Letters from Alfonso:
Learning to Listen

Earl Kessler

Paperback:
Perfect bound, 243 pages, 6" x 9" 
ISBN 978-1-938288-22-7 
We encourage you to buy this title from your local bookstore. Use this link to find bookstores in your area.
Amazon $14.95
Barnes & Noble $14.95

Ebook:
Amazon $4.99
ISBN 978-1-938288-33-3
Barnes & Noble $4.99
ISBN 978-1-938288-35-7

---

---

About the Book

Construction, development projects, slum improvement—rewarding work for Peace Corps volunteer Earl Kessler. But when residents of a Colombian town wiped out by flood took the future into their own hands, his life intersected with that of Alfonso Perez Correa, and he learned lessons in local participation and empowerment that have helped bring success in meeting community needs all over the world.

Preview

I was fortunate. I learned to listen to people I considered partners at the beginning of what became my career in urban development and disaster risk management in developing countries. Important lessons came from the effort to rebuild Caño Salado from the flooded mangrove swamp it occupied along the Canal del Dique onto higher ground that the community had decided to “invade.” A few months into the effort, I was presenting the new site plan to the community that I, the recently graduated architecture student, had prepared. It was “great”: neat, efficient, and eminently do-able. All self-help and village-y (to me anyway).

After the presentation, there was a respectful silence—really a terrible silence—broken only by me when I said “OK. ¿Que pasó? What happened?” My Spanish by this time, going into the third year in Colombia, was good, even able to communicate in the very-difficult-to-follow coastal Spanish spoken in Cartagena with its overlay of a seventeenth-century Spanish-Portuguese dialect and African words still spoken in the villages surrounding Puerto Badel. The issue was not the language.

Alfonso stood and doffed his hat to say something to the effect of “Pues, Carlos, this might be very nice in your country for people who live in the city. In fact, we are sure it is [seemingly said just to make me feel better]. However, it is really not appropriate for us here since we are farmers and rural people who have different needs and uses for our ranchos and land.” And so Alfonso, with the other men and women at the meeting, proceeded to lay out a program for development of the new town with dimensions and lot sizes and uses that I could only applaud. So I said, “When I was asking, why didn’t you tell me this before?” And the answer set me straight on what development, especially community development, is all about. Alfonso replied:

“We didn’t think you’d listen.”

About the Author

Earl Kessler has been engaged in the design and development of shelter and urban programs since 1965 when he began his career in international development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia.

After his work there in rural school construction and slum upgrading in Cartagena as part of the Office of Slum Rehabilitation, he earned a master of architecture degree in the Planning for Developing Countries Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As a consultant, Kessler was involved in USAID’s 1977 Guatemala earthquake reconstruction program, and then joined the agency’s Office of Urban Programs, working as its housing adviser in Quito, Ecuador, with a focus on new shelter finance programs, secondary city planning, environmental improvement initiatives, and the role of local building traditions in shelter programs.

He also served as director of the Asia Regional Urban Development Office (RUDO) in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1988–’93 and then as director of the RUDO Office for South Asia from 1993–’98, focusing on municipal finance and urban environmental improvements to benefit the health of low-income families living in informal settlements. During that time, Kessler led the Financial Institutions Reform and Expansion program in India, which successfully supported issuance of the first municipal bonds for water supply and wastewater treatment in Asia, for Ahmendabad, and the water system in Tirupur, India.

After retiring from USAID, he worked with PADCO, a private consulting firm, especially on earthquake disaster recovery efforts in Bhuj, India, and then most recently was deputy executive director of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, dealing with disaster risk management and tsunami issues. He is now an independent consultant, working recently as senior presenter at a series of muni-finance workshops in Washington, D.C., Jordan, Thailand, and Guatemala.

Kessler was senior adviser for the development and validation of a community-based Disaster Risk Management Guide for tsunami-affected communities in Thailand, working with CARE and Habitat for Humanity International. He also was the urban planner on a three-member team that prepared and implemented the Climate Resilient Cities Primer for East Asia, and contributed the chapter on community participation for Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing After Natural Disasters for the World Bank.

Kessler’s other recent accomplishments include work on urban strategies for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and USAID; and with the USAID Shelter Team in Haiti, the Cooperative Housing Foundation, and USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance on the KATYE Neighborhood Recovery Program in Haiti; as well as inclusive urban development work in India with the ADB.

He is married, has two daughters, and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Praise for Letters from Alfonso: Learning to Listen

When natural disaster forces rural families from their homes, giving birth to Puerto Badel, government programs, international aid, and, above all, the community’s tenacious energy all come to the fore. As the struggle to become a stable and secure neighborhood goes on, each victory seems short-lived, followed by another crisis. The story of how the poor are the victims of the environment—floods, windstorms, tremors, drought—is rarely told as beautifully as by Alfonso, the community’s leader, to Earl, his Peace Corps friend and supporter.
—Pablo Gutman,
Senior Director Environmental Economics, World Wildlife Fund
__________

Twice I have read Letters from Alfonso, and each time I learned something else. The book is real—and including the voice of Alfonso is the best part. In the ’60s, many of us heard the words “Listen to the people.” Earl did just that, as well as talking to them, with them, and following up. Great text, wonderful, moving photos, and what a long friendship!
—Barbara Belding,
Senior Natural Resources Officer, U.S. Agency for International Development
__________

Earl Kessler’s wonderful book intertwines two revealing narratives. Alfonso’s letters tell us of the struggle for social and economic development as it appears to a leader of a fragile community struggling in a difficult ecological context. Earl’s story is that of a humane development professional—someone who cares, is personally engaged, and listens to those he is trying to help. This last has become a rarity in a world where much of the work of development has become a top-down business managed by aloof professionals in vast bureaucracies. The lessons of Letters from Alfonso are important for anyone interested in understanding the process of development, and particularly for those who want to get deeply and meaningfully involved in the good work of helping real people who are trying to better their lives.
—Bimal Patel,
President, Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad University, India
__________

In forty-three letters, spanning a period of thirteen years, Earl Kessler and Alfonso Pérez kept their friendship alive while Puerto Badel, the community they helped found, continued to expand and develop. Some initiatives worked; others didn’t. Discouragement is always present, but it never gets the upper hand. The book is not only a testament to the value of not throwing anything away—these letters, for example—but reading and re-reading them to cull their wisdom. Kessler learned to listen and appreciate the lives his clients lived, and could better help them because he trained himself to open his senses to the multiple clues they provided. His contribution is a great lesson for those who would make the world more livable for us all.
—Margarita Sorock, Ph.D.,
Former Peace Corps Volunteer, Cartagena, Colombia

__________

… a remarkable unvarnished and unique look back over forty years. Letters from Alfonso has timeless development lessons applicable today just as over the last four decades. Donors’ increasing emphasis on participation, sustainability, scale-up, and climate adaptation strategies makes this required reading for those engaged at the local or national level.
—Robert Archer,
Development Economist, Senior Energy Officer, U.S. Agency for International Development
__________

The story of Puerto Badel as told by its first leader is at once inspiring and sobering. Slowly establishing itself as a legitimate neighborhood, the community follows the advice of government advisers into deep debt, lurching from breeding cattle to raising rice to fish farming to shrimp production as the development fashions change and funding follows suit. Befuddled by the “experts” and struggling to cohabit with the bureaucracy, the individual families try to survive each wave of change and to put their savings into their simple homes. Letters from Alfonso pits the case study against the human story, and produces a winning tale.
—Tova Maria Solo,
Senior Urban Specialist, World Bank (Retired)
__________

Working shoulder to shoulder with men, women, and children living in tremendous poverty is both a challenge and a blessing. Earl Kessler’s endearing book Letters from Alfonso comes as close to depicting both as anything I have ever read. It is a must read for anyone wanting to work at the community level in the developing world. Just make sure you don't simply read. Read and listen!
—Kip A. Scheidler,
Senior Director, Disaster Risk Reduction and Response, Habitat for Humanity International