Changes

Yes, this is inspired by Tupac’s classic.  Also by the word of God.  Also by an encouraging email from someone I barely know who understands.  Or said she did. 

Sometimes that’s all I need.

In search of this understanding, sometimes I discuss issues with Butters.  For example, I am territorial about things I consider to be mine.  This is an unfortunate trait in Central Africa – possibly even a continental faux pas.  If I’m eating or carrying food – it’s fair game.  Visible vegetables from the market are up for grabs.  Beignets and bananas are eaten as a personal favour to me.

”I will take this.”

“Hmm...  This is too sweet.” 

You’re welcome is heavily implied in both cases.

When I fussed over this half in irritation, half in shame – Butters was shocked and horrified. 

“You leave food on your table at work?!  Dude, I don’t even leave water out!”

Of course, sometimes it backfires.  In these situations, we spend 10-15 minutes discussing how different people and practices are here and how it could all be so much better. 

In all fairness, Butters masters the flexibility he was likely hired for and winds up talking about how horrible the West is and how it’s no surprise that the situation here is so difficult – just in different ways than we are used to.

On the one hand, I totally agree that people in general are vile. 

(Are we, uh, still doing the helium-and-smile thing?) 

On the other hand, I firmly believe there are some easy fixes to move towards efficiency (a global efficiency, not a Western perspective of it).

Time management, I am assured, is something I need to understand – not change.  However, when I hear leaders of a certain event complain that the group is always late, exhort them to come on time, encourage good work habits and respect for others, and lecture individuals as though they are children... and then show up late themselves the next day...  I am exasperated.  I can’t help it.  If a certain group deplores a certain habit, it’s not cultural - it's a bad habit that needs to change.  By the same token, if individuals are not willing to adopt a change and hold to it, then they have no right to shame others for it.    

Moving onto work practices, I have seen an Excel spreadsheet worked on by two different people.  On two different laptops.  Beside each other.  Neither with a firm grasp on Excel and needing even further help to make sure that their formulae matched up and they both had the same numbers.  In the same cells.  A suggestion that one or both parties work on one computer and have it sent to everyone to ensure consistency is met with a vague air of disgust and condescension.

Pardon me for wasting precious seconds of your life.   

This communal approach is deeply ingrained and manifests in a variety of practices that don’t make much sense to me; one reason may be the cultural ethos that no man is left behind.  Other reasons – which may be superficial or profound, I really can’t decide – are a resistance to knowledge-sharing and individual work (both for job security). 

Another novel experience is hearing of an agency searching for projects and location where others are not already working. 

In theory, this is a downy Pegasus-in-a-rainbow-soap-bubble of a thought – getting help to the poorest and most marginalised. 

In reality, it is a desperate bid to ensure funding from white bleeding hearts, and enough of it that an organization can skim inflated figures. 

(The helium is probably making you light-headed by now.  Your face hurts from smiling so hard.  See how difficult it is?)

They have reason, you know.  Local aid workers usually have large families (with at least 1 or 2 dependents, even if they don’t have children of their own yet) and they aren’t paid for the time they’re applying for funding.  Skilled individuals are reduced to begging hard enough in a proposal document to make sure that their (perhaps distant) loved ones are clothed, fed, and educated for the project period.

Oh yeah, and some women and children are helped somewhere.  Level up if they’ve been raped.  Missing limbs are great – take pictures of that shizz.  People who’ve overcome their challenges and work?  Forget that – that’s not what white people like to see; get me some dirty kids.   

So NGOs search for an unnoticed population (and there are many), making others angry in the process, assure donors that they cannot work with other local NGOs or that there are none in the same field (which is usually a lie, I think) to get a certain amount of money.  They use this money to survive, make white people happy enough to hopefully extend the funding period, and use some for its intended purposes with the target group.  In turn, the population - helplessly pushed to and fro by organisations carelessly flicking through them for a target group – plays various roles to receive donations of animals, food, money, and/or entrepreneurial training provided by a group of aid workers who just wanted to be paid (because the target group also just wants to be paid).

It’s a transfer of resources from the Developed – so very guilty and eager to help, but not at the cost of coming here, investing, creating jobs, and stimulating the economy to improve educational, political, and social outcomes – to a dark void of Aid Recipients – so very strong and versatile, but not to the point of staying in their home countries, investing, creating jobs, and stimulating the economy to improve educational, political, and social outcomes.

The transfer also has a pull from Africa – rich politicians, hungry bodies, and hungry minds – and a demand from the West – a never-ending supply of natural resources and cheap labour (exploited by minimal laws and regulations from both foreign and national governments).   

Donors do their part by trying to get statistics and numbers, facts and figures, to assure themselves that they are doing a good job.  Eventually, they hope, they will send this obstreperous dependent off with the relief and pride of letting go of a wobbling child on a bike.  

Recipients do their part by supplying the required statistics and numbers, facts and figures, to assure donors that they are doing a good job.  But not quite good enough.  Not yet.

Sometimes the relationship is less ideal.  The West demands suspects malfeasance and asks for more proof, more reports. 

Aid Recipients comply, but with grumbling.  Why is the West being so stingy – everyone knows they have money to spare (made off our backs, no less).  

And it disintegrates into a pair of small children squabbling over the TV remote – one is bigger and knows she can keep it, but has a sense of (as Tommy Pickles understood it) asponsatility; the other is smaller and can call on the Powers of Mom and Guilt.  One doesn’t understand why the older can’t share when she always gets the best of everything; the other can hand it over, but wants a say in what to watch, which is so unfair or totally rational depending on which side of the border you happen to be standing...  

World powers are juggling guilt from colonialism with trying to instill foreign principles of efficiency, social morality, and accountability - while respecting a culture and a people they have previously exploited (and continue to exploit, though in a more subtle fashion).

The Developing World just wants money, security, political freedom, and economic stability.   

So who’s to blame?

Bad precedents?  Worse presidents?

It’s a story of rape, violence, powerlessness, and war that hits people right where it hurts – in the spirit.

And knowing it’s a story doesn’t help fight it.  Miroslav Volf - writing as a Croatian from the past of the ethnic cleansing in his country – has an interesting explanation of sin in war and the outcomes of it in Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation.  A salient point for me was that Victims are seen as morally superior, though they were likely held back by not having the resources or the power to do as much harm to the Oppressors.

And sometimes victims and oppressors do the same work side by side and switch roles when necessary.