A 'Development' Tragedy–Pakistan#11

On Being Between

I don't know what to do with this day. The flight is tomorrow. The contract is broken. The work undone. Or done differently than anyone expected. I contacted the ombudsman yesterday. The odds are on my side, I think.


But what side is that, exactly?

I hike up Margalla Hills. Take pictures of plant communities. Not for the consultancy. Just because. Because I'm here and the plants are here and tomorrow I won't be.

I write to R.Z.: "There would be so much fulfilling and necessary work in this country, and yet this one little day feels like I do not know where to start." He doesn't reply. Maybe he's busy. Maybe he knows there's nothing to say to someone leaving.

Evening. Marriott Hotel. Dinner with two university chancellors. I'm the Swiss guy nobody knows in my own country, taken super serious here for being white. One defends optimization theory, tells us of his brother and his chicken farm. About what being smart means.

I try to add my perspective, politely. I mention Zurich. Ballot proposals. How people call it smart to build a new school for 100 million with toxinogenic materials. With the obscured outlook of where we're headed in the next years. Saying that I am sure we would need this money elsewhere.


One mentions value relativism. I say I despise it.

"What's the biggest difference from Switzerland?" one asks.

I say: "I see more wisdom here on average, particularly among the highly educated. Less reductionist thought. More willing to let patterns emerge instead of forcing them."

He asks about Europe. Differences. I mention Italy. The somatic culture. Inclusion of body-knowing.


Three days in a row now with highly educated, influential Pakistani men. Being heard more here than I am in my own city. On a linear contract.

The irony is complete.

Tomorrow I fly home. What was this? This place. A hiccup in my lifeline?

We are multitudes. We are not singular. Looking backward I can justify exclusion, but looking forward we must ask: who do we want to be in this transforming world?


Who was I here?

The consultant who failed? The systems thinker who couldn't make the system listen? The foreign expert with minimal influence? The guest who learned more than he taught?

All of these. None of these.

I was someone between. Between languages, between frameworks, between what was contracted and what emerged. Between efficiency and wisdom. Between the machine that wanted deliverables and the garden that wanted relationship.

"Forgive them – they do not know what they do."

Jesus being to poignant to be forgotton. Yes, I did presume. I presumed I could understand in ten days. I presumed my frameworks would fit. I presumed the structure could bend to hold what it cannot hold.

And they presumed too. Presumed I would cooperate like the other consultants "something-washing" their work. Presumed emergent work could be contracted. Presumed difference could be managed into sameness.

We all reduced each other. Made each other singular when we are multiple. Made each other simple when we are complex.

I came here as consultant. Became detective, then creeper, then refuser, then guest. Tomorrow I'll be passenger.

Next week I'll be something else.

Pakistan came to me as project site, became teacher, became mirror, became question mark.

Nothing stayed what it claimed to be. Everything revealed multiplicities.

And the consultancy  – that fixed, contracted thing –  couldn't hold any of it.

"Cultural confusion is the healthy recognition that there is more than one way to think about something. Whereas cultural misunderstanding is the rigid certainty about ourselves and others that precludes the possibility of mutual learning." Nora Bateson

The chancellors tonight. R.Z. the days before. The retired UN worker. The grassroots NGO director. The permaculture dreamer with his wounded soul.

All of them heard me. Saw me. Met me somewhere.

My own institution – the one I'm contracted to – never did.

What does that mean?

Tomorrow I fly. The work incomplete. The deliverables compromised. The relationship with the project broken or breaking.

Tomorrow I'll be both failed consultant and successful learner. Both disappointed employee and grateful guest. Both Swiss and somehow less Swiss than before. Pakistan will be both the country I couldn't understand and the place that understood me. The consultancy will be both contractual failure and educational success.