Running toward problems

I went to the field this morning. I hadn’t expected it - Sunday and all - but my counterpart, Mashud, called me at 05:20am to tell me he thought we could get some labour. He was going, did I want to come?

Our large research trial needs harvesting but all the farmers who might harvest it for us are busy harvesting their own crops; totally understandable and fair. He’d received a call from a community leader telling him he thought there were some lads who had finished and were ready to work on our trial. Off we went but when we got there, it was proven, yet again, to be a false hope. There were only three lads and they’d already decided to have a rest day.

We continued to the trial nonetheless and did some of the harvesting ourselves. It was hot work - by 9am when we got started, it was already 35oC and the sun was baking. There were three of us and in two hours, we got through just half of one plot. We have 54 plots… Hopefully next week, more farmers will be available and we can hire 30 of them to blitz it. If we don’t harvest it soon, the risk is that weevils will get into the beans and then all the money and effort that’s been spent on the trial will be wasted.

It had me thinking about one of my mantras - we must run toward problems, not away. I’ve long stepped into challenging situations when everyone else is running in the opposite direction. That said, there are extremes in context that show that my efforts are mere tiptoes around the edges. Harvesting beans this morning was super hard on my back and legs. I had my hat and sunnies and was lathered with suncream; it was dirty, hot, sweaty work, but I wasn’t in a war zone. Indeed, I’ve never worked in a war zone. I have worked in some pretty challenging places and suffered, but overall, I have to be careful what I say here because there are countless brave souls risking their lives every moment to try to bring kindness into the world where all around them, humans are intent on death.

All that said, our efforts shouldn’t be judged against extremes and the mantra simply demands that I spend as much time at the coal face, where the problems happen, rather than watching from afar or, yes, not watching at all and moving as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction. It’s why I rarely go to conferences - too much talk, not enough walk.

I thought I’d share this mantra with you to inspire you to dive deeply into the practicalities of the challenges you’re all striving to address. “You’ve got to get to the bush” I always say, where ‘the bush’ just means the frontline, where the problem happens, no matter how difficult it is. There are some challenges we can never solve, but we can do what we can do. We each have our own super power and the key thing is to use it as fully as possible to make the world a better place in the unique way that we alone can offer.

Run toward problems, get to the bush, the coalface, once more unto the breach! These are all different ways of saying the same thing - dive in, where the problem is happening and get to know and understand everything that’s happening there. Learn compassion for the players in the game, the chess pieces on the board of life, the people involved. Learn to listen to them, to see them, to acknowledge them and love them. Understand their failings, their humanity, their sheer brilliance and beauty. And work with them to explore possible ways forward. Be humble. Be respectful. Be truthful. Be courageous. No judgement.

All small mantras and lessons I’ve taught myself from long period spent in the bush.

There’s no real grand message beyond that in this post. Just get to the bush. It’s such a privilege to be out there. You learn so much, about yourself, the people you’re working with, about humanity in general, about Nature, the Earth, physics, chemistry, biology, life. These gives us priceless lessons and insights that become ideas and eventually, if we’re lucky - because nothing is certain - they become solutions that change the world.

I returned home from the field about 1pm and had some lunch and a cooling bucket shower. I had a few work calls and then collapsed into a deep siesta, one of those where for a small while, you feel as though you’ve left the planet. It was like I was so far gone that I just wasn’t present in the world. Just as I awoke after two glorious hours, my wife called and we had a quiet chat. I went to dinner with my Pond Foundation colleague, came home and here I am, a quiet Sunday evening in Tamale wondering at the wonder and madness of humanity.

Amidst all the terrible things that are happening, I find myself coming back, again and again, to this mantra, “Get to the frontline, get to the bush, run toward the problem, not away.”

I wonder what ‘getting to the bush’ looks like in your context?