Indigenous evaluation blog
I flew into Colombo in Sri Lanka on Sunday 1st December 2024 as an African representative for EvalIndigenous. Colombo that evening was adorned in bright decorative lights depicting Christmas trees, stars of David and reindeers. The music piped out in many places heralded the coming of a saviour. I was as an agent of a network attending a major and first-time Symposium in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) education. It was held in at the Ramada hotel, with the opening graced by the Prime Minister of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and renowned Evaluator, the Hon. Dr. Harini Amarasuriya The guidelines from the event organisers stated that the dress code was to be formal. I was in a flat mood as my suitcase had not accompanied me on my flight to Colombo. An hour's delay departing from Lusaka’s Kenneth Kaunda International Airport on 30th November was probably the reason. I learned from a fellow participant at the symposium that I was supposed to have been sent $200 by the faulty airline to enable me to pay for a set of new clothes. However, neither airline helped with any financial compensation to enable me to quickly buy 'formal attire'. If I was an ostrich, I would have buried my head in the sand for appearing in my t-shirt and sneakers at an official grand occasion. The alternative would have been to wear a bed sheet or tablecloth and loop an end over my shoulder, toga style. I needed sandals and bling-bling of a heavy gold chains and armlets to pass as a royal from a distant land far away across the African Ocean. However, I didn’t have enough cash for this sort of 'form'. I was very apologetic and explained to people that I exchanged greetings with that I had not yet got my suitcase. The suitcase arrived two days later without any apology or financial compensation, but its arrival didn’t lift my melancholy state; I had missed once in a lifetime major photo opportunity. During the session on Indigenous M&E in education (Session#10), Dr Cram moderated in her pyjamas. Her aim was to make a point about not being judgmental as evaluators when we go to premises of Indigenous people. Based on academic, personal and professional experiences we all advocated for inclusion of Indigenous and culturally responsive evaluation practices in the M&E curriculum. Dalada Maligava (“Temple of the Tooth”) After the Symposium, we visited Temple of Tooth Relic in Sri Dalada Maligawa. It is of major spiritual significance to Buddhists as it has a tooth of the revered Buddha and the World Buddhism Museum. The Buddha, also known as Siddhartha Gautama or Shakyamuni, lived in South Asia in the 6th or 5th century BCE. He is the founder of Buddhism, a religious faith followed mainly in many countries of Asia and the Pacific. There were flowers and incense vendors on the ground near the temple and security was visibly tight. We bought a pass into the main Temple, leaving our shoes at the entrance. I was worried about the heat of the concrete encased pathways so I kept my socks on. It is common in many cultures when in a sacred place for people to take off their shoes. Dambana VillageAs Coordinator of the EvalIndigenous Voices and Atlas Projects, I had already been to the Dambana village. My first time in Sri Lanka was from 14th to 20th September 2018, when I attended on the eve of the EvalColombo2018 conference of the Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation (GPFE). I met the King, Honorable Wannila Aththo and the village Coordinator, Mr. Rathnapala, of the Vedda to learn more about their ethnic group and to witness their spiritual ceremony. My guides during that visit also passed on to the King an invitation to the assembly (see picture of that visit on the left below). The members of the team to Dambana during my second visit consisted of myself, Dr Fiona Cram, Bhuban and his wife, Prabin and his wife and son, Brian, young evaluators Randi, Chama of Sri Lanka, and Erika and Naomi of the Philippines, and a crew of two. Seeing the young members of EvalIndigenous in the field very much gladdened my heart. The small spark of decolonising M&E lit during the launch of EvalIndigenous in Bishkek in 2017 had lit flames in hearts of similar thinking indigenous people. Seeing the torch that we brought to Sri Lanka in 2018 being carried by local emerging evaluators gave me great hope that the fight would be sustained. When it was my turn to greet the King, I stretched both my hands and held his lower arms below the elbows in traditional greeting style. “Greetings, your Royal Highness. I bring greetings to your land, yourself and people from my land of Africa and people across the African Ocean. I come here once more as a fellow member of the indigenous peoples across the globe. I am glad to see that our children followed my footsteps from my first visit and have been working closely with you these past years.” The King usually receives a lot of visitors and there were people outside the gazebo waiting to see him. Apart from being a traditional leader, he is also a renowned herbalist. The emerging evaluators of Sri Lanka had embarked on a program of working closely with the people of Dambana. This had resulted in the preparation of a Toolkit to guide evaluators in carrying our indigenous evaluations across Asia and Pacific. The Toolkit was presented to the King by Dr Cram. It was pleasant to witness an occasion of evaluation practitioners going back to the community that they have worked with and presenting their leaders the product of that work. Often, evaluators and researchers do not go back to communities where they have been doing their work. They instead present to donors, technocrats, politicians and government officials in flashy premises away from poor communities. The King reported to the team the challenges of his people. They had been promised by the government to have their traditional rights over their land restored so they would be able to hunt wild animals and collect wild plants. He asked whether there was a way EvalIndigenous could assist his ethnic group to get their government to act and honour its pledges. Dr. Fiona answered that EvalIndigenous could assist by writing to the Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister to urge the government to honour its promises on land protection and hunting rights. The challenges of Dambana over the land ownership and hunting rights are common to most indigenous people. Independent governments have inherited laws from colonisers. They were meant to disadvantage indigenous communities. Naomi narrated that in the Philippines they had overcome such disadvantages by signing agreements between the indigenous communities and the government. Performance by village cultural and drama group In a clearing in the dense forest there was an arena. The village cultural and drama group put up a splendid cultural art performance there for our visiting team. They mesmerised us with their drama of sketches, dances, drumming and songs on their traditions and culture. We even joined in a spiritual dance to their ancestors. Our many thanks to the peoples of the Dambana Village for a wonderful visit with themAlso see related blogs by Bhuban B Bajracharya, Chairman, Nepal Evaluation Society: Part 1. About the community Part 2. Visiting the community
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