Of Mud and Marxism

There is only so much traipsing about in the muddy cold that I can deal with. Particularly when it starts raining. I'm spending the week with a visitor from our home campus in California, taking her around to some of our partner organizations. Today we visited a micro-farming collective in Gugs and Philippi. More accurately, we went on a tour of the organization's community farms with 17 Americans who are piloting a drip irrigation system. They are "consulting interns" from the "Community Enterprise Solutions" arm of the "New Development Group". My visiting colleague articulated my feelings on their wordy origins perfectly, with the adequately descriptive: "You can't make that shit up."

When they first emerged from their van, there was a moment that we considered placing bets on what country they were from, but it took all of a few seconds' assessment of their backpacks and jeggings to claim in unison, "American!" (Two friends of mine recently explained the jeggings phenomenon to me and I was very pleased to be able to put my new-found knowledge to good use.)

It's a really unfair stereotype. I've placed close to 50 American students in service organizations this year, and the only uniform statement that I can make about them is that they've all been different. Some of them have been great; very sensitive and critical, with no stronger desire than to avoid being the stereotype. Some of them have been less great. But the group this morning, hells. Maybe it was the cold that turned me against them, maybe it was the "we've come to do a needs assessment and then give you what we have already decided that you need" vibe going on. The tour-guide, an epically amazing man who has spent the last 20 years with this organization, explained to them that they have tried drip irrigation before and it didn't work. He also explained in late 1970s Marxist discourse how we are all slaves to the neo-liberal supermarket empire. His words and phrases were more than faintly reminiscent of what Morpheus said to Neo about the red and blue pill.

Ya, so it was just an odd morning. Left-wing extremists and International Development Practitioners, mud and rain. In the end, all I really wanted was a peanut butter sandwich and a cup of rooibos, away from it all.