Reflection: To Give or Not to Give

Imagine you’re a Peace Corps volunteer invited to a meeting about the village’s maternity (a three-room clinic for delivering babies). Despite the fact that it was built and fully equipped by an NGO only five years ago, the group tells you gravely that there are major problems that require urgent attention. The solar battery died so there is no light, there is only one bed so on busy nights babies are delivered on mats, and deliveries are dirtied by the fact that the nearest source of water is a pump five minutes away. After listing these problems, they then ask you to give money to their association to fulfill these needs. To give or not to give?

I think the first instinct is to give. After all, these are some major problems: babies born on the floor, in the dark, and without water to clean the area. That kind of environment puts both the newborns and mothers at risk of complications that could result in death. You would have to be a pretty terrible person to have the means to prevent this suffering and yet ignore it.

But if that’s true, then why hasn’t the association done anything about it themselves? After all, you point out, a suitable extra bed could be bought for $5, and villagers are replacing their solar batteries all the time. At this point, the association tells you they’re broke because no one pays for the birthing services, pre- or post-natal consultations, or for the medicine. As for the water, you suggest that soon-to-be fathers could simply cart in 100 liters of water with their donkey carts prior to the birth. To this, the association laughs at you. Don’t be ridiculous, they say.

You, the reader, have probably figured out by now that this is a true story. In fact, it happened to us three days ago. But it is only one example of a time when we have left a meeting wondering: “What does it mean to help these people? What is development anyway?”

Sometimes, we think that development is about fulfilling basic human needs or realizing basic human rights. In a moment of frustration last week, I had to remind myself that “human rights are things every people deserves, even if they’re a pain in the butt,” – things such as clean water, adequate food, or a clean birth. And if these things should truly be given unconditionally, then when in doubt, they should be handed-out. This is what the NGO had in mind when they built the maternity five years ago, and what many NGOs do everyday as they almost indiscriminately give villages cash in order to help their schools, health centers, or improve sanitation.

It breaks the heart of almost every Peace Corps volunteer when they learn that this method has adverse and unintended consequences. First, it has created a mindset of dependency among the poor – they say, we can’t do it ourselves; we need the help. Worse yet, this can often develop into laziness over time – why do it ourselves if someone will come and do it for us? These lessons are then transferred into other aspects of life, discouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Certain Malians realize that can make a living of “hanging around” NGOs, while others work hard to be self-sufficient only to be beat out by the former. In short, when executed poorly, hand-outs lower individual’s incentives to try hard and exacerbate the problem.

Hence, why the maternity association had not done the work collecting the money, and why many villagers were ignoring paying their debts. Because they figured that when things got bad an NGO – the one who built the maternity or some other – would come around and fix it. I know this seems like a harsh analysis, but sadly, it is the truth for a lot of development work. It’s not that the villagers are immoral people, but it’s that their incentives to work for themselves have been replaced by hand-outs.

This is where Peace Corps and a lot of other organizations come in with a different approach dubbed “sustainable development.” The goal here is to encourage behavior change and capacity building with villagers that will last long after the project is in place. In the spirit of this approach, I hope to work with the maternity association to help them collect payments and turn profit. Once they have a system in place, they will be able to manage their own problems themselves, without the help of outsiders. This is also why we do many educational trainings on topics like hand-washing with soap and nutrition – because no amount of donated food or soap will help if people do not understand how to utilize them properly.

However, we are often tormented with how hard this concept is in reality. First of all, it often means holding back immediate assistance, even if it is desperately needed. It might be six months before that association buys another bed, and until then am I responsible for all the babies born on the floor? Moreover, we have found that sometimes villagers do not want to be “sustainable,” but either the matter is not important enough or they rather wait for another NGO to the fix the problem. For example, after we fixed the pumps in our village, we organized a committee to collect (very reasonable) monthly dues from every household so that next time the village can fix it themselves. This was an attempt to make our work sustainable, but yet we are finding that most villagers refuse to pay and many committee members don’t take their job seriously. At the present rate, it seems unlikely that the committee will function long enough to actually repair a broken pump. So next time the pumps break, and children are getting diarrhea from dirty well water, what will be the moral thing to do – to give or not to give?

You have probably heard it said: “Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime.” As it relates to development, the saying hints at the difference between hand-outs and sustainability.

But as we are learning, painfully and slowly, it is not one or the other. Rather, it is a matter of which blend of these two philosophies is most appropriate in the present situation. Determining this level requires a judgment call, based on a knowledge of the people involved, the crises at hand, and predictions of the short- and long-term effects. It is a draining and difficult process, one we are far from mastering, and one we tried to keep centered on loving those who we serve.

There is much more we wish to discuss on this subject, because we see so much misunderstanding about what development is or should be from both sides of the world. And yet, it is a goal we must continue to seek for the betterment of millions of people who do, in fact, live without our most basic human rights.

Thank you for reading and commenting below.

-James (& Joye)

Update: Little Dresses for Africa

For those who haven’t heard of Little Dresses for Africa, it is a Christian organization which distributes simple dresses to Africa, which are sown by Americans (in Bible Studies or Girls Scout Troops), using the linen from spare pillowcases. To date, they have received and given over a half million dresses in over 31 African countries! And since many women involved in this effort live near Joye’s hometown, we were asked to bring some dresses to Kongodugu.

We were excited to give the dresses to the girls in our village, but we were also apprehensive about reinforcing the “hand-out” mentality that haunts many Peace Corps Volunteers. So, we had to think creatively. How can we give these dresses out in a way that not only demonstrates the love in which they were sewn, but also encourages sustainable development? We found the answer in Joye’s work as an education volunteer.

Girls have it rough in the Malian education system. The boy to girl ratio is 1:1 in the 1st grade, mainly to what we attribute as “the daycare effect” (what good is a six-year-old out in the fields?), but by the 5th grade the ratio is 6:1! Why? Because as the girls become old enough to become useful, their parents yank ‘em out of class and strap on the apron (this is a metaphor, of course, Malians don’t cook with aprons). The girls themselves also get discouraged because they are dismissed by their teachers and are often teased by their not-in-school peers.

So, after discussing the matter with the village school board, we decided to give a dress to every girl that enrolled in the primary school this year, 1st through 6th grades. It made the girls proud of their education thus far and demonstrated the importance of educating girls to our village. Each girl was especially excited since they received a new dress only a few days before the biggest Malian holiday. While many families won’t be able to afford new clothes this year due to the drought, these girls will proudly be wearing their beautiful dresses.

  

 

Most of the girls didn’t react when we handed them the dress; showing emotion during gift-giving is not really Malian custom. But we saw their excitement in other ways: the way they all wore their dresses the next day, the way they flaunted their dresses while at market, and the way they all ran home thrilled to show their parents. So on behalf of the schoolgirls of Kongodugu to the tailors behind Little Dresses for Africa : “I ni ce! I ni baraji!” which means "Thank you and bless you.”

Thanks for reading!

-James & Joye

Update: Back to Middle School

After 36 hours in transit to Bamako and another 2 days to get back to our village, Jim and I were very ready to get back, rest, and catch up on what we’d missed. It didn’t take long to notice some differences in only a month. In fact, on our bike ride in, we noticed some temporary outdoor hangers set up adjacent to the elementary school.

Well, long story short, we now have a middle school (grades 7-9) in our village! About a week after we left, and due to the persistent lobbying of our school board president, Kongodugu was approved by the regional government to open a middle school.  This is extremely meaningful to the people in Kongodugu.  Until now, families have had to make a difficult choice: to keep their teens around as valuable farm hands to help with the harvest and chores or to send them 15km away to school with enough money to appease the host family who would give them food and a place to sleep for the next 9 months. Now,  families can send these teens to school, but can also use their help in the fields 2-3 days/week.

When we first arrived in Kongodugu, it was clear that the people of the village expected us to build them a middle school. It was the reason they had requested a volunteer and Malians are very accustomed to foreigners coming in, not asking a lot of questions, spending lots of money, and building shiny new buildings. When we asked who would pay the teachers to fill those classrooms, they responded with an “if we build it they will come” philosophy. “Just build us a school and then there’s no way the regional government can refuse to pay teachers to teach here.”  It was obvious that they hadn’t thought past the building yet. However, Peace Corps always stresses the importance of building sustainable communities, who can take care of their own schools, their own health care, their own water, etc. A building wouldn’t work without teachers or a supportive  community. Therefore, in the end, we decided that if we went ahead and built a school building, we would be reinforcing negative stereotypes that Malians could get anything they wanted without working for it, as long as they complained enough to the “tubabs” (foreigners). Instead, we tried to encourage the school board to meet, encourage the teachers to actually go to class, and improve the adult literacy clubs. Our hope was to increase general enthusiasm for education in the village and motivate them to start working toward getting a middle school on their own.  

Now, over a year later, the village school board (with some help from Jim) has succeeded in convincing the regional government of the necessity of a middle school in our village. Within a week of the approval, the village got together and built 3 temporary outdoor hangers to be used as classrooms and found families to host and feed the new middle school teachers. One family even moved out of their home to give it to the new principal. Though they certainly have their faults and can be very unorganized and downright lazy when they don’t want to do something, we have gained a lot of respect for our villagers in the last few weeks. It has also been a great lesson for the villagers on the school board: they don’t need to sit and wait for tubabs to solve all of their problems. With hard work and perseverance, they can make huge improvements to the village on their own!

The other fun part of all of this is that Joye and Jim are filling in for the English teacher (who never showed up) a few hours every week. Joye’s just started teaching English in the 8th and 9th grade and is enjoying polishing up on her rusty French. Jim, who had previously vowed NEVER to teach middle school, is now teaching in the 7th grade and finding that 13 year olds aren’t ALL bad.  So far, its fun to have a more structured activity built into our week, but we’ll let you know how it goes :)

Thanks for reading!

-Joye (& Jim)

Travel: 16 Hours in Lisbon

When looking for a round-trip ticket from Mali to Michigan, we unabashedly took the cheapest option available, even if it had us scheduled on our return flight for a 16 hour layover is Lisbon, Portugal. Never a pair to miss an opportunity, we decided to leave the airport and tour the city, despite being exhausted, jet-lagged, and burdened by our luggage. It was worth it.

Before leaving the US, we looked into one thing: how to get from the airport to the city. And it turns out that Lisbon has a great deal for long-layover tourists. For about $5 you can get access on public transport for 24 hours, which includes airport shuttles, buses, and trolley cars. Once we got downtown, it was just a matter of studying the various free tourist maps we had collected at the airport to know where to go next. As you can see, we consulted our maps quite a bit.

 

Lisbon has a few popular districts. From the Rossio plaza (where Joye is reading a map above), one can walk down a tiled shopping street (left) exit out near a cluster of government buildings (right), and enjoy a view of the river (where James is reading a map above). Being close to the Atlantic Ocean, Lisbon has a nautical feel to it, and was pleasantly smaller than other European capitals like Paris or Rome.

 

From here, we took a trolley car up one of the Lisbon’s seven hills to get a overview of its historic districts, complete with its winding roads and red-roofed houses. Believe it or not, this was Jim’s first time in a trolley car, so this was almost more exciting for him than anything else.

 

Then we took a half hour bus ride to the Belem district to catch some more tourist sites. But on the way, we both fell asleep, so that we arrived, our first task was to find a park, eat a PB&J lunch from the US, and take a nap. Afterward, we went to Lisbon’s famous monastery, famed to be the most beautiful building in the city. Inside the high-vaulted church was the tomb of the most famous Portuguese explorer. Can you guess who?

 

The monastery is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from two other destinations. First, the Monument to the Discoveries (left), a large monolith commemorating how awesome Portugal was at discovering new locations and losing most of them to other European countries. And finally, the Tower of Belem (right), which protected Lisbon at the mouth of its river, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Feet and backs aching, we then made our way back to the airport.

Overall, we liked Lisbon and felt that we were able to see the exterior of nearly all of its tourist destinations in one day. Our regrets are that we had a very limited amount of Euros and time and so did not indulge in Portuguese cuisine or go into any museums. Also, due the times of our layover, we did not experience any nightlife, which is supposed to be pretty fun in that region. Alas, you can’t do everything, or maybe on the next lay-over. :)

ANSWER: The explorer was Vasco da Gama. Some might say Christopher Columbus, but he was not actually Portuguese. He was financed by the Portuguese monarch but originated from the city-state of Genoa, now located in north-western Italy. Remember that for Jeopardy. :)

Thanks for reading,

-James (& Joye) Allen

Reflection: America the Beautiful

As we sat in the Newark airport surrounded by sandwich stands and corner stores filled with 50 types of potato chips, it was difficult to believe we were going back to Mali. Sure, we experienced some culture shock while visiting the States (i.e. Meijer has more food than my entire village), but generally we were surprised at how easy it was to dive back in and enjoy the culture we grew up in. Nevertheless, there is still a small part of us that struggles to reconcile how two such different worlds could exist simultaneously. It almost feels as if we are living double lives, except that in neither of them are we super-heroes.

After only 24 hours in the US,  we started in on our busy homestay schedule consisting of Joye’s PCAT exam, trips to Kentucky and Massachusetts, time with immediate and extended family, and American experiences ranging from hiking around the Great Lakes to a wedding to a Detroit Red Wings hockey game. Though exhausting, we loved every minute of it and soaked up time with our family and friends. We realized again how much we love America, the people, the colors of the trees in the fall, the opportunities, and the cuisine :)

But at the same time it helped rejuvenate us and made us appreciate how unique our opportunity is here in Mali. Very often Peace Corps volunteers can become frustrated and discouraged when villagers don’t mirror their enthusiasm for development work. Yet through our time home, we re-realized how much we are learning from every part of our service (including failures and successes). The insight we have gained here will certainly affect the choices we make and the way we go about ‘helping people help themselves’. So we are excited to make the most of the rest of our time here.

Thanks to everyone who took time to see us, call us, etc. while we were in the US! We really appreciated it and miss you all very much :)

Thanks for reading!

-Joye (& James)

Update: Ready for America

Leading up to our highly anticipated trip to America, we have had an incredibly challenging couple of weeks at site.

We both got amoebic cysts, making us drowsy and occasionally nauseous. On top of this, James has bacterial dysentery two weeks ago and a nasty cold last week that kept in bed with a fever for four days. Also, one of our close friends in village also passed away unexpectedly to some possibly preventable illness (we were not told he was sick until after he died). He was young with a wife and children, and the haste with which he came and went was very unsettling for us. Lastly, since we were planning for Hunger Awareness Week – in which we only spent a dollar per day on food – we finished all of our American food reserves. This meant that even when we got sick and wanted to stop Hunger Awareness Week, we could not, so we ended up doing it anyways. It was rough.

Thankfully, it all ended when a Peace Corps supervisor from Bamako came out to our site for a planned visitation. When she arrived, our bags were packed and the house in order, and we enjoyed vehicle transport from our village for the first time all the way to Bamako where we could enjoy air conditioning, electricity, and take our medications to rid us of the amoebic cysts.

Normally, life in village is not so terrible, but the misfortune of the past few weeks has one perk -  we could not be more excited for our quick vacation home. It’s like when it downpours continuously for the last day of your backpacking trip. Sure, all week you occasionally thought about home, but that last day, you long for dry clothes, a warm bed, and a hot shower and think of nothing else.

Hopefully we will be able to see a lot of our blog readers on this trip. However, we have a very busy schedule as is – Joye is taking the Pharmacy College Admissions Test and is in a wedding – so we do not meet up, please do not be too hard on us. We miss everyone and everything dearly and are thrilled to spend a few weeks taking in who and what we can.

Thanks for keeping tabs on us once again!

-James (& Joye)

Culture: Malian Education-Part 1

As we learned in our pre-service training, its difficult to know where to start when you talk about Malian education. Its a huge complex subject, and I could fill pages and pages on my observations and opinions. But  since many of you have expressed interest in it, I’ll try to start with the main overlying structure and problems.

Language and Literacy: First, Mali is a huge country, filled with many diverse ethnic groups and though French is the official business language, there are between 7 and 11 other national languages. Thus, it is common for a teacher to be placed in a village that speaks a minority language that he does not. Consequently, the students are taught in French or Bambara, 2 languages that none of them understand. Therefore, unlike the American system, Malians take many different paths to learn to read and write. If they would like to learn French, they attend a formal government school. Adult or young Bambara learners attend community literacy centers..  Those that drop out of formal school attend trade school literacy classes or begin learning Arabic at the madrasa (koranic school).  These various institutions have been set up over time to try to accommodate the diversity in languages and in lifestyle, thus trying to provide an option for everyone. However, despite the combined efforts, on the part of the Malian government, non profit organizations, and foreign aid, Mali still has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world! According to the World Factbook, the literacy rate of Mali in 2009 was 46%. However, that varies greatly depending on rural and urban settings. In a recent survey of our village, James found that only 40% of adults had been through primary school or literacy class, and from experience, we know that maybe 1/2 of those people can read and write at a functional level.

Access to Education: We currently live in the densely populated Sikasso region, so access to Education is not as difficult as it is in the far north of Mali, where formal schools are few and far between. Near us, most villages have a primary school (Grades 1-6), though many only have 3 classrooms, meaning they can only take new students every other year.  However, after 6 grade, finding a school becomes more difficult. The nearest middle school is often 10-15  km away and the nearest high school  is even further away at 15-50km.  Therefore, families usually send their children to live with a relative or friend in a town where schooling is available. However, this means the family must pay for food and living expenses as well as transport to and from that town. Often, the family decides that high expenses are not worth the seemingly irrelevant education the child receives, especially when they are at an age where they can be a valuable worker around the house. Nevertheless, the formal schools are being built by the national government and NGOs and access is constantly improving.

Quality of Education: Once a village has a school, the question is: can it handle a school? In the US, we are incredibly involved in our schools. The school board and PTO monitor the curriculum and state of the buildings, etc. Parents are constantly volunteering as chaperones, lunch ladies, team banquet organizers. They sign permission slips and look over their children’s homework, and habitually ask “Hey, what did you learn in school today?” and actually expect an answer!  However, all of that came about organically, because in America, we started to promote the idea that children are the future and they are worth the investment.  Now, Westerners have built schools all over Mali believing that education is the key to development (and I agree). However, part of my job as a volunteer is to convince Malians that taking care of that school is worth their time and that its their own responsibility to care about the quality of their school. Every village is different, but in general, repeatedly low test scores and the difficulties with multiple national languages has created a huge lack of morale within the Malian education community, leading to discouraged and lazy teachers.  However, when poor test scores come back or the village sees that the teachers are not spending time in their classrooms, they often don’t understand that its their job to fix it. There is usually no parent-teacher organization and a school board that only meets a few times a  year.

 

These are only some of the factors that make education work so difficult and frustrating in Mali. Some days, it seem s to be a vicious cycle that can’t be remedied. However, on those days, I have to remind myself that I can’t expect things to change overnight. I can change things little by little by encouraging the school board to meet, talking with my neighbors about registering their kids in school, and providing feedback to the teachers to help them improve. I also work to promote the idea of girl’s education through “Take Our Daughters To Work Day” Camps and awareness activities with the teachers. Certainly, these efforts are only a drop in the bucket, but I do believe that improving the education of the next generation of Malians is the surest way to encourage slow but steady development for this country.