Originally Posted by
berner
I do not automatically assume that the well intentioned or even experts are always stupid, despite some evidence to the contrary. An example is a story I read about where an NGO, having observed that women of a certain village walked miles each day to do their wash and fetch water for household use. To help improve their lives, the NGO had dug a well near the village. To their surprise, the women continued to walk miles for water. After the fact investigation revealed that the walk to the communal water source and the meeting up and gossiping with other women in the area, was an important social part of the day. The NGO's first action might better have been to ask the villagers how best to help.
This is a fable, often told as an example during NGO volunteer training. In the fable, the round trip to the communal well is "10 km" or "miles". The women usually gossip about their husbands.
While the moral of the story is sound, the fable itself is almost certainly not true.
-mr. bill