Leafing through a recently compiled album of 35 years of memories from CUSO volunteers shows they came to similar conclusions.
The people who went overseas to work on international development projects expected to make a difference, but ended up changing themselves.
More than 50 Saskatchewan people have travelled for the development agency CUSO since it began in 1961. At a reunion last fall the former teachers, agricultural advisers and nurses reminisced and celebrated CUSO’s 35 years.
One of the early CUSO volunteers was Borden area farmer John Buswell who went to Ghana in 1972 to do agriculture extension work. He worked with farmers there on seasonal gardens and the use of animal traction. The main crops were millet, sorghum, beans and ground nuts, and rather than summer and winter they dealt with dry and rainy seasons.
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“The first thing you realize is how different things are and the second is how similar they are,” said Buswell of his two years in Africa.
He now grows wheat, oats, barley, peas and flax on 10 quarters in northwestern Saskatchewan and raises 100 Angus cattle. But he noted Ghanian farmers had something to teach Canadians. They know every little spot of their land, which is something farmers here are just learning to do with soil testing, yield monitors and variable inputs.
“I think about going again,” said Buswell. “A person gets in a rut here with mortgages and family.”
In one case CUSO has become a family tradition. Mark Gimby’s parents went to Papua-New Guinea in 1981. He said “their experience and talking about it very much influenced me to want to work in another country.” This winter Gimby is going for a third time to Costa Rica to help Indians on the Caribbean side of the Central American country create sustainable and organic agriculture.
He is helping them market their products – bananas, papayas, mangoes, ginger and peppers. He has found a Montreal buyer and is exploring value-added production by solar drying the fruit to keep jobs in that community. It is an experience he is familiar with, having spent the past eight years at the Saskatchewan Research Council working on products and marketing for organic growers in this province. In fact the council was one of the funders of the project.
It was more than a one-way exchange, said Gimby.
“It was not what we had to teach them but what we came away with, what we learned. How people with few resources work together to make things happen. That’s what Canada can learn from that country.”
Today CUSO has 200 people placed in 30 countries around the world. They work in partnership with local community groups using two main themes – ensuring cultural survival and creating sustainable communities. Most of the agency’s funding comes from the federal government but individual donations are becoming a bigger part of its revenue.
And prairie people’s skills are still needed. One of the jobs CUSO is recruiting for today is an adviser on sustainable agriculture to go to Mozambique.
