Theory and Practice

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
– attributed to a bunch of different people including Yogi Berra

I can understand now why most jobs in international development require some experience “in the field”. The past eighteen months have taught me a lot about how things really play out with projects designed using the best or newest development theories. Basically, things rarely go as they are supposed to, and often you realize that your brilliant ideas aren’t so brilliant. Trying to force things to work out the way you want them to or the way they are “supposed to” doesn’t really work. If you don’t take into account that the people who are supposed to benefit from a particular project are people and that people are complex things, you run into trouble. That is why you have to involve them in the planning and implementation of a project. Of course, that itself is a theory in development that is well regarded and popular. It is also really hard to do. (How is that for a bunch of scatter shot ideas on the topic?)

I had an experience recently which made me think about this issue. We were at the remote location of the Mwangaza Learning Centres, one of FORGE’s preschools. I have written about this project before, but the location of this preschool is about as remote as you can get in Meheba. Unfortunately, the structure in which the school is house, a mud brick church, fell down due to the rains. We were meeting with the community to discuss how to proceed. There are two villages, villages 74 and 75, that feed into the school, and there was some talk about moving the school. It is currently located in village 74, but more students actually come from village 75. Since the school at 74 fell down, this seemed like an ideal time to put forward the idea of possibly moving the school. Village 75 was supposedly willing to construct a new structure in their village, and village 74 was already reconstructing the damaged structure in their village. There was much discussion back and forth, and while it proceeded in Luvale, I had an excellent idea. Why not switch the location of the school every term or every month or even every week? Then the burden of walking to school could be more evenly distributed between the students of 74 and 75. The teacher is from a different part of the camp, so he could just as easily go to 74 as he could to 75. You could just set up a rotation. This week class is held at 74, next week at 75. I was assured by the coordinator of the project and the teacher that this was, indeed, an excellent idea. They pitched it to those gathered at the meeting. It was met with unanimous laughter from parents of both villages. It would never work, apparently. The school remained at 74. And that is why we ask people before implementing anything.

One of my favorite illustrations of the theory/practice question came from one of our colleagues. She was talking to an intern who spent some time working at one of the field offices for one of the camps. He was a Westerner and was enrolled in graduate school at an American university. She asked him how he liked his academic program and he replied that he loved it. She asked him how he was enjoying his time in Zambia. He said he felt like he was wasting his time. When she asked him why, he replied that he should be in Geneva (where UNHCR, the UN refugee agency is located) making policy. His reasoning was, “I know all these theories, but they don’t apply here.”

-Nick