Much like Snoopy, I am a happy dreamer, an optimist who sees the world how he wishes it could be and is always shocked when cold hard reality smacks him in the face like the sight of Snoopy’s waterdish full of frozen water. Sometimes you just need to do a happy dance. Unfortunately “change agents” like myself in the third world are by and large optimists like Snoopy. What we need more of are realists like Lucy. I hate realists. They’re negative. And usually right. Our mission’s resident pessimist used to say, “The nice thing about being a pessimist is that when you’re wrong, you’re happy.” And he also said, “A pessimist is an optimist with experience.” I’ve proved that axiom wrong. Because, now I’ve got the experience and yet I’m still optimistic. Or rather, I’m a realist.
After all these years I’m still dancing. I cook up ideas that would help people in Mozambique and send them out with great enthusiasm, and then I see them die a pitiful death, impaled on the horns of reality. What is the key to doing development? You know, after all these years I still haven’t figured it out. And I keep cranking out projects. And they keep flopping.
Well, while I don’t have any solutions, I’ve discovered part of the problem: Africans. If these people would just get excited about my projects like they should then everything would be fine. But they don’t. They’ve got their own ideas. Their own plans. They are happy to have a free lunch, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to swallow my latest crazy idea along with the fried chicken. Since we’re in the land of Peanuts, a quote by Linus is appropriate here: “I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand.” So true, my little philosopher. So true.
I love Africa. It’s Africans I can’t stand.
To give you an example, I have been producing a Scripture sheet in Nyungwe on a monthly basis for more than a year. It was a joint project, or so I thought, with the local churches who promised to take it, reproduce it and distribute it to all their churches. Great idea, isn’t it? But it never works. Invariably something happens that assures that by the time the February Scripture sheet comes out it’s already April. I am not a man given to rages… but this sends me into apoplectic fits. So the tendency is to just take the stupid thing, reproduce it myself, hand deliver it to every silly little church in the province and be done with it. Can you see how calm I am about this? But there’s a word for that kind of aid. Paternalism. And frankly, I have no interest in being the “Benevolent White Baba” of the Nyungwe people.
What’s the answer? I’m asking you. Maybe you have experience in this kind of thing and know how to do aid without creating dependence. Well, while we’re still searching for answers, I’m going to keep dancing. When I see Snoopy doing that happy dance, no one has to tell me to join in. I just naturally feel like dancing.
15 responses so far ↓
mtjeff // April 17, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I guess being a dreaming optimist runs in the family. I think everyone should read your blog, respond to your pleas, support several days for the Nyungwe translation, send you letters and packages and pray daily. It just doesn’t happen. I remember when you said you understood when others didn’t have your burden for Mozambique. When your family thought you were crazy and selfish for taking your family to the ends of the world. You said you ubderstood and didn’t blame them for feeling that way. God gave you the burden, not them. Many have great intentions but they never get legs. I’ll still pass out Updates and prayer cards with the hope that some will respond.
I guess it is the same with your word sheets, keep doing what you are supposed to do and pray that the local churchs will do their part.
Last night I was talking to a former co-worker that had been on YWAM trips to South Africa and Australia, I was moved over his concern for those less fortunate than himself. Another co-worker, claiming to be a Christian, asked why he went there when most of those people will starve or die of Aids anyway. I tried to reason with him that if we could help a few it was worth while, but he didn’t see it. I guess it is like you and your relatives.
Oh well, enough of that. Now that you are no longer an AG minister you can dance with Snoopy and not feel guilty. Ha Ha.
mtjeff // April 17, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I don’t know what I had been smoking when I said all that relative stuff. I shouldn’t write when I have been up all night. No offense intended.
David Ker // April 17, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Oh Dad that is too funny.
Parke // April 17, 2008 at 2:59 pm
The process of learning across cultures never ends does it? I wonder if there is a need the pastors of the church see as more pressing.
Bob MacDonald // April 17, 2008 at 4:17 pm
The eunuch went on his way rejoicing - it didn’t say he became a bible scholar. So maybe the recipients are not interested in real time learning - the sort of learning that often drives the western mind. Response - slow down, don’t tie learning to your schedule.
David Ker // April 17, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Good thoughts there, Bob. We often feel a lot of pressure to produce “results” when much of those results are intangible.
Beyond Words // April 17, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I have sent your post URL to a couple of friends who’ve spent time learning this lesson in Africa. I hope they respond!
tim bulkeley // April 18, 2008 at 1:14 am
Why does it matter if the February sheet is delivered in April?
David Ker // April 18, 2008 at 6:14 am
My own dumb fault for putting a calendar on it. And the idea is that they are supposed to carry announcements as well so they need to be somewhat timely. Just ask the guy who paid to have an ad in the February newsheet.
tim bulkeley // April 18, 2008 at 9:16 am
Ah, yes, it’s always more difficult when people are trying to operate in two very different cultures at the same time
G. M. Prabhu // April 22, 2008 at 7:15 pm
David Ker: I received your blog link from Kathy Hanson (Beyond Words), and am writing to you a rather lengthy reply describing some of our experiences in giving aid to people in Uganda.
Charles Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, said last year, “A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb . . . . Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.”
In decades of research, economists have not figured out the causes of poverty. When we stop thinking in terms of goods and start thinking in terms of problems, then we give ourselves a better chance to address some of the real issues facing poor people. Ron Matthews, a Red Cross volunteer from my home town of Ames, Iowa, told me about his experience in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. He said that the West sent so many mosquito bed nets which had to be ‘warehoused’ because “how do you give bed nets to people and ask them to use it when they do not even have a bed to sleep on?”
There is the “Planners” approach of Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) where you formulate plans and give monetary aid to governments of countries to solve problems. But “planned” solutions deal with “tame” scientific problems and not the “wicked” societal, real problems encountered in the developing world. Oftentimes foreign aid goes into the coffers of corrupt officials and never ever reaches those for whom it was intended. There is the oft-quoted saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” But the flip side of this saying which focuses on improving “production” does not offer solutions to the problem of “who controls the river?” When the economic super powers do not implement equitable policies and undermine the ordinary markets for local food producers, then that is another bee sting for poor farmers who are robbed of opportunities for their goods. When this occurs over a period of time, small wonder that people are jaded and disillusioned when we tell farmers in the developing world that we are going to help them “improve production” but not find a market for the increased produce.
There is the “Searchers” approach of William Easterly (The White Man’s Burden) who says that “we need Searchers to find out what the reality is at the bottom; we need Searchers to find solutions that work.” Easterly advocates that there is no panacea for solving problems of global poverty, but rather a “set of solutions that will be specific to individual communities.”
It is this latter approach taken by Ames High School students who are involved in helping Uganda as part of an on-going service learning project. Their social studies teacher, Tim Mooney, had spent some years in Uganda and developed contacts and relationships with people in Mbale and Tororo. Since 2004 he started taking groups of 20 students every summer for a month to help build schools in southern Uganda. They have developed a respectful, working relationship with Paul Lubaale and Edith Wakumire of the Ugandan Women’s Concern Ministry who assist them in finding projects that solve some of the local problems in their communities. The non-profit organization in Ames, Life to Life Global Builders, raises money each year for building materials. A group of 20 students and 10 adults visit Uganda every summer and give their time and labor to help build schools and other housing for teachers and administrators.
The people they work with in Uganda, Paul and Edith, find other sources of funding to provide desks and to hire teachers to make the school functional. Together, this partnership has successfully addressed some of the problems in Tororo by providing basic education to vulnerable girls in the community.
Last year the students raised $3,000 to buy bed nets so that children would not die of malaria. Their plan was to purchase and distribute bed nets to children under the age of five. However, when they landed in Uganda and talked to Paul Lubaale, their perspective changed. This is what one student wrote, “I plan to work with a specific program at the UWCM called LAMP – Local Anti-Malaria Projects, which aims to spread malaria prevention techniques to villages by giving the villagers an opportunity to voice their opinions about their preferred manner of preventing malaria, whether it be through medication, mosquito nets, natural remedies, etc. LAMP gives about a $2,000 grant to each village, which can be spent on their preferred method of preventing malaria . . . . One of the new things I learned is that a solution to solve a problem should not displace or undermine employment, because it then affects the socio-economic fabric of the community in which it is deployed. I had initially thought that we would purchase and distribute mosquito nets with all the money we raised, but I am learning that people in individual villages and communities have other ideas about what would be effective for their communities.” Once again, a partnership solution was able to cure “a bee sting.”
I do not believe that worrying about whether or not aid creates too much dependence is that important if you are working with people like Paul Lubaale who inspire others to be self-reliant and hold them accountable when they are given aid that cures “one of their bee stings.” The current economic theory of “the helping conundrum” which states that the more aid you give the poor the less likely they will work to provide for themselves may be correct in a traditional western economic world, but it is certainly not true in Uganda for the folks who work under Paul Lubaale. There it seems that if you offer aid to cure some of the bee stings which they are unable to cure themselves, then they get a tremendous incentive to solve many of their other problems and be self-sufficient.
I think Charles Karelis is right when he says, “Econ 101 has got to change. It’s created this tired, phony debate about what causes poverty and how we can relieve it.”
You have a wonderful spirit of wanting to help people in Rwanda. I would encourage you to develop partnerships with local leaders and direct your energy in helping to solve specific problems in individual communities. I wish you luck in curing many bee stings in the future.
Best regards,
–G. M. Prabhu
David Ker // April 22, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Dear G.M.,
Kathy told me that she would contact you. I’m really grateful for you taking the time to write.
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