The Tenth Post

The other day I met a man called Trevor. Trevor is another Australian who first came to Kenya last year with the same organisation as me.

Trevor is also an excellent talker, and we've had a number of long chats. That’s been really handy for me because I think I can learn a lot from his experience. I can see parallels between the two of us in that he came here, like I did, with a general interest in development but without much idea of what to do when he got here. As he puts it, he had to spend some time “finding my niche”.

He was initially supposed to be here for a three-month stint (I’m here for two). He spent the first part of that time visiting different projects that were happening around the community, helping out here and there, then trying something else. In this way he got involved in promoting an agricultural technique called ‘push-pull agriculture’ – an organic way of protecting crops against pests that can increase yield sizes significantly. Flash forward 15 months and he’s now the ‘push-pull’ guru in the region, with about 70 demonstration sites plus a whole range of other projects in the works such as dairy goat breeding and plantation timber. He’s back in the country for the fourth time, having spent 11 of the past 15 months here.

He sees opportunities everywhere, but he’s not one of those hyperactive save-the-world types who are always so full of ideas and who wear their passion on their sleeve that I’ve come across previously, and who I assumed the development world would be full of. I know that comes across as a criticism of those types of people and I know I’m being unfair because a lot of them do great stuff, but my negative tone comes from a feeling of frustration – and, I admit, a little bit of envy – that I’m just not that sort of person. It’s always worried me that not having that sort of personality would prevent me from… well… achieving things. And by that I guess I mean achievements that have an importance beyond my own life.

Rather than a hyperactive save-the-world type, Trevor is methodical, patient and level-headed. He looks at problems dispassionately, and comes up with solutions in the same manner. Actually he’s more someone I’d expect to meet in the NSW public service than in a community centre in rural Kenya. Which, as you might expect, I find heartening, because Trevor’s is an example I’d like to be able to follow, and it feels much closer to my reach.

So naturally I was very keen to learn how Trevor had gone from ‘Trevor with no particular knowledge of agriculture besides a small vegetable garden in the backyard’ to ‘Trevor the push-pull agriculture guru’ in the space of 15 months. How did he know this was a problem that needed fixing? And how did he know how to fix it?

His answer: by listening. Just by asking people questions and listening to what they had to say. People who live here know what the problems are here, he said, because they live them every day. And often they have the solutions as well – sometimes they just need an outsider to coax them out of the old way of doing things and see the possibilities that are there. A lot of things are holding countries like Kenya back – debt, poor infrastructure, corruption – but (according to Trevor) one of the most significant ones is simply an attachment to existing practice and an aversion to trying new things. I guess when you’ve got literally everything to lose, even a small risk seems too daunting. So, the logic goes, one of the most helpful things we outsiders can do is nudge along this vital process of attitudinal change. That really hit home for me and it’s made me look at my role here in a new – and I think more constructive – way. It's less about "what can I achieve in two months?" and more "how can I contribute to this gradual process of change?"

I said before that this sort of approach feels closer to my reach, but that doesn’t mean it comes naturally to me the way it seems to do for Trevor. Nonetheless, it’s something I feel I can realistically aim for – if I want to. Of course Trevor has a few other advantages over me, especially those 25-odd years’ more life experience – he’s run his own business for many years, worked in a bank and in factories (he also left school at 14, so maybe we don’t need to be spending all this money on extending the school leaving age in NSW after all?). But I reckon if I can get to that age, look back on my life and tell the sorts of stories that he can, I’ll be pretty pleased with myself.

At the moment I’m reading the story of Muhammad Yunus, father of microcredit, founder of Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Not that I have pretensions of winning the Nobel Peace Prize (I mean, what’s it worth these days anyway? I like Obama but honestly…), but speaking of looking back on your life, wouldn’t it be nice to do that and be able to say “hey, I founded the Grameen Bank!” I certainly would allow myself a little pat on the back if I could say something like that. Reading that book, I find myself looking for clues as to how one comes to be a person like Muhammad Yunus. He seems a little out of my league, but the Trevor philosophy might get me a bit closer than I would have got otherwise. And hey, aim high right? Professor Yunus didn’t found Grameen Bank till he was 37, so I’ve still got a few years. Hmm... maybe I should take back what I said about the Nobel Peace Prize...