We humanitarians, NGO's and mission workers often forget. The "amazing" technology is not the main thing, the main help. It's life change, people willing to modify decade, even century old habits, attitudes, and mentalities. These are the real start of community development. The things we bring accomplish nothing without it. In fact, this is the real work. Anyone can plunk down some project that involves setting up some extremely helpful new technology, and then go home in two weeks and feel good about yourself. But most of it fails (unless you want to keep returning all the time and dump money in it year after year) because we have not even acknowledged the hang ups of the people, and e all have them.
"In the village the saddest and finally the most infuriating expression to the average Peace Corps Volunteer, if my own experience is any guide, was that, frightened sentence they pulled out of their hats when you were talking about change or when you were trying to push some slightly new idea. I was eating dinner one night with Alexandro, and he used the expression four times within a half an hour. What he said four times was: "The people aren't accustomed to doing it that way." Each time it was a little more irritating, especially, I think, because finally it was even irritating to Alexandre. The last time he said it he even blushed a little. The conversation offers some insights into both the problems of a poor town and the problems of a Volunteer working to change things in a poor town."
(Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 55-56)
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