Do better than Dora

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA – It was a typical toddler’s birthday party. Well, sort of. Let me put it this way: There was no Chuck E. Cheese. \nI don’t find myself at 3-year-olds’ birthday parties often, but it’s even rarer that I find myself at this kind of birthday party. Last weekend, I stayed on a dairy farm in the province of Limón, and because the owners’ granddaughter turned 3 the day we arrived, we were given the opportunity to crash the party. \nAt first, it seemed typical – we sang “Happy Birthday” – but then the birthday girl’s mother dished out a hearty helping of pigs’ feet stew to all in attendance, which, as a vegetarian, I politely declined. After the children won a long bout with a particularly obstinate piñata, which they attacked while singing along with a CD of what seemed to be a Costa Rican version of Alvin and the Chipmunks, we had dessert – a sheet cake with a picture of Dora the Explorer on it.\nThe entire weekend it seemed like these people were trapped in some crazy sort of limbo, with one foot in the traditional rural society, and one foot in the modern world that has begun to encroach on them. It’s a tricky place to be, one where you use chain saws to cut firewood and discuss Brad Pitt while milking cows. \nThis bizarre state of limbo is incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t see it on a daily basis, which is why governments and well-meaning development groups need to remember that policy determined by mainstream standards and practices might do little to benefit certain groups of people, sometimes leaving them worse off than before. \nFor example, although education and literacy are usually taken into account when judging human development, in the community in Limón, schooling in the modern sense does little to advance economic and social development. When you’re living on a labor-intensive farming operation at or below the poverty line, abandoning your daily chores to learn about rhombuses and the Spanish Inquisition isn’t always the most viable, or relevant, option. \nInstead of assuming that the needs of an entire population are similar, when financial assets and infrastructure are lacking in certain areas, government priorities need to assess local needs. Although at first it surprised me that formal education was not highly valued in this particular rural community, it goes without saying that operating a farm efficiently takes a different kind of knowledge than what is generally taught in schools. \nIn this case, government agencies that are, according to local residents, out-of-touch with rural lifestyles could supply the small farmers in Limón with startup capital and set up training programs to improve crop yields for small farmers in order to provide a financially stable, sustainable enterprise so that secondary and post-secondary education will eventually become a more viable option for local youth. \nIn areas that are stuck between two worlds, influxes from urban, mainstream society should not create liabilities, but provide benefits – and preferably ones that are more useful than Dora the Explorer.