Being in a constant state of stress and panic for work has become so natural to me I don’t even react anymore. Is that paradoxical? Probably.

Yes, Friday evening. And my boss just told us we have only been working on 1/4 of the full workload for last two weeks. And I’m actually a bit excited. I think I must have a tendency to torture myself.

Well, I’m excited because I suddenly got a much bigger picture idea about how our unit is supposed to work. And learnt a lot in 30 minutes about managing an organization.

So much more to learn. Always.

Sometimes I wonder if it really isn’t such a good strategy to attract so many young, ambitious, talented, able-to-see-in-multiple-perspectives, progressive people into development work.

Development is a big industry. It’s an important industry, in my opinion. It is still an industry, with mechanical inputs, and not so predictable outputs. Yet, the problems we try to fight are so vast and complicated, that I’m not sure being an industry would actually make much of a difference.

This thought came about when I was discussing with a friend (I seem to do that a lot these days; love it) about how I always seem to meet the most amazing people in Dar. The most ambitious and good-hearted people I know, are from when I travel or work abroad, usually in developing countries (aside: how I hate that word). I meet people like that back home(s) too, but then I usually meet those people abroad again at one point or another. It’s a big part of the reason why I really enjoy living in Dar and visiting Kampala. Getting to know people who aren’t afraid to go into intense discussions (1). People who spend their off-work hours thinking about work-related issues. People who read ‘heavy’ world-issues type books for leisure. Because I’m this kind of person, I feel at home when surrounded by such types. Yes, we do get cynical. We do get frustrated and give up sometimes. But many of us still stay and keep crashing our heads against the wall, in hopes that we’ll at least leave a crack.

At the same time, maybe it would be a bigger impact if all these amazing people could just ‘infiltrate’ all different kinds of industries, instead of concentrating in one. Preaching to the choir. Singing the same old songs to the same old people who already know all of the words by heart. Imagine if only 5% of the stereotypical banker population were people who are now in development. Would it make a difference? Or more importantly, would it make a bigger difference?

I don’t know. Although I know for sure if you told me to enter a normal banking career path right now, I might just cut off all contact and hide in a cave on a mountain. I’m not that brave. A coward.

1. Yes, afraid. I think most people don’t think too critically because they are afraid of judgment and of the world falling apart (it’s called deconstruction ;). Personal opinion though.

A discussion worth remembering, from yesterday.

Academics is changing. It is more and more about doers who want to connect the world of theory with the world of real world experimentation and hands-in-the-mud implementation. It’s about being critical and radical, but being able to communicate and persuade others. It’s about being idealistic and stubborn, but being able to live with the frustrations and fight until the end. It’s about not losing the bigger goal to prestigious ivory towers. Not letting egos stand in the way of serving the world with our knowledge.

In the end, taking the most unusual path means I’ll have less competition (and less opportunities). And it’ll feel right. And good. And interesting.

I’ve always been a bit wary about pursuing a PhD. I know I love the academic side. I know I love the debate and discussions and theories. I know I miss it. However, for reasons that alone seem silly, but together, daunting, I’ve always thought I would be more suited to a professional masters program. I don’t want to be pigeon-holed (yet). I don’t want to spend my life dealing only with theories. I don’t want to spend four years of my life writing a thick document that doesn’t interest anybody but me.

My friend and my boss really inspire me. There is a different way. Academics is changing. Maybe I would consider gambling 4 years of my life.

My generation – especially youth who are for whatever reason attracted to the activist lifestyle; especially those coming from a North American perspective – are often taught that we have the potential to change the world. To make an impact. To save the earth and humanity from an apocalypse. Throughout my high school and university years, I was also fed a steady diet of such propaganda. (I’m using propaganda here without a negative connotation.) I don’t disagree, nor do I regret believing such words. In fact, I still do. I often think that I was actually born an idealist and an optimist; the propaganda simply confirmed my beliefs and helped me find compatriots.

While I wouldn’t say that I’ve become more cynical over the years (I wish I never do, at least not too much), I’ve certainly become more realistic. The fundamental systems of the world were built up over centuries, if not millenniums. They were built up to adhere to the most stable power structure, which isn’t always the most equitable. They were built by countless deliberate actors and by countless unintended consequences. Where is the evidence that we can dismantle such deep-rooted systems within a decade? Or, if more recent social media hype is to be believed (*cough* KONY2012 *cough*), with the click of a mouse?

I was having a good, long, interesting chat (my favourite kind) with a friend recently. We touched on the topic of people who declare they want to save the world. I would never shy away from saying that my ultimate goal is to help save the world. I would also probably always want to be friends with people who say so. At the same time, however, I do believe that, statistically speaking, I never will. At least not alone. At least not in the way that is so popular with Hollywood movies or best-selling books. And I’m content with that. Content in being one of the clogs that refused to help the conventional world function. Content in working my hardest for little direct result. Content in being the utmost prepared for the day where I could be in a position of power to affect change, yet might never get there. Life is afterall a chance, but a chance which you must be ready to grab. Maybe this is one occasion where I’m thankful for my natural irrational ability to be hypocritical and contradictory.

Recently, for work I’m summarizing and synthesizing many scholarly articles on what factors actually improve educational outcomes, mostly targeted at the context of developing countries. Firstly it’s amazing to be paid to read quality articles and books (on my reading list is also Poor Economics – a book I’ve been trying to settle down and read for so long!) on topics in development I’m very interested in. Second, there are just a few lessons that really strike me reading these articles:

1. Past efforts in development in education have mostly targeted indicators as proxies to real learning. What I mean is that we’ve looked at class sizes, at number of text books, at teacher attendance, at school meals, and hundreds of other factors rather than the actual learning outcome of the students being able to read basic texts and calculate simple math. We’ve focused on the indicators, the most famous example is probably the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), where increasing the number of schools and enrollment is paramount. While these factors are important, their successes pales when we find out, for example, that 80% of grade 3 children do not have grade 2 literacy or numeracy (and this is quite an average percentage – surprisingly and sadly). Now we are realizing that these proxy indicators actually do not tell us much except numbers to be checked on a checklist. It’s important to note that it is not that these inputs or changes aren’t important, but that they may not necessarily lead to the outcomes we were hoping for – i.e. more children learning.
2. From the above, we need to set our goals correct. Numerous people have said this again and again, but we need to actually focus on our ultimate goals rather than our proxy indicators. The first example that comes to mind is what do we actually want out of life? Is happiness, and dependent on which kind of happiness, an indicator or is it a goal?
3. Development may be failing. Aid may not work. But we cannot discount all the lessons we have learnt over the past few decades on what does work. Like in education, we have tried, with best intents, and can only continue to try with our best intents. In whichever field, private or public or non-governmental, we always learn by trial and error. We often forget that the current complex globalized world we are forging together is a completely new one, with no historical lessons learnt. Universal human rights are also a relatively very new concept. We have actually progressed a lot in the last few hundreds of years. While we can have the best experts (and I use that word to mean not just academically trained scholars), we are still going to have to continually fix our models to better fit such a complex world.
4. In general I have a feeling that while many of the criticisms of development/aid is sound, and welcomed, the proposed alternative solution of private entrepreneurship in solving the worlds problem is at best naïve and at worst destructive. If private enterprise really could provide all of humanity with an acceptable standard of living, education, and work, then it would have “naturally” occurred over the centuries of ancient civilization. We are often too harsh on development/aid because the failure of private enterprises are not publicized, whereas aid’s failures are headline news. Also, current private enterprises often focus on very specific, narrow goals with the financial bottomline at the forefront. The problems that private enterprises target are usually the ones that are the easiest to solve, and therefore most profitable. The bigger, more complex, and more vaguely defined (development as freedom, anybody?) problems are often left to the public/NGO sector. If you have to compare “failure” rates, then it’s almost expected that the public/NGO sector would “fail” more.
5. There needs to be a much larger bridge between academic research and theories and development work. Translating theories and lessons learnt into implementable, tangible solutions to real world problems is paramount. Ivory towers are only useful in providing a protective environment for ruminating “radical” new ideas and paradigms. They are useless when you actually want to see those theories for a better (more equitable, more sustainable, more ‘harmonious’) world function in the current real world. While I completely understand the self-protective tendencies to stay in an encouraging, comfortable environment to shield attacks about our progressive theories, it greatly frustrates me also. How are we ever going to actually improve the world? How are we actually going to help provide a better life for all? If we cannot be vulnerable and be willing to stand in the fighting arena without being bullet proof we are only ever going to huddle, defeated in a dark corner in our ivory towers.

Anyways, brain still jumbling from all this recent reading. Now that I’ve written down part of the jumble, I’ll go back to jumbling it some more.

Interesting post over at Blattman (by the way, I can’t believe Freakonomics attacked Blattman with such viciousness; have a bit of class, will ya?). Emphasis are mine.

My favorite discovery of past weeks are Yale’s open courses, for video or podcast.

Right now I’m about a third of my way through Steven Smith’s Introduction to political philosophy and Ian Shapiro’s Moral Foundations of Politics. Highly, highly recommended.

…hard to understand what the political theorists were writing about. What use was revisiting 2000-year-old tomes?…They tackle the first and most fundamental questions in politics: What makes a state legitimate? What makes a good life? What is a responsible citizen to do? What are our obligations towards others?

Every course of new book on development, whether it seeks “why people are poor” or “why nations fail”, and every public policy or Millennium Development Goal–all of these implicitly have an answer to these deeper questions. The answer, though, is almost never explicit, even sometimes to the authors themselves.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Keynes quotes: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

Interesting to read this right after I made a post about being more of an implementer than a theorists. I completely agree with Blattman, of course. Theory has always been, and always will be, important. We organize our world, of what is possible or not, desirable or not, according to paradigms. We can only understand and deconstruct paradigms through theories. We can only try to step away and look at our current path from a more objective view through theories. Hence, we can only change society through good action stemming from good theoretical background.

That being said, I’m still more of an implementer, I think. Or rather, I’d like to be an implementer who provides feedback to theorists. Only together can we actually make a change.

“If we’re not progressive, who will be?” — Friend

“It is not my responsibility to compromise. That is the politicians’ jobs.” — Raj Patel

Although it’s been a few years since I heard these two quotes, they have always stayed with me. I completely agree with the sentiments –  society has and always will need people who are progressive. By definition, societal progress cannot happen if we’re always conservative*. History has shown us that humans are not willing to remain the same as they were 200, 1000, 10,000 years ago.

At the same time, society needs a variety of different actors. There are those who are radical, who push the envelope until most in society cannot understand why they would go to such extremes. There are those who are trying to preserve heritage and values that are essential for us to function with history in perspective. There are those who fit somewhere in between, making the compromises, bridge those who seek to change and those who seek to preserve. There are different actors on every tiny segment of this spectrum, and no peaceful change to societal structures can ever happen without everyone fully participating.

As for myself, I haven’t fully figured out my place in the spectrum and where I can have the most impact yet. I feel I’m somewhat of a bridge: progressive in thought, but extremely realistic in implementation/advocacy. While I thrive during intellectual debates, I ultimately am interested in theories because I want a more equal, just, sustainable, and (insert all the good development terms) society. There’s no use for theories if they cannot be implemented.

As my dad, who understands me more than I do sometimes, said to me recently (paraphrased), “You’re extremely idealistic, yet realistic. You’ve learnt to use logic to convince, yet still kept alive that empathy (感性).”

I like my place so far. I think it fits my personality quite well.

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* I’m not using progressive/conservative as labels in the Western politics sense.

Nitatoka Hong Kong katika baada ya siku mbili. Ninasikitika kwa sababu nitaacha nyuma familia yangu. Lakini mimi siwezi kusubiri mpaka nitafika Dar. Nimefurahi sana ninaweza kuishi mjini huu tena. Ninapenda sana. Na ninafikiri kazi yangu ni kusisimua sana!

I’m sure I just made a ton of mistakes in that paragraph (the way I used kusisimua is wrong, I’m sure). But I’m learning! It’s also exciting to be picking up Kiswahili again. I love learning new languages. Especially one as useful as Kiswahili.