A conversation with Katie

A conversation with Katie.

Katie and I talked about my blog post from yesterday about health education in Yomandu. She said that it was interesting that I thought my advice was more practical and direct, because she thought that hers was too! And then I explained how I thought her advice was really valid, but that when someone asks a question, I want us to present some options that they haven’t already pursued. Katie said again, that she thought she was doing that. So we talked about it for a while.
By the end of the discussion, a few things were clear. First of all, we don’t understand the Sierra Leonean culture very well, and so it’s difficult to determine which if any of our advices are effective.
Second, Katie’s repeated advice to redouble efforts to communicate comes from her much deeper experience helping people resolve similar personal problems. For instance, her response to the first young man was an exhortation to try and communicate more with the girl about the consequences of not using contraception. In Katie’s experience, people often haven’t tried very effectively to communicate with the other person, and doing so is the best way to solve these problems. To me, that sounds like the best first course of action, and perhaps the best second, third and fourth one as well.
Third, we both agree that my recommended action of recruiting help from others can be dangerous. If a person feels like they are being betrayed or ganged up on, then they are liable to close down and ignore otherwise good ideas and advice. However, the society here is very hierarchical. That advice is an attempt to work around and capitalize on that hierarchy for a positive benefit.
We decided that it’s still good to give many perspectives, because we don’t really know how rural Sierra Leoneans will implement either, and we figure that whichever works will be the one that catches on.
In any case, I decided to share the discussion we had with you readers because, at least for me, it’s very difficult and scary to think that Katie and I are giving such personal advice to people in such a different culture. The problems that people ask about are difficult, and there aren’t any easy answers; the best answers would be tailored to each situation, and what we really want to be teaching is how to understand the problems so that people know which strategies to use for which problems. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. So we go, ‘small small’ like they say in Krio, and try and figure it out. Hopefully I haven't dramatically misrepresented Katie's perspective! Cheers, Chris.