The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

to the bus park. On the way, I continued to pick her brain. As she told me about her job and her lifestyle, I realized it was exactly what I was looking for. I went on to become a consular officer at six overseas posts, always managing to avoid a domestic assignment. It was a real blast, and I never would have known about it without the embassy newsletter and Silvia. Linda Eichblatt FSO, retired Amarillo, Texas usu L ESSONS L EARNED As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mauritania from 1987 to 1991, I taught English as a foreign language in a small village in the middle of the Sahara. Here are a few lessons learned that I still use in the Foreign Service: Know your audience. I was posted to a Muslim coun- try, so I read the Quran and bought an English-Arabic concordance. That facilitated questions (and answers!) and helped me tailor my approach in the classroom. Learn the local language(s) if possible. It isn’t easy to learn an obscure dialect, but even mastering a few phras- es will help. I learned enough expressions to get every- one to laugh, and then I had their attention. Listen and observe. Remember that you are going to be there a long time, so be sure to listen and observe more than you talk. After all, while you have something to teach, you also have things to learn. Be open. Audiences are much more receptive if you show appreciation for their culture. And the more you are accepted, the further you may get. Paul Dever Contracting Officer Embassy Manila usu R ELATIONSHIPS M ATTER My experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali from 1986 to 1988 was at the grassroots level, literally and figuratively. I lived in a mud hut, rode in crammed trucks, and ate many meals of millet porridge with my host family. Now, as a Foreign Commercial Service offi- cer, I recognize how easy it is to distance myself from the host country. If you live in a compound with other expa- triates and don’t make an active effort to travel within the country, you may see only a veneer of the host culture. A key lesson that has served me well is that to get things done, relationships matter. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, this meant chatting with the village chief, tak- ing tea with the local bureaucrats, or spending time play- ing games with the children. The players and activities are different for me now — paying courtesy calls on local government officials, having lunch with company execu- tives, or chatting with office staff — but the impact is the same. Often people want to know who you really are before they commit to supporting your projects, no mat- ter how important, or pressing, the initiative seems to be. Francis “Chip” Peters Commercial Officer Consulate General Shanghai usu B OTTOM U P , N OT T OP D OWN Dealing with poor farmers as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala, I quickly came to realize how many farm- ers were smart and had truly enviable leadership skills. They were people who could see possibilities and whip up enthusiasm in their colleagues for any endeavor. Largely because of that experience, as an FSO with USAID I have always relied heavily on getting the views of people at the village level via direct interviews. This can sometimes take a bit of digging because my inter- locutors’ communication skills may not be the best, due to a lack of formal education. However, their experiences and perceptions are critical when deciding what inter- ventions in any given project make the most sense. Similarly, regular follow-up with the people directly affected by a development project to get their feedback is critical to making sensible modifications along the way. Good project design is usually bottom up, not top down, because people at the very lowest level, closest to the ground, know the facts. The rest of us only think we do! In Mali, we were on the verge of chucking a small hand-pump irrigation project because our technical advisers were saying the pumps had too many problems and farmers, after purchasing them, weren’t using them. Yet during on-the-ground demonstrations and inter- views, purchasers said they liked the pumps. In addition, sales continued at a fairly decent rate. I felt there must be some disconnect between our technicians and the F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41