02.10.04
“Large worms may wander into the appendix, pancreatic duct, biliary tree or even appear at the back of the throat. Large parasitic loads are so common in children living in poverty that it is difficult to know the significance of the worms’ contribution to the development of malnutrition.” --M. D. Seear, Manual of Tropical Pediatrics, 151.
I find it difficult to breathe when I read this part. Reading the part about worms in every book I come to is my equivalent of Annie’s old, “How did he die? How did it look? How long did he scream?” or Heidi’s old, “Back in the Genticles, back in the time, back in the Genticles everyone died”: being drawn to that which is most gruesome to you.
What I really want to say is this: NGOs are the problem.
The complaint is no different from what we hear in the US: you need to teach people how to fish, not just hand them one. “A country in chronic crisis,” spoken in a sarcastic tone, is a phrase you hear often here when you speak to people about aid to Ethiopia. Most of the westerners I’ve met here, and virtually all of the college-educated Ethiopians I’ve met, have told me they never give anything to beggars, again, for the same reasons we are often advised not to give money to beggars in the United States: successful begging breeds more begging, and for the most part doesn’t help much more than your own conscience. (There is of course something to be said for listening to your conscience--but sometimes your conscience speaks out of ignorance or fear. Sometimes what you think you’re hearing is not actually your concience at all, its your guilt-o-meter.) (On the other hand, begging is just part of the social security system here. I’ve seen lots of other Ethiopians give small coins to beggars. It just seems like because I’m white I shouldn’t give--it perpetuates a stereotype.)
What is well known it seems like, if you’ve been here, but not if you haven’t, is that Ethiopia desperately needs a long-term change in the way the world looks after it. Actually, needs to change so that the world doesn’t need to look after it. Because most people’s conceptions of other countries are built on foggy stereotypes (here, of famine)
Free food gives farmers no incentive to farm, and certainly no incentive to keep the food they do grow. They grow cash crops instead of subsistence crops because they know big bags of USAID grains will be coming in. Or cash; Alemush said the Ethiopian president requested that aid organizations give money instead of food since transportation is so poor to most places in the country that food spoils before it can reach its destination.
Free family planning is ignored. Each community health center has a worker who keeps a huge book with handwritten records of who has received birth control and when. They give women the pill, or, if they’re older or already have several children, a deppo shot. Turns out that if you give the pill for free, people won’t take it. But if you charge them for it, even just five Ethiopian cents, they will. Human nature, Alemush says.
Many years of only receiving has had the opposite effect on this country than its generous (or guilty, or both) benefactors intended. Instead of building a stronger people, instead of helping a population find its feet, free aid with no attached responsibility has created a climate where old know-how, old wisdom, old pride and self-sufficiency has been undermined, hollowed out.
Gifts are dangerous things, and ignorant compassion may not be compassion at all. You could say that any Ethiopian seven-year-old has a better idea of where some of our tax monies go, than we do; its no wonder they target white people.
(Maybe the problem is as much that although what is offered is needed, it can never be enough, so the only thing the receiver can do, knowing there is a giver, is ask, ask ask, always ask.)
The more I think about it, the more it seems like the fundamental problems of this country are really not all that different from the problems in ours, they’re just at a different scale. In the end, there will need to be some cultural--both the old and the new--changes made before all, or at least most, Ethiopians have the standard of living they want. (It would seem this would come at an environmental price, though, and Ethiopia just doesn’t have the ground to spare, like we supposedly do in the United States.) In towns such as Soddo, it seems like the sad parts of urban culture are being adopted, but not the parts with greater virtue.
I also want to revisit my question about whether people here really need healthcare if they’re used to being in pain, or used to dying younger, etc. My perspective in asking that question is almost completely obscured to me now--why in the world would I think that someone would not want full health if possible? It really struck home when I was reading through 3 Nephi and Christ, in spontaneous compassion, alters his plans and stays with the Nephites a little longer. As in Jerusalem, he offers to heal any of them they bring forward. And they bring ALL of their sick people forward--the lame, blind, halt, maimed, leprous, withered, deaf, and afflicted in any manner. Of course. Up till now, I’d always thought of those ailments as metaphors.
Though it might not actually answer the question of how or when to bring in medical care to people, it does answer my question about if it would be wanted or necessary or justified.
This whole thing doesn’t feel well though out or articulated yet.
I find it difficult to breathe when I read this part. Reading the part about worms in every book I come to is my equivalent of Annie’s old, “How did he die? How did it look? How long did he scream?” or Heidi’s old, “Back in the Genticles, back in the time, back in the Genticles everyone died”: being drawn to that which is most gruesome to you.
What I really want to say is this: NGOs are the problem.
The complaint is no different from what we hear in the US: you need to teach people how to fish, not just hand them one. “A country in chronic crisis,” spoken in a sarcastic tone, is a phrase you hear often here when you speak to people about aid to Ethiopia. Most of the westerners I’ve met here, and virtually all of the college-educated Ethiopians I’ve met, have told me they never give anything to beggars, again, for the same reasons we are often advised not to give money to beggars in the United States: successful begging breeds more begging, and for the most part doesn’t help much more than your own conscience. (There is of course something to be said for listening to your conscience--but sometimes your conscience speaks out of ignorance or fear. Sometimes what you think you’re hearing is not actually your concience at all, its your guilt-o-meter.) (On the other hand, begging is just part of the social security system here. I’ve seen lots of other Ethiopians give small coins to beggars. It just seems like because I’m white I shouldn’t give--it perpetuates a stereotype.)
What is well known it seems like, if you’ve been here, but not if you haven’t, is that Ethiopia desperately needs a long-term change in the way the world looks after it. Actually, needs to change so that the world doesn’t need to look after it. Because most people’s conceptions of other countries are built on foggy stereotypes (here, of famine)
Free food gives farmers no incentive to farm, and certainly no incentive to keep the food they do grow. They grow cash crops instead of subsistence crops because they know big bags of USAID grains will be coming in. Or cash; Alemush said the Ethiopian president requested that aid organizations give money instead of food since transportation is so poor to most places in the country that food spoils before it can reach its destination.
Free family planning is ignored. Each community health center has a worker who keeps a huge book with handwritten records of who has received birth control and when. They give women the pill, or, if they’re older or already have several children, a deppo shot. Turns out that if you give the pill for free, people won’t take it. But if you charge them for it, even just five Ethiopian cents, they will. Human nature, Alemush says.
Many years of only receiving has had the opposite effect on this country than its generous (or guilty, or both) benefactors intended. Instead of building a stronger people, instead of helping a population find its feet, free aid with no attached responsibility has created a climate where old know-how, old wisdom, old pride and self-sufficiency has been undermined, hollowed out.
Gifts are dangerous things, and ignorant compassion may not be compassion at all. You could say that any Ethiopian seven-year-old has a better idea of where some of our tax monies go, than we do; its no wonder they target white people.
(Maybe the problem is as much that although what is offered is needed, it can never be enough, so the only thing the receiver can do, knowing there is a giver, is ask, ask ask, always ask.)
The more I think about it, the more it seems like the fundamental problems of this country are really not all that different from the problems in ours, they’re just at a different scale. In the end, there will need to be some cultural--both the old and the new--changes made before all, or at least most, Ethiopians have the standard of living they want. (It would seem this would come at an environmental price, though, and Ethiopia just doesn’t have the ground to spare, like we supposedly do in the United States.) In towns such as Soddo, it seems like the sad parts of urban culture are being adopted, but not the parts with greater virtue.
I also want to revisit my question about whether people here really need healthcare if they’re used to being in pain, or used to dying younger, etc. My perspective in asking that question is almost completely obscured to me now--why in the world would I think that someone would not want full health if possible? It really struck home when I was reading through 3 Nephi and Christ, in spontaneous compassion, alters his plans and stays with the Nephites a little longer. As in Jerusalem, he offers to heal any of them they bring forward. And they bring ALL of their sick people forward--the lame, blind, halt, maimed, leprous, withered, deaf, and afflicted in any manner. Of course. Up till now, I’d always thought of those ailments as metaphors.
Though it might not actually answer the question of how or when to bring in medical care to people, it does answer my question about if it would be wanted or necessary or justified.
This whole thing doesn’t feel well though out or articulated yet.
posted by Johanna Buchert Smith at 5:03 AM
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