May 27, 2025. I still remember that date-my first day in the field. Everything felt foreign: the geography, the society, the communities, even the way people looked at me. I was an outsider holding a clipboard, armed with theories and frameworks from the classroom,thinking I knew what “development” meant.
I didn’t know anything.
This moment stays with me. The forest department had installed these high-tech motion sensors in the area, expensive equipment designed to detect wildlife movement, which was part of their monitoring system. One morning, while the sensors showed nothing unusual, an elderfrom the Baiga community casually mentioned, “The leopard passed through the mahuagrove last night.”
How did he know? No sensor. No camera. Just years of reading signs I couldn’t see. A bent branch, a patch of disturbed soil, the silence of certain birds.That’s when I understood. I was standing on the tip of an iceberg, thinking I could see the whole thing.
Often, in the development sector, we obsess over theoretical knowledge, the kind you get in air-conditioned classrooms, made on neat power point presentations, and peer-reviewed journals. It’s important, yes. But it’s just the tip. Below the surface lies something far more vast, traditional knowledge. Passed down through generations, tested by seasons and survival, refined through centuries of observation. The baiga elder predicting which non-timber forest products will be abundant this year. The grandmother who knows exactly when the rains will truly arrive, not from a weather app, but from the behavior of insects and the smell of the wind.This knowledge is the real iceberg-massive, powerful, mostly hidden.And here’s the uncomfortable truth- we often act like it doesn’t exist.
I’m learning that facilitation isn’t about delivering what I planned to say. It’s not about my agenda, my frameworks, or my timeline. It’s about creating space. Space for the knowledge beneath the surface to emerge. Space for voices that have been speaking truth for generations-often unheard by people like me. Space for the community to teach me what sustainability actually looks like in their context, not mine.But this kind of facilitation? It’s hard. Really hard. It depends on:
● The rapport you build (and you can’t fake this)
● The questions you ask (not the ones that confirm what you already think)
● Your body language (communities read you better than you read them)
● Your intentions (and trust me-they know)
The community might not tell you directly, but they know why you’re there. They can sense if you’re genuinely listening or just checking boxes. If you’re there to learn or to lecture. If you see them as partners or as “beneficiaries”.
Here’s what I’ve realised. Communities have been studied, surveyed, and ‘helped’ by people like me for decades. They’ve developed a sixth sense about developmentprofessionals.They watch to see if you sit with them, or stand apart? If you eat what they offer, or politely refuse? Do you ask questions and then actually listen, or do you interrupt with your ‘expertise’? Do you return when you say you will or are you just making an empty or convenient promise?
They’re not going to share their real knowledge, their traditional wisdom, the sacred practices, their hard-won insights with someone who’s just passing through. Why would they?
I am still learning. Some days I get it right. Many days, I don’t. But what I’m learning is this- as development professionals, we need to approach communities with the humility of students, not the arrogance of teachers. Our theoretical knowledge can add value-absolutely. But only when it’s woven together withtraditional knowledge. Only when it respects what already exists. Only when we understand that “development” doesn’t mean replacing what’s there with what we learned in a textbook. Sustainable change doesn’t come from our plans alone. It comes from the marriage of two knowledge systems-one that lives in our heads, and one that lives in the land, the seasons, and the memory of communities.
The Baiga elder who detected the leopard? He didn’t need to prove himself to me. His knowledge has been proven over lifetimes. The question is: Am I humble enough to learn from it?
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