all of my favorite missions were ill-defined

At this time there is nothing novel or probably even contentious about the bag of theories referred to variously as NGOization, conference mentality or even dependency theory [misnomer] –basically versions and symptoms of that the idea that the continued provision of services like healthcare or education or conservation from foreign organizations does nothing so much as guarantee the continued provision of services like healthcare or education or conservation from foreign organizations. This is said mostly to happen by destroying local incentive bases for said service provisions and by frothing up a lot of attractive activity and income around this thing called international development.

Cameroon ain’t Uganda, but ‘development’ as an end in its own right sure has carved out a little home here.

Over the past few months I’ve been approached by a handful of people- mostly young and moderately tech savvy people- who want to talk ‘projects’ with me. Let’s begin a collaboration, foster an understanding, build some capacity. Let’s do some Sustainable Development. It gets more intense then that, but never more specific.

One of these people, older and better educated and better off then usual, has for quite some time now been eager to talk about his pet non-profit non-governmental and eager to work with me on the ‘funding enterprise’ end, although it’s never been clear to me what brand of development he does.

Today he brought me a document, apparently to set me straight on what the NGO was all about. I’ve recreated it here minus the official looking stamps and the specific names.

[the NGO] is registered with the government of Cameroon and is a civil society organization.

Governing Structure:

The General Assembly is the highest government body; it is followed by the board of directors, advisory, a Program Coordinator, a Program Director, and a committee for Projects management with members elected when ever a project is to be implemented and is headed by the Project Director.

Prime Activities:

To create awareness

To out reach and contacts

The studies and planning of projects

The running of projects

Humanitarian Services.

The funny thing is that the right person probably could take that piece of paper and turn it into money, and then even if the organization never got past the outreaching of contacts and the planning of projects, it would have been some income.

It’s certainly not more abstract then subprime lending, for god’ sake. And yet it makes me want to crawl into a mud hole or do more piece work or something. Maybe I think everything is zero sum game and it’s wildly dangerous to make money from things you can’t see or lick. Can you lick sustainable development? Where is the Ministry of Development in all of this?

In other news a human corpse washed up next to my home today, and several employees at the botanic gardens were successfully absorbed into the government fold, which means they can look forward to a stable salary by mid 2010.