The contrasts all around can be very striking. For example, villages where families commonly own TV satellite dishes yet the children of the same families defecate in the open.
The philosopher Jagger once said that you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.
So what is intriguing to me about this example of development is that the opposite appears to be true. What they’ve got, television, might seem to us to be what they ‘want’; whereas what they haven’t, sanitation and hygiene, might be what we think they ‘need’. Water, sanitation and hygiene programmes have been done here, but they have perhaps not led to as durable a change as television has.
It’s clear to me that I have a lot to learn about how development works. But my stay here has only just begun and, as that philosopher also said, time is on my side.
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