instead of riding up the valley, they choose not to ride out. They live in under constant threat, surrounded by eroded gullies, half destroyed buildings, and hillsides denuded of trees and habitation. Everyone bereaves at their own personal loss from a barrage of mud, rocks, or water.

In one location the claw of nature has sliced three parallel vertical gullies, like a knife through butter, destabilising enough earth to swallow a village and digest hectares of farmland. Do the people not realise – of course, will they move – of course not. It is their home, their ancestors’ home; they would rather live in the shadow of death than desert their ancestral spirits, and relocate to new pastures in the southern plains.

Last week CAMP planted 2000 thousand fruit trees to help provide food and slope stabilisation, but they are woefully short by several million saplings to have any real impact. I guess, the inevitable is as always, inevitable.

330 Homes Destroyed (no people), Khoroson District May 2009

Hairy, Fatty and Dirty

Over ‘NAV RUZ’, the Tajik New Year festival, we decided to escape the Buzkashi (goat polo) and visit another politically sensitive country, Uzbekistan. Armed with two guide books, two Russian translators (friends), and two carrier bags of low denomination Uzbek Sum (currency), we crammed in taxis and trains to celebrate my birthday in the ancient Islamic cities Bukhara and Samakand.

Uzbekistan is synomynous with brutality and violence, with reported buying and selling of white slaves in 1920’s, to the Andijan massacre of 5000 protestors in 2005 by the present regime and notably its president Islam Karimov. Karimov was slammed by the United Nations, who accused him of “institutionalised, systematic, and rampant” torture. Somehow even after the last British ambassador, Craig Murray, denounced the regime stating that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy" and that the boiling to death of two members of Hizb ut-Tahrir "is not an isolated incident.", they still let the Brits in to spend their pounds. However, they are meticulous in fingering through your dosh during your three hour border ordeal and confiscating your press pass if you care to carry one.

Nick’s Blog provides a great selection of pictures and description of the madrassas, minuets and mosques that have been carefully restored for the frequent visits of the Japanese and French tourists. So I will concentrate on the highlight of the trip – the visit to the ‘LADIES Haman’.

The last of the middle aged mothers who patronise the Haman scuttled away giggling as we entered. This Haman is really not for tourists, so we constituted a rarity and a welcome source of income. The 500yr old Haman was the beauty treatment spa for the bequeathed women of the Emir, here they were scrubbed, perfumed and adorned, before the selection process and subsequent de-flowering.

Perched on a stone ledge in my Next boxers, the steam emanated from a dark watery pit. The Haman is a dungeon of archaic archways, a labyrinth of cells linked by marble floors. Just as the first beads of sweat dribbled off my brow a young grandmother dragged me through for a scrubbing.

Positioned amongst a rainbow of bowls she proceeded to attack my skin with a well worn silk glove in her saggy black knickers and sodden slip. She chatted in Russian, Tajik and Uzbek as the dead skin peeled from my arms, the hair yanked from my calf’s and my teeth grated with the pain. She rambled on as vigorously as she rubbed and finished the procedure by purifying my reddened skin with salty water. My small yelps of pain echoed against slimy walls to return as screams of torture.

Somewhat bemused by physical appearance she was purposeful in ensuring her final remarks were accurately translated; ‘Hairy, Fatty and Dirty Man’. Disgruntled by her diagnosis I rose out of my pile of dead skin and extracted hair to the massage parlour, leaving her to de-flake her iron glove of silk.

In Uzbekistan many international organisations are banned from working and with this the level of accountability of the government decreases. This places immeasurable importance on tourists who provide the international eyes and ears in a one state party; if they cease visiting the Uzbek people will feel abandoned and helpless against a notorious tyrant. Therefore, I would actively encourage a de-scaling in a dungeon at the hands of a middle aged grandmother in a sweaty slip.