A development delimma.

Alright, so sometimes I have to actually almost say it to myself in the mirror: “you are a development worker.” That comes with more baggage than the phrase actually first implies. Since the Peace Corps wasn't honestly on my radar until about two years ago, the thought as to what I was getting myself into didn't settle in until, oh, maybe a couple months ago. I saw a Katleho 'Moho document that outlines everyone's roles within the organization. Yep, you guessed mine; Development Worker.
The truth is I still don't know what that really means to me personally. Thinking of myself as someone just coming to Lesotho to live with people so I can get to know them and the world they see was as far as I projected myself. 'I would help people,' though with what I wasn't too sure. Can I fault my previous ill-preparedness. Nah, not really. I would actually say it set me up to maintain an open mind for what I might see, and do. Certainly I wasn't just coming to Semonkong to help people build some houses and work in the fields as free labor but I considered whole-heartedly that my expectations of Africa, of the Peace Corps, and development were simply uninformed.
Now that I am here I see the relics of previous development workers. 'White Elephants' the locals call those skeletons of foreign projects no longer active. My favorite is a huge warehouse looking structure at the other end of town which was originally meant as the headquarters of a local farmers cooperative. If it was something akin to the heart of the organization then you can definitely say the organization is long dead. The building stands as a reminder of what a lot of money can do without any accompanying management training.
A similar project was a noble effort to construct two medium sized greenhouses at the local high school. The project was initiated and fully carried out with another country's money. The materials were purchased and the structure built without the need of any local people's involvement. Two agriculture teachers received minimal training on greenhouse management but then as fast as lightening the donors were gone. No one talked with school administrators about how to maintain the structure, how to repair it, or draw up a plan in case repairs were needed. Who was more naïve, the locals to think that the donors would remain forever or the donors to think their project would last till the end of time without developing people and plans?
In the end, no one is any better off especially since the plastic covering for the greenhouse was torn about five years after being secured. With no plan of repair or even a model number to reference the structure began its slow and expensive decline. This is a legacy of development.
There are others too. Mostly, however, the impact of foreign development workers in Semonkong has inadvertently been on the people themselves. White Elephants are just reminders of what development workers really mean; money. At some point people here started to see outsiders as the solution rather than a means. Outsiders with good intentions failed to engage locals and demand that they invest in their own successes. Instead of flourishing once the development worker left, people began to distrust one another, to loose interest and not care for what seemed not to be theirs.
This is the environment I find myself; the cesspool of a legacy. Yet, Semonkong still develops, imagine that. The developed world has caught wind of this new trend in the latest generations of youth who know development as a means to big things with little cost. That is what I most want to avoid. If I don't do anything else then I just want to ensure I don't contribute to that mentality. To me that is what Peace Corps really does and means. Maybe I am wiser for this thought.