Tall Tales

In the orientation classes before coming here, we were told that often Afghans will relay an important lesson by telling a story or anecdote, rather than coming out openly and making an assertion.  But it wasn't until recently that I actually witnessed this happening.  I was at a meeting at a certain government ministry with the minister, and the topic was whether the US, and the international community in general, was getting much impact from the vast resources they were putting into Afghanistan, and if not, where the fault was for that.  There is much talk that the root problem is corruption among Afghan officials, or ambivalence or reluctance among the Afghan population.  But of course from the Afghan perspective, the problem might be with the approach of the foreigners - say, an inattention to facets like coordination, or doing things like building a school without checking to see if there were any available teachers to staff it.  But the minister didn't openly say that.  Instead, he told a story - who knows if it's true - about a well-meaning effort by the foreigners in an unnamed district. 

There was a district, he said, where the US had decided it was necessary to build a water pipeline.  No doubt that was a worthy project, though the US had not consulted with the village elders to see if the water pipeline was the most important need, or if the planned place for it was the best site or, on the contrary, might exacerbate any existing conflict over land or water.  The US officials had simply made a decision; no doubt they had a map that showed where pipes were and weren't, and this was one of the places where the map would look better if a line could be drawn showing another pipe.  In planning the work, the US had divided the project into three distinct parts, the minister said, and decided to hire three different groups of people to perform the work.  In this way, he said, perhaps the US thought it was doing well by spreading the benefits of the work, or reducing the opportunity for a single individual to skim off money; certainly there must have been good reasons.  The US officials hired one group of men to dig the ditch.  They hired another group of men to bring the pipe and place it.  And they hired a third group of men to fill in the ditch.  This was a very good effort, the minister said.  The only thing forgotten was to coordinate the work of the three groups, or tell the men how their part of the project fit into the overall project, or direct the timing of the individual projects. 
And so the first group of men went one day and dug their ditch.  Some time later, the third group of men went and filled in the hole.  And some time after that, the second group of men took the pipe to the place, laid it on the ground on top of the freshly filled-in ditch, and considered their work done.  And all three groups had done exactly as they were asked and paid to do, the minister said.  And yet there is still a problem with water in the village.

He didn't say any more; he didn't need to.  We were drinking tea while he told this story (in English - he spoke pretty good English, though the interpreter had to re-tell the story in Dari for his staff to understand, after which they just smiled softly).