CALMING THE ELEPHANT

A sanctuary was trying to move an orphaned elephant that had spent the last 7years growing under into the wild.

Getting him out of his enclosure in the sanctuary proved to be an impossible task. The Elephant was restless and terrified, stumping and trumpeting from one end of this enclosure to another.

The cause of his tantrums was musophobia (fear for mice and rats). In other to calm the elephant, the sanctuary workers spent 2 hours trying to eliminate the mice from the elephant's enclosure.

After several failed attempts, they were successful. With the elephant in a calm state, they spent 5 minutes moving him from his enclosure into the transportation vehicle that would take him to his new home in the wild.

Today, I want to focus on the mice and not the Elephants.

To achieve national, regional and global development it is empirical to create solutions that are sector-specific while recognizing the webbed nature of the problems.

Hence, we speak, negotiate and explore sector- focused solutions in areas like education, healthcare, infrastructure among others. Despite numerous hours and resources spent in planning, we keep struggling to calm the Elephant (sector-based problem) while ignoring the mice in the cage (population).

"what you can measure, you can control"

Although eco-anxiety is a popular concept in the climate discourse, we have grown immune to the mental health burdens that developmental professionals face.

Projects are implemented, conferences and workshops are organized, grants are issued, awards are celebrated, yet the popular reports in the media shows a growing need for more interventions.

Regardless of the dedicated role misinformation has played on this subject, the presence of obsolete data is also another.

Hence, I will ask you some questions.

• What baseline data are you working with?
• Is there a correction between the baseline and end-line data during the course of the project?
• What is the population in the Country, City, Province, City, Village or Community?
• What frameworks have been created to adequately measure population increase over a period of time and create sustainable structures that account for the population increase after the project cycle?

If $1bn is required to develop a nation with a goal of improving the capacity building of one million people. If/ when nothing is done about the target population and the target population grows to 5 million people needing the same capacity development, in the second year more funding will be required to cater for the population increase. Leading to more investments and loans.

It is not sustainable to solve major problems that affect large populations while focusing on less than 1% of the affected population without doing anything to slow the population growth rate of the remaining 99%. The problem will not get solved this way, it is like trying to get an elephant stuck in a cage with the mice out of the enclosure without calming the mice.

Maybe it is time to remove the mice so we can spend less time calming the elephant.        

We can not continue to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result.

Remove the Elephant and Calm the mice.

P.S: It is a myth, Elephants are not afraid of mice.

Keep your mind open till you hear my next thoughts,

D Oracle!

Tolulope T Gbenro

Tolu's Tea Corner

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