Dilemma of A Third World Country
Posted on November 13, 2012 | posted by:
In November 2009, a disaster struck the streets of Jeddah, KSA when a short but heavy downpour destroyed the city. That date is not one any Saudis will forget. It was a typical rainy day, keeping in mind it only rains like three times a year, so no one feared the rain. I lived in East Jeddah, near all the hills and mountains. Poor planning of the infrastructure of the city caused a couple of hours of rain turned the city into a huge river with muddy water coming from the mountains pushing dumpsters, cars, trees, and at some point people. It was a horrifying scene I could see from my bedroom window. This disaster opened my eyes to everything everyone was ignoring while focusing on the less important things, like, a woman’s right to drive!
Everyone was too preoccupied they forgot to think of the rich, pretty advanced and modern city that only has a sewer system on the roads the royal family would take, specifically the King’s road. It took a couple of hours of rain to damage the poor area of the city. hundreds were found dead, and some still missing until today. I despised my city that day, I could not bear the thought of living there for another day. I despised the city’s lack of preparedness, they justified it by saying they had a system for emergencies. My father worked in the civil defense and he always told us that every system the government has is on paper because the worst case scenario is always a hypothetical one and one that is not going to happen.
“Systems thinking can only tell us to do that. It can’t do it. We’re back to the gap between understanding and implementation. Systems thinking by itself cannot bridge that gap, but it can lead us to the edge of what analysis can do and then point beyond—to what can and must be done by the human spirit.” said Donella Meadows in her book Thinking in Systems, a book I wish every person with authority in the city could read, because you cannot just assume that things will always be okay. Nature has proven everyone wrong and should have taught us the importance of preparedness. The King compensated everyone with a million Saudi Riyals (about $260,000) for every person they lost and he paid for their hotels until they got back on their feet, but what good does that do? Yet, the same thing happened in 2010 and we had the same results; deaths and homelessness.
Although the city did not manage the disaster well during and after it happened but the community did. Two days after Jeddah was destroyed, young men and women arranged a relief efforts where hundreds of people from all over the city, of all ages, were at one place for one purpose. Most of the volunteers were at the center, while the rest go out to sites trying to help people out. The effort put into giving a helping hand with so much positive energy was inspiring. Everyone was so frustrated at how it took rain and flood for the city to realize that the money spent on a sewage system was not put towards that, instead probably built a wealthy mans palace in Switzerland. We volunteered day and night and made sure everyone got part of their normal life back.
After a painful week, life went back to normal. I remember the first day back to school after the first disaster happened I was devastated when hearing all the stories and how some lost their family members, friends, and/or drivers and maids. It was not easy for any of us. So, one of our amazing professors listened to us vent about how we would love to play a bigger role, we would like to help more. Knowing our government, she knew we would not be heard or even allowed to speak even if we wanted to. That’s when she decided to hand us out a completely new brief for a very sudden project during that semester. For this project, we were put into teams and were asked to come up with a concept for an organization that would be a quick solution incase it rained again, and since we were graphic design major we had to create an identity for it. My team members and I came up with a quick system that would keep the city safe until the sewer system is built, we called this system (or organization) Faslah. In Arabic, Faslah means comma or break. Giving a break to the victims to a chance to breathe was our goal, we proposed building a ditch around Jeddah that pours into the Red Sea, preventing the water coming from the mountains surrounding the city to come into it.
We thought this idea was an unrealistic one, our teacher thought otherwise but could not encourage us to pitch it to the city because she knew it was almost impossible to reach them or be heard. We kept it to ourselves and proceeded with our project and the design aspect of it. To communicate the Faslah message visually-the Arabic logotype was custom drawn based on the shape of the comma. Although we did not help much it was great therapy pretending we could help prevent this from happening again.
Despite what we thought about our concept being unrealistic, last year they dug huge ditches all around the city for water to collect in if it rained again. It still hasn’t rained that bad, thank god. However, they claim they are working on the sewage system but I guess the skeptical me will not believe it until it rains that badly again and Jeddah is not destroyed!
What I’m trying to communicate here is that Transdisciplinary Design made me optimistic and eager to make people believe in designers, I mean my groups idea might have been ridiculous, but it’s what the government ended up paying 25 million Saudi Riyals ($6,600,000) on!
Donald Michael who was quoted by Donella Meadows in her book Thinking in Systems inspired me to believe that although a part of me may loathe the government for not being prepared, but their lack of a complex system and preparedness and made me realize how amazing of a community lives in that city. Meadows titled the paragraph “Stay Humble-Stay a Learner,” and it says a lot about not giving up and learning from others mistakes and knowing that we do not have the answers to everything.
“Niether we ourselves, nor our associates, nor the publics that need to be involved… can learn what is going on and might go on if we act as if we really had the facts, were really certain about all the issues, knew exactly what the outcomes should/could be, and were really certain that we were attaining the most preferred outcomes. Moreover, when addressing complex social issues, acting as if we knew what we were doing simply decreases our credibility… Distrust of institutions and authority figures is increasing. The very act of acknowledging uncertainty could help greatly to reverse this worsening trend.
Error-embracing is the condition for learning. It means seeking and using—and sharing—information about what went wrong with what you expected or hoped would go right. Both error embracing and living with high levels of uncertainty emphasize our personal as well as societal vulnerability. Typically we hide our vulnerabilities from ourselves as well as from others. But… to be the kind of person who truly accepts his responsibility… requires knowledge of and access to self far beyond that possessed by most people in this society.” —Donald Michael