The Wishing Tree, World Refugee Day 2009

This past Thursday, folks from our office here in Tbilisi attended “Real People, Real Needs,” the official opening of World Refugee Day by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)-Georgia. The event took place at Mtatsminda Amusement Park (Wish Tree Square), a perfect choice to give just a few (300) of the many displaced children here in Georgia a chance to experience what most American kids take for granted: park rides and treat or two. There was also a bazaar where IDP and Refugee families sold handmade clothes, jewelry, handicrafts and home-produced honey. Although there are different ethnicities and national identities involved, one commonality for all of the displaced families is an unquenchable spirit to survive today's hardships, to sometimes look backward with both deep grief and happy memories, and to always look forward with hope—and skepticism.



For many of these families, promises have been made and promises have often been broken. At least on this day, some sense of normalcy prevailed; laughing and excited children clambering to get on the next ride (elbowing out any adults who dared to get into line, too), a lively and bustling marketplace, the usual local VIP speeches and the satisfied but worn out feeling at the end of it all.






Tomorrow will not be like this for IDP and refugees, however. They will go back to the serious challenges they face: waiting for decent toilets and reasonable ways to cook simple foods, and if they are lucky, help to find some kind of employment. The kids will walk for long stretches to get to a school where other Georgian children also face serious problems; this is a young democracy with many growing pains. The IDPs and refugee families will question whether they are really going to be remembered by the “normal” populations as we all return to our regular schedules and busy lives.



As I go through my own days ahead, I hope that the tiny bit of time I am spending here can help Georgia's youth—both IDP and “normal,” look forward to broader opportunities and a chance at real choices, as they grow with their country. I know these small duties I have been performing for IRD—and just one day for the kids at the amusement park—sometimes seem small for such a big challenge, but I am confident that it is in this collective work that we can move into Georgia's future together.

Images Top to Bottom: The Wishing Tree, four little girls perform dances, two boys enjoy a cartoon game, IRD staff members Charles Specht and Robert Harris buy homemade honey at the craft bazaar, two youth perform a traditional dance.

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(editors' note: this post is actually courtesy of Gretchen Van Ess, who has limited internet access while traveling to project sites in Indonesia.)

Communication is essential and believe it or not… decreases violence.

As Jason has found out how important communication is when ordering food and working in the field in Georgia, I too realized its importance yesterday afternoon, as I chatted with three women about their IRD sponsored project.

For the past 6 years KPKP-ST, a local group advocating for women’s equality in Central Sulawesi, has been working on mitigating violence against women in the Poso district. They have hosted hundreds of community discussions allowing women to articulate their concerns and together formulate solutions. The women of KPKPST recognized the importance of communication in problem solving, especially in an area recovering from conflict. I can’t imagine a more constructive way to ease tension, communicating and understanding one another’s views, opinions and beliefs.

Over the last three months KPKP-ST has been disseminating information in more than thirty villages to increase awareness and skills in reporting cases of violence against women and children. KPKP-ST has also opened more than thirty Village Information and Reporting Centers for Victims of Violence against Women and Children. These homes, voluntarily offered by members of the community, serve as safe locations for female victims to receive both legal and communal support following cases of domestic violence. In the few short months this program has been running, KPKP-ST staff has seen a decrease in domestic violence and family fighting in the Poso District.

Along with being a safe house, these village reporting centers are heavily used as a resource by both women and men to discuss household concerns. Community members feel comfortable using the centers’ volunteers as mediators, assisting families with issues of communication, child rearing, and increased stress and tension. Community members even refer their friends and neighbors to the center, claiming it is an excellent recourse and place for families. These centers are being utilized by community members as a preventative measure, offering families a place to communicate, long before domestic violence occurs.

As I was returning from the visit yesterday I was reflecting on the impact and success of these reporting centers. Originally designed as a place for women to find assistance in reporting cases of violence, these homes are being used before physical violence transpires. Can you imagine what our communities in America would be like if we had village centers offering free guidance and mediation in household spats. How much better would men, women and children communicate with one another if they were freely given tools and examples of positive communication styles? Would our domestic violence shelters be empty if from the first point of tension, stress or anger, people were give a safe and unbiased forum to discuss their thoughts and concerns?

Simple communication is decreasing violence against women in Central Sulawesi, and I think this method could and probably should be replicated in our own communities.

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Good Table Conversation...

You know, I can’t read a word of Georgian.

There are some fourteen unique alphabets in the world, and Georgian is one of them. Unfortunately, I can’t even make out a single letter of it. You can stick my two favorite words in front of me, gamahrjobat (transliteration, meaning “hello”) and didi modloba (trans: “thank you very much”) – words I repeat frequently as they represent the extent of my Georgian vocabulary – and tell me that it was my street address and I wouldn’t know any better. I am completely illiterate! And it is frustrating to no end!

Struggling with this, I realized that one of my normal coping strategies while traveling abroad is to look for cognates and transliterations whenever possible. In France, for example, I just sounded out the words. In India, the Hindi signs were usually subtitled with English transliterations. Good stuff, real helpful…unfortunately, signs here are subtitled with Russian transliterations. And my Russian is even worse than my Georgian!


This is particularly frustrating when I am hungry. For example, Clare and I have tried many of the local restaurants in our neighborhood, always hoping that they will have an English menu. Of course, this is rarely the case and we usually point to things on the menu based on their price. We just say a prayer and hope it will be something hot and good. Finally, last week we found a restaurant that had a transliterated menu and we excitedly searched for foods we had tried and liked over our short stay. I remembered seeing a dish with skewered meat the week earlier and rushed to order something called “kabob,” thinking I had cracked the code.

After waiting in anticipation, I got a foot long sausage wrapped in a tortilla-like pastry. It was served with a side of spicy ketchup.

At first I thought that I had lined up the transliteration with the wrong line of Georgian writing. Tired of eating whatever happened to come out, and determined to get that skewered meat (regardless cost and embarrassment), I ordered kabob again. This time I paid close attention to which line of writing I pointed to.

I got another foot long sausage thing.


Again unrelenting, I tried to remember meat dishes we had with Georgian friends – ah, shashashuli! Nope. This was a stewed meat dish in a sizzling clay pot. I think it was goat meat. I was getting farther away from my shish kabob by the minute! Meanwhile, Clare was making similar efforts to get a dish she remembered being called “bean in pot” and we slowly took in that our language problems were symptomatic of our cultural illiteracy writ large (yup, pun intended).

Finally, noticing our table full of small plates of meats and vegetables, and having observed our repeated efforts to pantomime food descriptions to an equally frustrated server, a patron came over and offered to help. He spoke English and asked us what we were trying to order. At last, I got my shashlik. It was delicious.

As we walked home, I couldn’t help chuckling to myself about how complicated a simple thing like eating meat on a stick could become when there is a breakdown in inter-cultural communication. I thought about IRD’s USDA agriculture program in the Kvema Khartli region of Georgia. They were able to include a group of new IDPs into their existing micro-enterprise farming project this past spring; helping these displaced farmers earn some money and feed their families. Like many of their projects, IRD did this through a successful partnership with a local NGO.

Clare and I weren’t exactly going to starve that night. And we weren’t in Tbilisi because a conflict forced us out of our home. We certainly aren’t country experts like IRD’s international staff here, either. None-the-less, having a local partner sure seems like a smart strategy.

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Income generation and sustainability: The magic cure-all… or is it?

Monday in Maxixe finds the internet down all around town. No emails, no Skype long distance phone calls, and saddest of all, no in-between time on facebook. What's a person living in this modern age to do! Nick has been calling the internet company all morning trying to get the problem fixed. As expected with technology issues in Mozambique, it's as of yet to no avail. The only answer the company provides is to say that there's a glitch in the fiber-optic cable. Oh no! Not the fiber-optic cable! I have no idea what this is, but it sounds serious, right? I mean, you could blame the world's end on a problem with the fiber-optic cable and I'd probably be convinced. And according to Nick, that's oftentimes just what happens around here. If there's a problem with the phones, it's the fiber-optic cable. If the fax machine messes up, it's got to be the fiber-optic cable. And if you're late to work, just say the words “fiber-optic cable” and everyone will give a knowing nod and a look of unsolvable desperation. From what I've discovered, these are the three magic words in Maxixe. (Gosh, the thought of this creates many a-good Saturday Night Live skits in my head. Can't you just see Tina Fay giving the Weekend Update and blaming the current economic crisis on the fiber-optic cable?)

Both similarly and sadly, I've discovered the use of three other magic little words we in the West use that can at times sound just as ridiculous to the folks in Africa as the F.O.C. does to us. These are income generation and sustainability; two politically correct, buzz-worthy topics that can be studied add-nausea at any university boasting an international relations program. And for good reason. The words just sound so good, don't they? They roll off the tongue so easily, providing graduate students galore with inspiration for that final year's thesis project on what Africa needs to develop itself. Income generation and sustainability. What could be better than transforming outside aid into programs where the people themselves make the money that keeps their organizations afloat? This type of ingenuity rocks, eh? It counteracts all those dependency models that keeps Africa crying for foreign aid and instead provides a way for them to pull their own selves up by their flip-flop straps, right? Hmm... maybe. But then again, maybe not.

From what I've discovered thus far, income generation and sustainability may sound good in theory, but it's actually one of those things that's less practical when put into practice. If the economic system isn't relatively developed with high-skilled systems already in place, it's difficult to imagine an income generating project that could generate enough money to allow an organization to become completely sustainable on its own.In many cases, I see this playing out with the work of the home-based care (HBC) programs here in Mozambique. The HBC system works with groups of community-based organizations (CBOs) whose members are volunteers who visit HIV/AIDS patients in their homes to help them climb their way back to recovery. In return for the services of the volunteers, NGOs provide a limited amount of funding (about 25 dollars per volunteer per month) so that the HIV/AIDS operations in the country can function. In addition to this, NGOs provide the vast majority of the antiretrovirals and funds for the operations to exist in the first place. In the case of Mozambique, I couldn't even begin to say how much money is funneled in through this system. Millions upon millions of much needed dollars flows into this country each year.

Now, rightfully so in many cases, the criticism made by the income generation and sustainability folks is that there's a real danger being created in this system of aid dependence. What, they ask, is Africa going to do when the money goes away? Indeed, this is a good question. God forbid it from happening, but just what would the majority of developing countries do if funds for HIV/AIDS, women's rights, disease prevention, etc dried up? How would they sustain themselves and keep the operations in tact? I have no answer for this. However, I do know that most of the models for sustainability and income generation don't provide an answer yet either. Although a system built on going directly to the people and asking them what they want to produce seems decently just and democratic to our Western ears, it's also not going to be workable in the long run. No apron project can generate enough money to keep a working organization afloat. No AIDS ribbon arts and crafts project can provide a constant flow of cash so that the volunteers will keep working after the aid groups are long gone. I'm unconvinced that any of the income generating sustainability projects we talk about will ever provide a real answer. And when we think about it, it's almost funny that we expect them to. What percentage of American organizations are self-sustainable on their own? What nonprofit that you know of can function without funding from outside grants and governmental organizations? Very, very few.

In discussing this, I’m wondering what others out there think about these topics? Do you know of workable income generation that can sustain a new organization for the long-term? If so, please comment because I’m struggling to make sense of these concepts that don’t seem to make much sense on the ground here in Africa. I don’t have an answer. However, I can say from watching the work of IRD and how they successfully manage to balance the thin line between workable programs and slow but steady and real sustainability-building that there is an answer somewhere out there. Perhaps it won't be as catchy and clean-cut as the income generation/ sustainability cure all that we currently talk about, but I'm thinking it will be just as thesis worthy for all us grad students out there. But until then, let's just blame all of the unsolvables on the fiber-optic cable, shall we?

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