Author: Tracy Kidder
In one of my favorite books, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Dr. Paul Farmer poses a fiery response to the question of development in rural areas of Haiti. In the world of international development, everyone wants to make sure their investment for boreholes, livelihood projects and other aid are good investments. However, this is easy for educated western people to think, when in truth, we must also take the reality of local people into consideration.
There’s also a sociopolitical lesson to draw, of course:
“Look at Alcante’s family. It’s intact, the kids are bright and clever, and the
father can’t walk. And they just can’t make it. It’s fucking unfair. The woman
who said to me years ago, Are you incapable of complexity? That was an epiphany
for me. Are you going to punish people for thinking TB comes from sorcery? It’s
like the guy on our own team, a nice guy, who said he would help with a water
project in a town here, but only if the people really showed they wanted it.
What if that standard had been applied to me when I was a kid, before I knew
that water could carry organisms that made people sick?”
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