Culture, language and pattern of development

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

That news item about the difficulty of delegates to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Bali to demystify acronyms like SEANWFZ and ZoPFF/C inspired this revisit to a piece I wrote two years ago. (Lest we also “drown in Asean’s alphabet soup”, the acronyms stand for Southeast Asia Nuclear WeaponspFree Zone and Zone of Peace, Freedom, Friendship and Cooperation.)

The issue about language or jargon complicating or blocking development is found in that humorous - and therefore interesting - alcoholic product endorsement by Manny Pacquiao. The boxing legend reads and orders from the menu “roasted mountain legumes” to go as finger food (pulutan) in his drinking session with billiards ace Efren “Bata” Reyes and other friends.

Television viewers need not strain for the meaning of the three-word combination. In a second or two, it comes swift and clear, solid and telling as any three-punch combination from Pacquiao. The meaning comes on a dish of roasted peanuts, a legume native among the Incas and other indigenous peoples of the mountains of South America.

My own indigenous mind bounces to an analogy by the respected Baguio lawyer Art Galace to explain the difference between involvement and commitment. He said it can be found in a breakfast plate of ham and egg. The chicken gave the egg, and that’s involvement. The pig contributed the ham, and that’s commitment. Instead of telling, Art showed the difference. The whole point of the ad and comparison (or“benchmark” in “development” gobbledygook) is a lesson for all who are into “sustainable development”.

By “all”, I mean fund grant agencies, consultants, workers in the field, those in government, erstwhile non-government organizations (NGO) who re-labeled themselves “civil society” and anybody advocating “good governance”, “gender sensitivity” or whatever issues need to be addressed to “empower beneficiary (some call “client”) communities” as “efficient and effective stakeholders, champions and partners in development engagements” during “summits, strategic planning, benchmarking” and whatever “processes and strategies” ( SWOT analysis or team building) are being “conceived and conceptualized” towards the formulation of “well-defined, clear and concise missions and visions”, “programs of action” and even “declarations” of commitment to “sustainable development”, a by-word that emerged from that “historic” 1992 World Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in the same continent where Manny Pacquiao’s “mountain legume” came from.

We need to simplify and demystify the language of development if we are truly committed in helping villages become “role models” and “success stories” in “sustainable development”. (The jargon of the preceding paragraph of this mangled and angry piece hardly clarifies and simplifies. It reflects nothing but my own confusion and struggle to understand and come to terms with development gobbledygook, together with my urgent need for sponsorship to a jargon-juggling seminar to makes heads and tails of these freshly minted and falsely elegant words, tags and phrases churned out everyday, supposedly to speed up understanding of and actual development work.

To borrow again the words of Mikhail Gorbachev, the head of Green Corss International at the World Urban Forum in Barcelona, enough is enough. Gorbachev pleaded enough of those numerous “declarations”, “challenges” “pacts and agreements” signed over the years to reduce world poverty. He laments the reduction of these broken promises to forgotten paper and ink. Enough of this word-minting and word-bending in the name of development.

It took me sometime wondering why NGOs renamed themselves “civil society”, and whether they refer to government as the “uncivil society”. If the meaning points that way, it’s a misnomer. Lack of civility is not exclusive to government. Neither are corruption, mediocrity and lack of transparency a monopoly of those in government.

I feel horrible like Hagar the Horrible, the Viking-looking comics strip character. While he was walking through his village’s main street, someone, perhaps a drunk, poked his head outside a bar and shouted “barbarian!”. Not knowing what the tag meant, he strode into a library and opened a dictionary. He then took the tome to the bar and banged it on his name-caller’s head.

Development jargon seeped into our heads that time we joined a team that met (touched based with, according to development lingo) village folks in northern Sagada, Mt. Province. Our team presented in “matrix form” a “community-based” program to protect a water source the villagers share with other villages.

Our development language, and that of the project features and figures on manila paper we posted on the walls immediately raised suspicion. A villager asked if it was another project of government, giving us the suspicion they’d been introduced to similar development projects before, through the same pattern and language. Another asked whether it was our project for them to implement. We told them it was their project for them to implement.

It took them sometime to believe us. Then town mayor Thom Killip, now the presidential assistant for development in the Cordillera, saw through the confusion triggered by our language of development. He told his constituents to forget the terms we used. He said they have been doing projects for their communities in their own terms and language.

With that, the language, format and process shifted to those of the village. The project, titled “headwaters enhancement”(to conform to the format of the project proposal) was renamed “tubbogan”, a native term which roughly means “to increase production” of a water source.

Forester Manny Pogeyed, a native of the place who prepared the project proposal granted by the United Nations Development Programme, found relief. He was home in Sagada where native farmers also produce and roast mountain legume.

With this basic lesson learned, particularly on “cultural sensitivity”, we sipped lemon grass and coffee grown and roasted in nearby Fidelisan (or Pidlisan) and brewed at the Bangaan National High School .

I felt lucky to have read the children’s version of “Agenda 21”, the document that emerged out of the Rio Summit. It’s my guide whenever kids explore Baguio’s remaining forest water source under Eco-walk, a program inspired and guided by the sustainable wisdom of our Igorot forebears. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).