This past weekend I had the chance to go out to Moro Moro, a small village in the campo, to see some of the rural programs that MCC has out there. It was a long 10 hour bus ride, but the scenery was great. It was a relaxing time in the mountains, accompanied by quite a bit of hiking. Still, it left me with some lingering questions.

(Disclaimer: this is not a description of Moro Moro, just some imaginative thoughts)
I wonder what it would be like to live in a small, isolated town in the mountains. It seems like for a lot of people in rural areas, their life decisions are dictated by what's available. Choosing some other profession or place to live is not very practical. And so, they don't really have a lot of options as far as what kind of work they have, where they live, what friends they have, what they do for fun, etc. Their local life is pretty much all they know. It's simple and yet difficult.

Imagine living in a place like this, where the only foreign people you see have come to "help" you, to fix some problem, or to help your village with "development." That alone seems like it would do some damage to your self-image. Beyond that, though, imagine what it would be like to have someone who is younger than you, who doesn't talk like you, eat like you, view the world like you, suffer like you, etc. tell you how to improve your life. Imagine having these foreigners dump on you strange "technology" which you know neither how to work it or why you need it (since it seems to be accomplishing a goal the foreigners decided was necessary).

Surely, not all international development is done in this way, and these are definitely not things I observed in the MCC projects. Still, I wonder about the appropriate influence I can have as a foreigner in such a context (if there even is one). What is the best type of relationship and way to interact with these people? Again, big questions (I seem to have an affinity for those), and people have written books trying to answer them. For now, I'm content with raising and contemplating them.