The study of post-exilic literature posits community decline as a ‘miss-take’ of community objectives. This is mostly due to predominantly myopic leadership and consequential breakdown of community. Narrow vision leads to egocentric looking out for ‘ number one. ’ Many development proponents have referenced the biblical book of Nehemiah as a template for community restoration. While I concur with the gist of their proposition, I cannot help but note the vicious cycles of temporal healing and relapse of communities. Sometimes the golden years last a generation but when that generation is gone then the relapse takes the community back to square one. Intellectual solutions have the bane of smart sound bites because a lot of the proponents do not have boots on the ground and advocate for theories they have not tested. Picture this, a single mother in Uganda has raised a family of nine and sent them to school eking a living from a 2 acre plot in su
Are you Choking Communities? How do you view and speak about otherness, when in angst, burnout or culture shock? Unknown or hidden prejudice easily comes to the surface when pressure builds up in Intercultural settings. Southern hemisphere residents reference colonialism when faced with any form of presumptuous and condescending superiority. Some expats , in asserting their presumed superior paradigms , refer derogatorily to ‘inner city’ or ‘third world’ paradigms. I once heard a tired and frustrated Caucasian missionary talk of ‘ Negroids ’ in Africa. Though venting in anger, her desire to put them in ‘their place’ was evident . I doubt she was aware of dominionism’s effect on her worldview and the cognitive dissonance lived out. This ‘power over’ approach is exhibited when academics refer to lack of training to "Band-Aid" dilemmas while skilled but nonacademic experts retort with talks of diploma snobbery. What occasions