Surveys

Today we had the third workshop. Yesterday was the first workshop that I really presented any information at. The first one was just an introduction. Yesterday I wondered how we could possibly get through everything that I am planning to cover in just three months. We seemed to be moving at a glacial pace. We jumped right into problem identification and started to create a survey. I am pretty sure that this will be the first survey that has ever been created and administered by refugees living in this community. The UNHCR, WFP, and other NGOs seem to give surveys every once in a while, but people come to not trust them after a while. They answer questions and then never see anything come of it. I am hoping that this will be the exception to that rule.

 

Today we made a lot more progress than yesterday. I should have expected that. It's been a long time since most of them have been in any kind of structured educational setting. They don't really know what to expect. And we are still discussing things in very abstract terms. For example, I present a list of questions to guide them in forming questions for their survey that will be asking people what kinds of problems they have in the community so that we can create a community development project. What kind of project? Well, that depends on the problems that we identify. It's all so vague at this point. In fact, that's been the problem in explaining this project since I started it. Everyone always wants to know what the project is about. They want to hear an answer like "education" or "agriculture" or "HIV/AIDS". Most people don't seem to know what to do when I respond, "It's a project to teach people how to make their own projects".

 

But today moved much more quickly. I think they are excited about administering a survey that they created. I probably could have come up with a survey in 10 minutes similar to the survey that they created in 3 hours, but I am certain they would not be as excited about administering it. Maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see, but they seem to be proud already. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday just trying to convince the women's group that they were in a better position to make the survey than me. When we got to the part where they were supposed to decide what questions to put on the survey one woman said, "You tell us. You are the teacher, and we are the students. You know what should go there." I actually enjoyed disagreeing and telling her that they had all kinds of knowledge that I didn't have about the community and the culture that made them better suited to write the questions. I don't think they are told that the knowledge they have is useful and valuable very often. Many NGO workers here are quite rude and condescending towards them. Sometimes it seems like succeeding is as easy as showing some respect. How hard is that?

 

One of the participants told me yesterday that ideas and thoughts were racing in his head after the workshop. He hadn't experienced anything like that in a long time. I was so glad to hear that because I was worried that it was not stimulating at all and was kind of boring for them. Sometimes it's so hard to know what's going on in the heads of people you are teaching. Then he told me what an opportunity he thought the workshops were. He said that a class such as this would probably cost someone two million Kwacha to attend, which is currently about five hundred dollars. It was flattering to hear such a large figure being attached to the PACE workshops. I'd never thought of this in terms of how much it was worth in dollars or kwacha.