Failed Commitments
We are confusing
very unlike situations in our easy application of the `struggle for existence'
to war. The struggle is not now between
individuals to decide the fitter; it is between vast bodies hurling death by
wholesale. We pick the physically fit
and send them to the battleline; and there the fit are slain. this is not the situation in nature... The
final test in nature is adaptation... adaptation and adjustment mean peace, not
war... The military method of civilization finds no justification in the
biological struggle for existence.
The final
conquest of man is of himself, and he shall be greater than when he takes a
city. The final conquest of society is
of itself...
Liberty Hyde Bailey. The
Holy Earth. 1915
June 89
Arrival at my new job!
Woo Hoo!
Is
the introduction of cash crops to a subsistence food production system as much
a shock as withdrawing the opportunity for sales from a cash cropping system?
Boy,
was I ever full of deep ideas.
July 89
Two
mango trees planted right up against a stump that even in its state of decay stood
taller than our jeep and stretched well over one metre in diameter. Other charred stumps scattered over
landscape. Area recently cleared, in
places soil underfoot still hot with smouldering roots. Some dark colour in dirt - residual topsoil
only. Young, bright green cassava
shoots, subsistence starch and export feed for European cattle. A forest gone from incalculable diversity to
two species of plants. Awesome in the
most horrific sense of the word.
August 89
How
do I engage my new colleagues in development dialogue?
A
recurring thought: if I had chosen to stay in Canada, I could have assumed an
employment role that would have provided me with material resources well in
excess of what my supervisor here might ever expect to access. So what is his status based on? A paltry, tiny pickup truck or patronage
appointments to local government jobs?
Smug me who, on the basis of being able to purchase a suburban home one
day, blithely deny that I could be corrupted.
September 89
Initiated the process of purchasing a motorcycle.
These
people just can't think right. Why don't
they get their act together? When it
comes to the bullshit of materialism and environmental destruction and western
influence I think I have a right to speak up.
I have convinced myself that owing a motorcycle is not a contradiction. Yip.
October 89
Do they have any ability to engage in objective research
here?
November 89
What
is this? They've got information. They have resources for field research. Plenty of staff wishing they had more to do
than hand copy old papers. Why no
research that I can see? Why no ideas? For example, one could just study increased
soil biodiversity and any subsequent impact on grain production. Nope.
Just fertilizer and hybrid seed trials in tiny plots on the edge of
farmers’ fields.
Several
farmers brought up the concern for the sale of their pararubber latex. I said nothing but thought: can't eat it if
you can't sell it. Dispensable cogs in
the international agricultural commodities markets, notorious for wildly
fluctuating producer prices.
When
I arrived in the village of Ban Nakham, a few nudges and winks from my
colleagues indicated that I was to talk.
Some sort of speech? I had not
anticipated such a role. I talked about
world rice production, subsidies, and trade barriers for poor countries. Blank faces.
Nudge, wink, whisper. They want
to know if you are married. I am not
married. Smiles and laughter.
In Ban Nakham I met three women who had worked the
underside of Bangkok,
married foreigners, tasted the world, and under various circumstances returned
to Ban Nakham without their husbands. I
wrote a letter for Kit to her husband in England - mostly to remind him to
send money, without explicitly saying so.
Her two friends came over to visit while I wrote and we all smoked
cigarettes and they invited me to stay and drink whisky and stay the
night. I declined but said I would come
back and visit. I didn’t.
Villages of many colours.
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