It’s a jungle out there!

A little while ago, while being a part of the mediation of a village conflict, one of the village leaders turned to me privately and said, “Engineer sahib, it’s a jungle out there!”  It was one of those statements about which you think, “how am I to understand this?  Are you speaking literally or figuratively, or are you pulling my leg?”  Then he continued, “In a jungle you’ve got deer, and elephant, you’ve got rabbits, and monkeys, you’ve got mouse, you’ve lions and tigers, and you’ve got donkeys!  There’s all kinds out there!”  Then I understood that he was making reference to a community development training delivered by an Australian development guy, Phil, who is a close friend. 

Phil’s introductory training on community included lots of illustrations like this one, and this one stuck with those he told.  In reality, the village leader had not heard the training from Phil because he never went to that village.  This leader could only have learned it second-hand from our local staff.  I was impressed that Phil’s training illustration had been so good that it was remembered and passed on by our local staff and by a community leader!  And the fact was, he was applying the illustration perfectly!

Why did the village leader say to me: It’s a jungle out there?  He said it because at that moment, the whole community, minus 2 guys, were ready to put their shovels in the ground and start digging the ditch for an irrigation project.  The majority of the community had debated and worked out their preferences and opinions regarding irrigation and come to a consensus conclusion that they wanted this spring-fed irrigation pipe scheme project.  It had taken them a long time to get through that period of debate and resolution, and they were ready to put the arguing behind them and get to work.  Unfortunately on that day there were 2 guys who had not yet had their say in the matter and they decided to make their own disagreeing voices heard rather than accept was the majority of the community agreed upon. 

In this situation, these 2 men were the donkeys of the jungle.  Picture a nice, quiet jungle morning where the animals are calmly moving about as they start their day.  All of the sudden 2 donkeys, for reasons known only to donkeys, bolt through the forest, BRAYING wildly, kicking and knocking over anything in their path.  Despite the fact that there were bigger, wiser animals in the jungle on that day, at that moment there was nothing anyone could do to contend with the wild donkeys!  Then once they had run their route, trampled the ground and relieved themselves of all braying, they went back to being a mostly unnoticed animal.

Like my local staff member, and the village elder, I have been thinking a lot about the lesson on the diversity of people in communities.  Communities can be described in general terms according to their cultural characteristics, level of connectedness, ambitions and goals, and other common measures and norms.  However, communities often if not always contain people that are outliers to every norm that the community tries to hold to.  The strong people might work hard on getting these people to conform, but in the end, they’re going to be who they are going to be. 

The main task of a community development facilitator is to relate well to everyone in the community, and to mobilize them toward positive community changes.  That’s a tall order given the diversity of many communities.  It is possible, however, to realize that there are a diversity of tools and facilitation approaches that can be used to interact with different types of individuals. 

There’s more to say about this jungle business… but that’s for another night.

Update Jan 14:  This week I learned that one of the two men that were the “donkeys” toward our irrigation project, has now become a happy proponent of the project and supporter of our work.  Apparently the reason for his change of mind is that the irrigation water has made watering his animals much easier, and in the words of my staff, “The man’s donkey is jumping for joy!”  I love it.