Post Office

The post office in Dajabón is very basic. It is a room with a very few furniture, an antique balance, and usually two people working. Mails arrive from the capital and leaves for the capital twice a week.

I went to this post office to mail a postcard to my aunt who does not use emails. Sending a postcard to Asia costs 15 pesos, but I was told that the rate has gone up to 35 pesos or more. In order to confirm the rate, the lady at the post office looked for a rate chart which was in the old notebook that I too have had seen before. She could not locate the notebook, and she called the office in Santiago, the second city of the country. What she was told was 53 pesos. Can the rate go up from 15 to 53 pesos just in a few months? I was doubtful. I decided that I had better check it up in the internet. So I asked for enough stamps to buy so that I didn’t have to come back to the post office. She gave me the stamps, but as she received a 100 peso bill from me, she said there was not even a peso of change in the office, because she had just gone to the bank to deposit all the money. …well…okay. I said I could come back next week.

I opened the homepage of the Dominican postal service, but they did not have information on international rates. I found a telephone number of the central office, and I called. The number was no longer in service.

This kind of story is a classic one. One would encounter a similar scenario everywhere in this country.

A Thought

It’s easy to draw a pretty picture. It’s also easy to feel that this beautiful, complete picture can be attained in reality.

But it’s NOT. Only by doing it, one knows how not easy it is, and why, only in the context of where s/he works. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a manual guide of “What to do to avoid problems and mistakes in development projects”? Well, such a manual would either be not very useful because of its over-generalization that overlooks diverse conditionality, or be non-existent.

Once in the workshop, said Robert Chambers, “this is the best manual for development field workers…” showing one book. He opened the first page of the book. It was blank. So as the second, third…. pages, and the rest of the book.

Dollars for Making Mistakes?

Any development projects have their costs. The funds can be used to facilitate project implementation, avoiding making mistakes. They can also be used to walk through the process of making mistakes in the course of project. The former generates project results more quickly. The latter, however, accompanies more “learning” of the community people, by the community people. And this learning is what makes projects more sustainable. Which is a wiser way of spending?

We (the donors) do not generally think in terms of how much mistakes we want project beneficiaries to make. We think in terms of the positive results that projects would entail.

The response to the above question would depend on the type of donors, projects, and the socio-cultural environment of the beneficiary society/community (i.e., if they have culture of learning through mistakes). But this kind of question seems to be sort of “out of question” that doesn’t even get to be discussed in humongous international organizations.


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