The Problem Is...

The most distressing facet of humanitarian aid in developing countries is its attitude towards recipient people and cultures.  This insidious whisper of Well, what more can you expect?  It’s never spoken out loud, of course.

That would be racist. 

It’s shown in a variety of examples given by Michela Wrong in It’s Our Turn to Eat – The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower.

“The British in particular have long held the quietly racist, patronising view that Kenyan affairs are being managed as well as anyone could expect, that the present government is the best we can hope for – in other words that Africans simply don’t have the intelligence or sophistication to manage very well.”    – John Githongo (qtd in Wrong 187)

I wasn’t expecting this book to hit me as hard as In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz because I do not belong to Kenya in the same way that I now belong to the Congo, but Wrong’s storytelling (as well as the easily generalizable subject matter of corruption) is clinically efficient.  There is a systematic, profound school of thought among aid workers that differentiates between a standard for locals and a standard for me.  This is seen in our houses, our cars, our salaries, our propensity to throw money around, and our sheepish tendency to overlook fraud and theft because, well...  What more can you expect?

I think, in some circles, this passivity is labelled ‘peacekeeping.’ 

Sometimes it’s called ‘cultural.’  As someone from another culture, on that also deeply values hospitality, collective identities over individual gain, and outward appearance (especially in matters of honour and shame):  that’s rubbish.   

Personally, I call it waste, fraud, and theft; practices you would never condone if they were happening to you and your children or in a major Western organisation.

“The one sector in which Asians could flourish unhindered was trade... vast business empires grew and with them a reputation for deals clinched with a nod and a wink.  The emerging African elite felt little affection for the wahindi, seen as tight-fisted, snooty and brazenly colour-conscious...  With extended families stretching across half the world, only the Asians had the international contacts and backup to help a minister wanting to stash illegally-acquired funds abroad.”  (Wrong 172)

We may like cheating others for our own gain but we certainly don’t enjoy being cheated ourselves.  We enjoy being served and treated with dignity, but we have very little desire to serve if we can get away with selfishness.  If we’re being perfectly honest, reaching a position where we can order people around (even if it’s as a housewife with a domestic helper) is devoutly to be wished.  The ill effect of this is seen in the way that men and women are treated in African and South East Asian cultures, and in the existence of slavery, prostitution, and variations of the caste system.

There.  I hope I’ve dismantled the frankly ridiculous idea that humans seeking personal gain and organizing themselves into hierarchies to achieve that goal is cultural.  A hierarchy wherein my group is the pinnacle of a country, a province, a community, and I am the pinnacle of my household covers all of human history; there is no such thing as cultural theft, fraud, or human exploitation.  It’s true that each culture pens its take on such evils in different colour of ink and with different writing, but the story is the same. 

Pastor summed this argument up in one of his experiences with a young adult who’d served in the Congo for a while:  “She said she understood why they would steal.”

You don’t understand why people steal, why they cheat, why they abuse others.  You understand why people are poor, how they need help, and you seek to address these issues.  Seeking to understand sin will never work.  From a Christian perspective, I believe that Word became flesh in the form of Jesus Christ so that he could understand us, empathise with us – not with sin. 

Jesus was born in a manger under humble circumstances and befriended sinners because he wanted to understand us – not sin.  God made him sin who knew no sin. 

How does this apply to a professed disciple of Christ?

To go where no one wants to go.  To go where there has only been a list of successive failures – failures to believe, despite miracles, seeking after lies, abuse, and murder - from Adam to David to Josiah.  And, in that place, to know that sin was all around.  To live within an ancient culture as an ordinary person, not an elite, and be tempted by sin.  To eat with sinners, deny the claims of family and personal needs (except for solitude and prayer) in favour of being righteousness.  To live in an honour-bound society and preach servanthood, to question hypocrites who used religious rules and cultural practices to cover their sin – and yet not understand sin. 

This affects so many aspects of my walk with God that I have a hard time processing it all.  This means there is no compromise with sin – driven home with as much force as it takes to nail a body on a cross.  This means a measure of isolation and asceticism, not because this increases holiness or facilitates a connection with God, but because ‘stuff’ doesn’t matter.

“If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh... we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ.”  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer (qtd in Foster 133)

Undoubtedly, my choice to come to the Congo and live on a limited budget is a far cry from being born and raised in a large family struggling to make ends meet in a war zone, but three separate conflicts in the recent past have reminded me that poverty is not an invitation to sin, nor are victims eligible for a moral high ground. 



Part II

Part III

Works Cited

Foster, Richard J.  Celebration of Discipline – The Path to Spiritual Growth.  3^rd ed., HarperCollins, 1998.

Wrong, Michela.  It’s Our Turn to Eat – The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower.  HarperCollins, 2009.