Small Steps

I have spent quite a bit of time recently wondering, how can I be of use here? What contributions, of a tangible nature, can my research and the theoretical tools I have available really produce? I also realize that this is jumping ahead quite a bit, but I think it comes in response to the situation I see around me. There is so much to do, and there are so many good people working hard, that the desire to contribute something right away is becoming an urgent need.

I also realize that I am not really ready to do this yet. There is a great deal I have not yet even seen – and there will be many things I don’t have time to see before I leave. When studying the activities of human beings, their communication and their work, you realize that nothing ever happens as your carefully crafted research agenda (constructed in the comfort of a home office) had predicted. This can be frustrating, but it can also be wonderful. It hardly ever, however, conforms to a pre-arranged schedule.

Walking around the city, and having conversations with INCEF staff, I realize that I am getting better at talking to people and I can understand more every day. I am also beginning to get a handle on the questions I need to be asking that I could not have anticipated from my perch in Seattle. One aspect that I had not foreseen, which turns out to be very important, is the role of communication with local bureaucracy. When I first conceived of this research project, I thought all local communication efforts would be focused on the population at large, particularly rural populations living in close contact with the forest and the wildlife. That is indeed the main focus of INCEF’s work and mission. There is another local audience, however, that occupies a very different position, and that requires a great deal of attention in order to make the other work possible. Coordination with local partners, including several different government ministries, requires energy, experience and expertise on the part of any NGO that wants to work here. It is a very different mode of communication from INCEF’s main work: it takes place in different settings, and in a different language (French, rather than Lingala or Kitouba), and often involves multiple stakeholders with different agendas.

The norms of bureaucratic communication, and the culture of government in Congo, play an important part in the work of getting the work done. Some initial conversations have suggested to me that personal connections are important in this process. This is not in any corrupt sense, but in the way that an individual’s personal credibility is judged and evaluated by interlocutors. Several people have also mentioned the importance of observing the polite formalities of face-to-face communication, allowing the conversation to cover more general topics, inquiries about the health of one’s family, the state of one’s children, and so forth, before diving in to the main purpose of a meeting.

These few initial observations indicate that there is “something” going on here, and that I should at the very least attempt to account for it in any revised project design, and in future efforts at data collection.