We all keep secrets, most are meant to be harmless, like Christmas presents or nuts and cherries. But in my experience it is very hard to trust a person, (or an organisation), that keeps secrets. Some organisations have made it into an art form; they demand loyalty and obedience but withhold vital information, secrets, ‘for my own good’.
I have written before about the principle of PQT, or Prior Question of Trust, but I do so again because I believe it to be perhaps the single most important ingredient in any relationship – and in my current context – in a relationship with local leaders and an organisation for the purpose of transforming communities and empowering individuals. A lack of trust can be devastatingly destructive, whilst the nurturing of it can be exponentially transformational.
I have observed both aspects of this trust relationship in Haiti. Too many NGOs come to this disaster already convinced that the people cannot and will not help themselves. So in the interest of expediency, and with the excuse of emergency, they import and implement programs without due regard for the need and the long term results. Sometimes this results in a stubborn allegiance to a log framed agenda for the purpose of satisfying and maintaining a donor relationship – rather than admitting the needs have changed and the project is not of benefit to the beneficiary.
One of our partners has succumbed to this donor driven temptation. The money is big, the reputation to be made is important; the relationship to be maintained could be of long lasting benefit (in another disaster). But does that make it right to perpetuate a project that is not ‘building back better’? A project that was needed 7 months ago but is still only just beginning, and will now give the impression that this Soccer Field IDP Camp, this potential slum ghetto, is a permanent housing solution. The secret, ‘a silent insidious agenda’ has been uncovered by the leaders of the community, and now, where there was once trust and respect, there is dangerous anger, unwillingness to cooperate and this impacts on us all.
Into this cauldron of disappointment and distrust walks a short, wiry, Haitian man. A man that has had his own dance of disappointment and disempowerment with well meaning donors. It took almost six of my weeks for this man to trust, but then he started walking alongside me. He started talking with and for me. This relationship of trust with an alongsider began to transform what was a mechanical relationship, a meeting of others into a communion of brothers.
Today when we met with a group that days before had threatened our partners, we sat together, expats and local leader, and he spoke in the heart language of his people and even though the message delivered was not all good news, the people listened, they trusted and respected this insider, this trustworthy man, and they thanked him for his honesty and for ‘no more secrets’.
