How can we work effectively across our world’s cultural divides? USIP and Burning Man Project travel to that frontier, hearing stories and practical lessons for working in unfamiliar cultures. The Culturally Attuned podcast complements USIP’s online, self-paced course on Cultural Synergy. Both help us cultivate the skills we need to do good work in a diverse world.

Transcript

Dominic Kiraly

This is Culturally Attuned. Brought to you by the United States Institute of Peace, in partnership with Burning Man Project.

Carmen Mauk

If we hadn't listened to them, I think we would have still gotten the job done, we would have been successful by our own measurements, but not really creating the deep roots in the community that allowed us to do so many more things after that many things that were outside what we considered, you know, what we were there to do.

Dominic Kiraly

How should we respond to different visions and expectations when we are working with someone from another culture?

I’m Dominic Kiraly, and today our guest is Carmen Mauk, the co-founder of Burners Without Borders, where she spent 12 years working on international projects in disaster relief and community resiliency.

In this episode, Carmen reflects on the importance of being open to change when working cross-culturally. We cannot remain wedded to our own agenda to the exclusion of what is important for those who have a stake in the outcome. The most effective plans and strategies usually result from listening and collaborating with locals to help meet their own needs.

Carmen Mauk

Burners Without Borders supported a six year disaster response effort with over 6,000 volunteers after the 2007 earthquake that decimated the city of 80,000 people in Pisco, Peru. This was an earthquake that was an 8.0 on the Richter scale and lasted for two minutes. It's one of the most profoundly gigantic earthquakes that have ever happened to the population. And it was just heart wrenching when we arrived to see an entire city basically just leveled to the ground.

When we came into Pisco, as three green disaster responders, we felt there was a certain mandate of what needed to be done to quickly remove rubble and help people rebuild their lives. But shortly after we arrived in Pisco, we were approached by the local free dive fishermen who expressed a lot of concern about the rampant dynamite fishing that was occurring along the coast.

Now, we weren't there to do this. We were really there to help people rebuild their lives, but it became apparent that this dynamite fishing was destroying marine habitat as well as putting their lives in danger. And the practice also killed anything in the blast radius, including protected marine life like sea turtles.

But what we realized very soon by listening to the locals and the community was that there was much more that needed to be done that was important to them. And if we were going to build trust in the community and actually be there for the long term, we really need to listen and come up with strategies and plans that worked for them, and not just our own agenda.

So we were like, "Okay, well, what do you guys want to do?" And they asked us to use the disaster as like a kind of a gap in the whole chaos of it all to actually do something really good that might not have been able to be possible before.

Dominic Kiraly

The community’s vision was much greater than just recovery and reconstruction, as Carmen and her team learned.

Carmen Mauk

It kind of blew us away, because we were not expecting to, we're starting to move stuff out of the way, repair bridges so that rubble could be removed. And we were very surprised when the fishermen approached us to do this. We really didn't know why. And I think it was because they could see that we were doing things in kind of an out of the box way. So, I think those fishermen who are also dads and parents of children going to these schools, saw something in our group that they thought these are the people we want to approach to see if this thing that's very important to us, which is our marine life is being decimated, our lives as fishermen are at stake. The future of the environment here, if they keep dynamite fishing, and so they asked our group to help.

But we were very surprised because our Burners without Borders had really only had Hurricane Katrina, under our belt, as far as deployment. We were pretty green. We didn't really know how, what to do necessarily, and so anything was on the table.

So, they asked us to help them transform an old building on the beach into an environmental education center that would address not only dynamite fishing, but also educate the larger community about how they could support the health of the marine environment. So volunteers got to work rehabbing the building, and developing posters and educational materials with the fishermen that would eventually be displayed. And the grand opening was set for an upcoming festival holiday to attract as many people as possible. And to our great surprise, there was a long line out the door for the entire day.

And we weren't sure how the educational materials would be received or if anyone would take the time to read them. But we were thrilled to see people of all ages taking the time to read and engage with the materials and each other. So, after the grand opening, this new Environmental Center became a hub for all fishermen and the community to learn how to use computers, take English language classes that were primarily taught by our volunteers over that six year period. And it was just one of the best projects we had during our time there. And it was a true collaboration with the people and it allowed us to build trust in the community. And also create a model for what else is possible. What else you guys want to build here rather than just rebuilding after a disaster? Your home? But how do you strengthen a community in a way that can make a real difference for everybody?

Dominic Kiraly

Great outcomes can happen when local stakeholders set the agenda. Carmen addresses some of the take-aways.

Carmen Mauk

I think with this example with the free dive fishermen, when you arrive in a disaster zone, you want to feel like you can help as much as possible. And you want to show the people who've just been through hell, that you're there and you're competent and you're capable, and you're going to get the job done. And I think that for me, we could have easily said, “Well, actually, we're not here to build an Environmental Center. We're here to move stuff around and get the debris off the beach and do these other things that we think we're supposed to do because we're calling ourselves “disaster responders.” But when you're really listening to the community, and they come to you with something that's a real need, that kind of stopped us in our tracks and made us realize like, "Okay, we don't know everything." And we need to be very open to what the community says they want and what they need and slow down so that we're not just coming in thinking we know everything. And you know, none of us had ever been to Pisco, Peru before. And so it's incredibly important to, whenever anybody stops and says, "Hey, I need this, or can you guys do this?" that you not think that there's a box that they're outside of, but just like, "Okay, how do we include this in as possible so that we are not seen as foreign?”

I think that when you truly listen to people without an agenda, which I think is key, that enables the real trust between us and the community that creates the strong relationships to go forward so that real change can happen, and it’s not just moving stuff around, because anybody can do that. We saw very quickly that the people who had just survived this disaster were the experts of their own experience. It behooved us to really listen to them and their needs.

If we hadn't listened to them, I think we would have still gotten the job done, we would have been successful by our own measurements, but not really creating the deep roots in the community that allowed us to do so many more things after that many things that were outside what we considered, you know, what we were there to do.

Whenever I travel, especially if the community is viewing me as an expert, I humble myself immediately. And I asked a lot of questions and listen. Asking questions creates, I think, an open stance. People can feel that. And it enables trust actually to happen in ways that can go a lot further than me coming in as a so-called expert, and talking without having any idea what the people have experienced.

Dominic Kiraly

We asked Carmen if there was ever a time when a project did not work out and how she handled the situation.

Carmen Mauk

Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Sam Block who was instrumental in the Burners Without Borders Peru rebuilding project, put together a team in Port-au-Prince, Haiti to create a hub for NGO volunteers to live and work as well as a demonstration project that would show like different kinds of housing and composting toilets and different things like that, that Haitians could, really take back into their own homes. And this also included a skills training area for Haitians and an aquatonics program that could teach very schools that visited a demonstration project how to grow their own food.

So, when I arrived in Port-au-Prince and at this location, there were two volunteers who had come in to build the Aquaponics project. They needed a lot of rocks for the project and I found them sifting rocks out of dirt that they'd found on the property and it was taking forever. And they only had a short amount of time to complete the project while they were in the country. So I suggested that hey, Burners without Borders, we can donate a truck full of rocks so that they could finish the project on time. Problem solved.

But during this time, a cholera epidemic was sweeping across the country. And it was right the beginning of it. And we had to be really careful about sanitizing our shoes every time we entered the property so as not to spread the disease further. And this was a dangerous time for Haitians and anyone working in the area. And I had received a lot of information on how to put in practice, best practices, on how not to spread the disease.

And so we found a truck we ordered the rocks, and when the dump truck returned and was backing up onto the property, water was gushing out of the back of the truck as the driver dumped the load onto the grass. I asked where the rocks came from, and why were they wet? I just assumed that if they would come from a company that sold building materials and gravel like in the US or even, like in Pisco, how we had purchased materials to rebuild. And it turns out the rocks have just been taken from the river, the same river that was known as the culprit for carrying cholera.

And now it had just been dumped in the middle of the property. And I had this sinking feeling with tears in my eyes that I had just created a scenario that would undo all the precautions we took to keep this potentially deadly bacteria out of the area and was going to kill everybody.

I felt really stupid and ashamed that given the obvious dangers associated with this epidemic that I hadn't asked more questions, and applied what I'd learned about the epidemic before I thought I was efficiently solving a problem.

And fortunately, we were able to bleach the rocks, rake them, let the sun do its work, sanitizing them, but it took like three days to complete the job. And the project was finished on time, but I learned many valuable lessons. But the main one was about checking my Western ideas about efficiency and my assumption that the quickest way to the end is the best way. And it could have gone sideways in so many ways, and unfortunately it didn't. But I will never forget that lesson.

Dominic Kiraly

Successful projects like those Carmen talked about start with listening to people, building trust and being open to changing course. We also may need to set aside our own vision and preconceptions, adjust our expectations, and recalibrate goals and priorities.

How comfortable are you with sharing responsibility and decision-making? Which approach do you value more: task-based problem-solving or building a process and relationships? How might you overcome the differences in those approaches to collaborate successfully?

Thanks for listening to this episode of Culturally Attuned, produced by Dominic Kiraly at the United States Institute of Peace, and in collaboration with our partner, Burning Man Project. If you like what you heard, be sure to tune in to more episodes and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Culturally Attuned Credits

Produced, engineered and narrated: Dominic Kiraly
Co-Creators: Christopher Breedlove, Kim Cook