I encourage you to read the President of Rawanda Paul Kagame's entire speech on Aid and development:
Also of interest, Kagame made a public address regarding Rawanda being reopened to the Peace Corps:
and finally, an article about a year ago critisizing Peace Corps:
As I'm nearing the end of my service-- completing final reports, re-drafting my resumes, performing all of the formalities that the first world demands. In doing this, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I are forced to answer the bottom line: to put it bluntly (as Americans are prone to do), what exactly did you do over there? Is Peace Corps doing any good?
I understand the question. But it is still upsetting to hear it--it takes a moment, 3 or 4 seconds, for one to take a deep breath, to remember what I, too, was like in a culture which operates according to a very different conception of priorities.
To answer the above two questions, we as Peace Corps volunteers are forced to confront the development component of our job, that first goal which says we are here to help our Host-Country meet developmental goals.
As a health vounteer, my work revolves around health development: malaria prevention, sanitation education, reproductive education, etc. And I bump up against other developmental organizations fairly regularly: our health center distributes mosquito nets that are donated by aid, a German NGO comes through for one weekend and distributes medicine, USAID gives food supplements to malnourished children. This is, according to my sources and my own experience, the most common form of aid.
But what I do, what my work is--how can I even begin to explain? How do I answer? Let me provide you with an example of a 'typical' day in my village: yesterday I helped my friend sell rice and sauce at my village's Tuesday market.
I told my friend one day, exasperated, "Whenever I cook rice and peanut sauce, the sauce just isn't good like when a Malian woman cooks it!" She laughed, and responded, "market day, I will teach you again, and then you will know exactly how to cook sauce like a Malian woman." So I start my day by helping my friend sweep clean the hut she sells rice from, and then begin chopping onions with her eleven-year-old daughter. While cutting, we chat all the while about last night's rainstorm and the intricacies of peanut sauce (I add tomato paste to mine, is that okay? What if I can't find Okra powder?).
While the sauce is cooking, some more friends stop by: "Fatim! Why are you not at the health center? Are there vaccinations today?" I tell her no, there aren't vaccinations today, but I thought I remember her being told to come to the health center next market day. She repeats what the doctor said, and I tell her, "yes, yes, that's next market day!" I continue, "...and the other woman in your house? Her baby is 2 months old now, her child needs to start vaccinations too." Ah, yes, she has forgotten that he is already 2 months old. She leaves, wishing me a peaceful day, and also promising me that she will be at the health center the next market day.
After the sauce is cooked, I meet another friend of mine to ask if her savings group is meeting this week: last week, we treated five woman's mosquito nets together, and now the other five women want to treat their nets too.
Finally, afternoon has arrived. I join another set of friends--four boys between the ages of 15-17- to make tea until dusk. "Man, I'm tired" I tell them, and they laugh as I tell them that my morning of making rice and sauce is what has exhausted me. Two of them will be in highschool in Bamako come October, and I tell them, half-joking but half-serious, "how will you focus on school in the city! There are so many beautiful and smart Malian women, you do know where to buy comdoms in Bamako, yes?" And they laugh, although it is nervous laughter--I know one has a 'girlfriend' in our village, something that Malian parents, who select their child's future wife, tend to frown upon.
I then come into Bamako to stare at an evaluation report--number of children completing full vaccination series, number of people employing preventative health measures. I understand the rationale, the need to measure and evaluate what is working and what isn't.
But to us? As vounteers? We laugh a little bit as we fill out our reports; it's not what you get done, but the way it gets done. Peace Corps' first goal is tough to seperate from her second and third goals--mutual cultural exchange between your Host-culture and American culture-because exchange is the way good development happens. To us, it is refreshing to hear Kagame, to anxiously watch Rawanda, mostly because we feel like he gets it--he is a leader that is not merely looking for a handout that a Western Nation, eager to prove it's 'generosity', is only too willing to give.
I would argue that aid can be done properly. For example, Doctor's Without Borders builds and renovates health centers, including the very one with which I help. But without properly trained staff, a nice and clean facility is useless. It was only after my village kicked out incompetant staff and asked me to help work with new personnel, to develop a patient file system and consultation hours, that my village has begun to make good use of the facility. Similarly, the doctor in the village 50 km north of mine was hoarding food aid destined for malnourished children. With a new doctor, and a Peace Corps volunteer, the health center has begun to distribute food to those children who are malnourished, as identified through regular weighings.
But what about those white people who drive up in Land Rovers, hand out medicine, and then leave? And the donated mosquito nets, handouts that sabotage the motivation of someone every buying a net on their own initiative? And the training sessions well attended by Malians for nothing other than the free lunch and drink? It is all so some bureaucrat can check off a box, number of nets distributed, number of villagers trained.
The current state of aid has been called neocolonial, paternalistic, and classist. I think, quite simply, most aid is disrespectful--it treats people as data points, or these noble poor which need taking care of, and which the rich world will continue to take care of. The First World has yet to treat the Third World as equals confronting a set of borderless problems--HIV/AIDS, global warming, the energy crisis. I would argue with respect to consumption patterns, waste-reduction, and self-sufficiency, it is the First World that needs helping from the Third.
Aid needs to have a mind, not a heart; and that only happens when we give another culture or country the dignity and respect one would one's own culture. Treat people as an end in themselves, do things the right way- that is genuine development.
Some suggested titles that are critical of aid:
Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo
The Road to Hell, by Michael Moren (RPCV Kenya)
And finally, aid done right:
Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher Two Ears of Corn, by Roland Bunch Helping Health Workers Learn, by David Werner Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
3 comments:
I was already sensitive to our first world wastefulness before I visited Mali. One of the first things I noticed was how much care was taken to consume everything that was produced, eliminate waste, and reuse reuse reuse. Those of us with so much need to think more about how to live with less.
I am curious whether you think there are aid organizations (Bill Gates Foundation, Bill Clinton's Foundation) that are "getting it right" or if every group has its pros and cons.
I read Small is Beautiful many years ago and really believed it would catch on, not just for helping the third world but in many other ways. So much of what we do in the US has to be on too grand a scale. Sadly, not much has changed.
Thanks so much for regularly sharing your thoughts on how to truly help the entire world grow and advance.
It depends--money toward vaccination research, esp TB and malaria, I'm okay with. But as far as vaccination campaigns--the buying, active administration, etc-that is the responsibility of each country's government.
I also tend to be skeptical of 'agriculture/food security initiatives'. Like with last years' rising food costs, there was no food shortage, there WAS food in my village; the problem was that it was too expensive for most people at my village's income level to buy. That's a market failure, not an agricultural one.
The big most of us as volunteers have a problem with is the handouts or freebies--free medicine, free mosquito nets, 'improved' rice or corn strains; they ruin market forces, create dependency, and discourage local solutions.
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