This is meant to be the dry season. Everything's been dusty and hot - more like a desert than a tropical island really. And then last night came a torrential downpour. Wave after wave. Huge drops falling straight down, plop-plop-plop... then rat-a-tat-tat.. the sound magnified on the corrugated roof of my container. It sounded just like Cape Town must do now. Without the wind though. And with the ambient temperature in the high 20s.
This morning I was awoken by the sounds of the last ripple of the storm as it departed, depositing one last shower on us mortals, steaming everything up, causing the leaves to glisten and washing away the pollution...
Another full day. Writing up my report now that the workshop is over and drawing out the lessons. Trying to project into the future what the foci should be. But these tools, these frameworks we use are so foreign to the experience of the people here that it feels like a constant battle against paternalism. These answers are within them. How often have I not been pleasantly surprised at the depth of understanding of even unsophisticated rural or township folk who have no tertiary education, but have been schooled in "Life" and have learnt those lessons well?
Our challenge is to find the right language - the right lingua france - to bridge the divide and to facilitate understanding - theirs and ours. Too often our frameworks, our handy PowerPoint presentations, our paradigms and diagrams are so sterile and so far removed from the reality; they serve rather to obfuscate than to elucidate or illuminate.
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