I spent most of this weekend finalizing my study guide for 8th grade material (it's going to be a bit longer than I had hoped, but comprehensive), so now I just have to print it up. I've also started on "Dark Star Safari" by Paul Theroux. My mother warned me not to read it (until after I return) because it'd be too depressing, but ironically, I'm finding that it's quite close to how I'm finding Africa to be - and I DO find that fact depressing. He writes quite extensively about the presence of aid workers who don't get it. Meaning that there are tons of aid workers here who are so focused on accomplishing their self-serving goals, that they don't realize what the goals or motivations are of the people they're helping and that the aid they're giving might actually impoverish in the end. That we have the misguided vision that any help is better than none.
Missing from the maxim "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he'll eat forever" is that if you give him a fish, he'll actually put off learning how to fish for TWO days because he's got a full belly and fully expects you to feed him again the next day. I do the same thing. When someone says to me "Here, take this pill and you won't get malaria" I take the pill and wait for the next dosage. I don't necessarily think about how I can go about avoiding malaria, without taking a pill in the first place. So do we really expect that people who are struggling for meals are going to have the presence of mind to say "No, thanks. I want you to teach me how to do that for myself."? I think what's sad is that exactly this is starting to happen because the victims are being further victimized by this behavior.
And then, when that is avoided, many of the methods for creating a sustainable infrastructure are completely UNsustainable. And why? Well, I'll give an example I developed with Nanosh today. Let's say there's some strife in the US and we end up at civil war again. The country divided into two factions, each having to rebuild based upon new ideals and realities. And let's say one of these factions finds Communism attractive to solve its problems. So we implement a Chinese-style government, educational system, etc., down to the letter. It would fail miserably. And not because Americans and Chinese are different racially. We're culturally - irrevocably - vastly different. Such a governing style isn't a manifestation of OUR culture and inherently doesn't work. Western solutions don't work in Africa 9 times out of 10, not because we don't try hard enough, or because the people here are stupid (definitely NOT the case), or because the solution is bad. It's that the solution doesn't match the culture. And the culture isn't looking for a solution because the culture doesn't yet see it as a problem. Take AIDS. We see AIDS as a problem because we're much more familiar with its effects, having combated it pretty thoroughly. But when we first dealt with AIDS, we were immature and cocky. We underestimated its potential and it ran relatively rampant. Nobody was over our shoulders saying "This is horrendous! It's a catastrophe!" We found enough out on our own and found our own solutions.
So I'm saying that Mozambique needs to find its own solutions, but I still think we can help. I still think we can help give the information about the disease and stir up activism - but as soon as we preach, we're feeding the man a fish and he won't eat nor learn how to fish. So long as we're offering temporary hope, real solutions won't be found.
Peace
John
