Letters from Majuro
Why don't we tap our strengths?
Workers Too Readily Adopt Boring Western-Style
Oration and musical ability are art forms in the Pacific — learned from the time children are old enough to walk and talk. Ask a dozen people at a party who’ve just met each other for the first time to get up and sing, and invariably they’ll do it not just on key but in four part harmony.
The point is that music and dance in the islands, while bringing people together in an excitement-filled atmosphere, communicates ideas, stories, history. Pacific Islanders have been practicing drama for centuries, using it to pass history on from one generation to the next.
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So why is it, I wonder, that frequently — perhaps nearly always — Pacific Islanders today adopt western ways of delivering information that, unfortunately, often does just the opposite of what was intended? Take, for example, the hundreds of preventive health programs (diabetes prevention, immunization, family planning, etc.) in the region. How many of them consistently use the means of communication — music and drama — that
a) gets people interested and enthusiastic, translating into receptivity to the message being delivered, and b) opens doors to discussing potentially sensitive subjects because it’s culturally appropriate? Surely there must be more, but Vanuatu’s Wan Smolbag theater company and Marshall Islands Youth to Youth in Health are the only two in the region that have been active since the 1980s. For all the rhetoric from overseas aid programs, parroted by local agencies receiving funding, about “targeted sectors” of “civil society”, programs delivering services or attempting to influence behavior change would be much more cost-effective, to say nothing of their impact, if people tapped into the strength of their cultures to address modern day problems. And it isn’t limited to health.
Whether it’s nation-building exercises, a development project in the community, or AIDS prevention work, the message will get through more readily if people want to hear what one has to say. One wonders, though, why people want to follow the style of consultants who come from outside the region? If we haven’t learned by now, take note: In the Pacific, the medium is a very big part of the message.
