Fishing about and about fishing

 

 THE FUNNY DEVELOPMENT

 

CORRELATIONS

 

       Whatever is the right approach to the development problems in the

       third world, it is totally wrong.  The more learned and experienced are        the experts who are planning and executing the various programmes, the bigger and more costly are the flops they produce.  There is an inverse correlation between the size of projects` budget and the resulting benefits.

 

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  O.R.T.

 

       On Jan 12, 1986 I listened to a 15-minute feature on the oral

       rehydration technique (O.R.T.) on the Voice of America. Doctors,

       experts and their interviewers were talking about the millions of

       children in the developing countries dying every year of diarrhea

       and how and why the diarrhea is killing them.  Then, they told

       the listeners the world over, how a simple technique of mixing

       some sugar with a bit of salt and a litre of water is saving

       many.  I learned how mothers in the third world are taught what a

       litre of water is, how the mass media are helpful and a lot of

       other more or less relevant information.

 

       The whole thing was very educative.  The VOA told the listeners

       that the solution is not a cure for the diarrhoea, but prevents

       deaths from dehydration; that ready-made dozes are available (I

       wander, who`s the producer); that the mixture should be just

       right, and what not...

 

       At the end of the programme, I found myself wondering:  how it

       happened that none of the speakers told us the secret of the

       mixture, the dosage, and other practical details.  They told us

       all about the ORT but not what it is, and how to do it.

 

       Before I am telling the readers why am I bringing this matter up,

       I want to do one thing - to tell here what one can do if one

       comes across a little child dying of diarrhoea.  It took me some

       effort to find out the ORT "secret", but here it is -

       approximately:

 

*  *  *

 

       Take 1 litre of water - better boiled - one level teaspoon of

       salt and eight level teaspoons of sugar.  Mix them well and and

       let the child drink, the more the better.  Another source spoke

       about a beer bottle of water, 4 cubes of sugar and half level

       teaspoon of salt.  And it said that when the child is really ill

       and dehydrated, taking time to boil the water may be the wrong

       thing to do.

 

*  *  *

 

       I'm using the example of the VOA broadcast as an illustration to

       what so many well-wishing, learned, and outspoken experts keep

       overlooking - that the straightforward, simply worded and

       practical advice is the most important thing to communicate.  The

       "backgrounds", "justifications", and public-relations stuff

       should come next.  It is, often unnecessary, sometimes -

       detrimental, especially when the real stuff is covered with

       layers of blah...

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  ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCE FICTION

 

       I wouldn`t be surprised if sometimes in the future,

       anthropologists would find tribes practising "Development Cult"

       that evolved the way the "Cargo Cult" evolved on some southern

       islands.  The service would, probably, look like this:  people

       seating in circles and signing on and passing to each other

       sheets of paper.  The priest would be seated at a desk with a

       typewriter and an empty chair for the HOLY EXPERT who will come

       one day from Heaven and bring a lot of outboard engines, nylon

       nets, and other development goodies.

 

 

 

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EXPERTS

 

During my 7 years with the FAO I met many experts on cooperatives.  I used to ask each one of them a nasty question: have you been at any time a member of a cooperative?  This private, statistically unrepresentative poll shows that...  well, you guessed it.

 

Experts aquaculturists (that was what they called themselves) I used to         ask whether they at any time farmed fish for living.  There was one or two of the lot. Incidentally the true-to-God fish farmer who was sent to identify a fish farming project in an African country reported that fish farming there would do no good, and that the right course to take would be growing cattle. A bad aquaculturist expert? Perhaps. But a good farmer.

 

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THE CHAIRMAN

 

       During a visit to a fishing village in a developing country, my

       hosts invited me to the local fishermen's coop.  I was shown a

       working business with sizeable facilities and met the coop's

       Chairman.  He told me all about the fishing operations and the

       coop's business, using all the time a rather proprietary

       language:  "my boats", "my fishermen", "my earnings", etc.

       Finally, I asked him to whom the coop belongs.  "To me, of

       course" - said the "Chairman".

 

 

 

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BORN FOR COOPERATIVES

 

       I have travelled in a coastal area where fishermen are daily

       sailing their raft-like craft many miles offshore to handline for

       bottom fish.  There is a crew of 4 to 6 on board each raft.  Upon

       return ashore, the custom is to spill the catch on the sand and

       to divide it among the crew members by the marks made in each

       fish by the fisherman who hooked it.  Thus, everyone is given

       only those fish which he caught himself. The cooperation among

       the crew ends with the fish.

 

In the same area, I saw a market place with modern refrigerated fish stores put at the disposal of the small boat owners and fish mongers.  That has been hardly used, but the space in front of the store was full with, mostly, home- made “strong boxes” equipped with huge padlocks where the individual fish owners kept their fish. I asked the fishermen why they don’t use the modern storage. They told me that they can’t entrust their fish to the storekeepers. Co-operatives? A fisherman told me: I catch my fish, I keep my fish, I sell my fish, and I put the money in my own pocket. Period. 

When I was asked to assess a multi-million dollar small-scale fishery development programme for the same area, I discovered that this was a huge scheme of fish terminals and improved marketing-distributing system,  based entirely on the establishment of fishermen’s coops to channel and market the catches.  No one of the programme designers ever asked the fishermen of their opinion on joining the co-operative movement.  My own opinion of the programme was...  well, you guessed it again.

 

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PAPERLINGS

 

       A friend of mine, a well known and a very experienced

       international expert on fish farming who, incidentally has been

       himself for years a fish farmer (a rarity among aquaculture

       experts) was telling me about a network of government hatcheries

       in one country.

 

       - How many fingerlings do they produce? - I asked.

       - I saw a few fingerlings - answered my friend - but according to

       the report they produce about 2 millions of paperlings...

 

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 DESERTIFICATION

 

The Director of the Department arrives in his black,

chauffeur-driven Citroen CX. His office room is about  a quarter

of an acre large, and the carpet on the floor is about half foot

thick. There is a heavy, well polished huge desk, a throne-size

revolving armchair, telephones, dictaphone, a large stereo

radio/tape-recorder, the works.  There is a "visitors corner"

over a space large enough to accommodate two-three families of

famine refugees. The furniture comprises a low, beautifully

carved table, two large soft sofas, and a number of deep, soft

armchairs and is worth a couple of tractors. The whole room is

richer than anything I saw in my life, including some U.S.A.

department directors, not to speak of an Israeli minister.

 

There is a famine in the country. It also has serious desertification problems. The desert is advancing some ten to twenty kilometres every year. Would it stop at the offices of the dignitaries?

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 FROM MY LITTLE BOOK OF WISDOM

 

There is a World of the Word,

And there is a World of the Fact.

The first is for talking and reading and writing,

The other is where we must act.

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 TARGET GROUP

 

One day the UFO landed and Martians finally arrived.  They found

on Earth a rather low-level culture.  What stroke them

particularly was the lowly, senseless, and quite irrational habit

of burying the dead and letting them to deteriorate into a messy

heap of worms, bacteria, and dry bones.  Wasteful burning of the

dead in crematoria has been found only slightly less appalling.

 

After some analytical seminars, and a pre-feasibility study, it

has been decided to initiate a programme aimed at the

introduction to the grass-roots level of the under-developed

Earthlings, the culturally and socio-economically more advanced

Martian bio-economic system of eating the dying and quasi-dying.

 

The progressive gastro-ecologically balanced procedure involves

the socio-patriotic sacrifice of elderly people for the sake of the 

universal feeding programme (UFP). Actually, the UFP-participants are    forfeiting only a fraction of their potential life span (in average, 1.76%).  

Upon the decision of UFP-extensionists following strictly verifiable    criteria, the UFP-participants would be voluntarily put asleep and tenderized, before the final extraction of life operation (OLE), and the

cooking process took place.

 

A suitable target group has been identified:  experienced and,

mainly, retired former development consultants, project managers,

and expatriate experts.  It has been considered that as

experienced development activists they will both, appreciate the

Martian superior economic system in general and UFP, in

particular, and be proud to be identified, for a change, as a

target group themselves.

 

The programme, however, has encountered unexpected difficulties,

stemming mostly from the conservative mentality, backwardness and

otherwise hardly explainable resistance to progress on the part

of the target group.  All the more, that an anthropological study

has established that a rudimentary form of UFP/OLE had been a

part of human culture for millennia and is still being practiced,

in a way, among Earth politicians.  A participatory brain-storming session was called to analyse the situation and a phased approach

strategy has been adopted.  A consultancy mission is being

presently arranged to find out a possible remedy to this

situation.