Sustaina-Blind

I read my journal entry from one year ago, today. Always a source of entertainment. In this particular entry, I lay in bed in my house in the US of A, spilling forth my fears and excitements about Peace Corps and Niger and what challenges I would face. I bulleted them like this:

• Food
• The heat 
• Food
• Culture
• Food
• Clean water 
• The heat 
• Using a latrine
• Culture
• The heat 
• Food

·        I also reminded myself to buy “a billion batteries.”

As I rolled my eyes at my own stupid exaggerations it dawned on me that the actual battles I’ve fought as a volunteer, with myself or others, have been entirely different from those I speculated a year ago. One adapts to food and climate. I adapted. I must say, I pride myself on being an expert adapter at this point. Throw me into the ocean and I’ll build a raft from jagged seaweed and jellyfish tentacles and make friends with the fish. Or something like that. (So glad I retained my ability to exaggerate). 

The real difficulties I’ve faced so far have been the result of cultural walls, or, surprisingly, of issues with my program itself. Most recently I’ve struggled with the pressures associated with Peace Corps’ biggest watchword: sustainability.

Peace Corps, as an organization, prides itself on what it is not. We are not an NGO that throws money at a community without research or further follow-up. We don’t put our stamp onto every project we’ve briefly brushed up against (ahem, cough, USAID) and we are not, most importantly, unsustainable.

One thing that Peace Corps is is self selecting. The type of person who joins the organization is full of zeal and good will; think uneven tan lines, calloused palms and lots of laughter. As a whole we’re a concerned group. We’re concerned about our commitment, concerned about the country, concerned about the cultural stressors, and lastly, concerned that our well meaning sacrifices are worth it. Therein lies the rub. According to Peace Corps and many development theories, in order to be worth it, our work must be sustainable.  

This makes all the sense in the world. The lifespan of a volunteer is only two years. Granted, so far it seems like the longest two years in the history of time, but in the scheme of things it is a blip, a flash, a sprint. In the lives of the people we want to help, two years is sadly insignificant. It is for this reason that we strive to find projects that last. This means not only teaching individuals, but teaching teachers. It means broadening our net of knowledge and trying to reach as many people as we can in our service. It means trying to hit all problems at the source and not the end. It means not doing everything yourself, a concept that has fallen hard on many an earnest volunteer (Mamadiy, I'm talking to you here!) It means, unfortunately for us, never giving a quick fix but always thinking in the long term.

I say “unfortunately for us” because wouldn’t it be so nice to once, just once, give a few extra dollars to help a family get through the week? Wouldn’t it be so nice to see a grateful smile and know that this baby is going to live because you paid the hospital bill? Couldn’t I just buy this man lunch so he doesn’t go hungry today? 

But what about tomorrow? What about the day after tomorrow? What about next week?

Logically, one can see the large crater I’m so gladly moving towards. I can’t possibly give money to every sick baby, to every hungry man. I may be a white American but I’m a Peace Corps volunteer which doesn’t amount to much financially even in Senegal. Anyways, it’s better to teach a man to fish and all that, right? If I help improve the health care, if I increase food security, these problems may work themselves out for the betterment of every citizen, not just two or three. This is the very core belief of the Peace Corps and sustainability. But this man will die by then, and that baby will never survive the week without medication. Do I really want that on my conscience? And so I continue to give small financial aid and consequently feel like a dirty, corrupt volunteer.

There are other issues at hand in this scenario. The family system in Senegal, in much of West Africa to my understanding, is tightly wound and supporting. If you’re in any need, your family is honor and duty bound to assist you. Some are not blessed with a particularly loving or capable family, but that’s the general idea. Let’s consider, however, the viewpoint of such a person in need. You could save yourself the shame and hassle of petitioning your sister or your husband by asking this hapless foreigner. You could find the money in your family, but this poor lad doesn’t know that, right? Also, he’s more likely to give you ten times the amount you actually need, through sheer ignorance or that nagging privilege guilt. Sounds like a good deal!

Secondly, Senegal thrives on the concept of making a quick buck. Any way to fix a piece of junk for two dollars and resell it for ten is seized upon immediately. The amount of money scams in this country is astounding. I may have written about this before, but one that really gets me is coined the ‘prescription scam.’ In this scene a person will find an old hospital prescription in the trash and then set about house to house, asking for small donations to cover the cost of the medicine. “My daughter is so sick, she’s all I have, I need to get her help, please give me a few hundred CFA”. In reality, no one is sick, this person probably doesn’t need the money (at least not desperately) but sees an easy way to fool people into emptying their wallets. The Senegalese are wise to this scam. Foreigners? Not so much.

This isn’t to say we don’t have similar situations in the US of A (or worse, unless I missed something and Bernie Madoff was Senegalese). The difference is merely the continent and the continued perception that Westerners have towards the third world , mainly, Guilt with a capital G. The hand of fate made me a rich American and so I feel compelled to shell out money for those with fates less fortunate. I believe this describes, on a small scale, many failed development schemes. Voila – the reason Peace Corps discourages and frowns upon such handouts, as harmless as they seem.  

My personal problems with sustainability stem from the Master Farmer site. My farmer is working 24/7 to install this field, a place that is producing nothing as of yet. Do the math – this man is broke. He can barely afford bread for breakfast. The Master Farmer program assumes that the farmers have grown children to help in the field and a family support system to feed them during this installation, which most of them do. My farmer, however, owns land in Tambacounda, about 40K from the village where his family lives, and has no grown children. He is living in a small room in Tamba until he can afford to move his family out here. 

Therefore, rather than watch this rail thin man work himself to the bone and suffer pangs of hunger and exhaustion, I’ve been giving him money for food. I also bought him a cell phone to make our work partnership easier – better to just lay it all on the table.

Flashes of red warning signs appear in my mind as I write this. I know, I KNOW it’s unsustainable. Other volunteers would tell me to be wary of setting a precedent that I can’t uphold, or that the next volunteer will be saddled with. They’d tell me I likely don’t know the entire situation and it’d be better to keep the boundaries of volunteer and work partner without travelling into the wastelands of money dependency from which one can never turn back. After all, Peace Corps is funding his farm - in the larger sense, he's one of the lucky ones. I'd be told to just wait it out and things will get better when we start selling vegetables in a few months. And I’d agree. I’d nod my head, say that I understood. And I’d continue to feed him, and I defy anyone who reads this to do differently!

One of my friends in Tamba put her thoughts about this issue very nicely. She said, “Frankly, I’d rather be scammed out of a few dollars than deny someone the help they really need.” My consternation with sustainability rises not from the concept itself or its obvious merit. But I often feel strangled by the notion that I’m not ever supposed to give financial help to those in dire straits, just because I can. I think change agents are forced to sometimes turn a blind eye in the name of the greater good. We can be, if you will...sustaina-blind. 

At the end of the day, I don’t want to set bad precedents or ruin the reputation of my organization, one that is tenuously built and often undermined by wealthy French tourists (zut alors!). I don’t want to leave Senegal having only temporarily helped several people instead of setting in motion long term shifts that will better the nation forever. I also don’t want to look into the face of a distressed mother and tell her her baby will die because it’s not “sustainable” for me to give her two dollars for medicine. A dilemma, my friends. And one that has been much more than challenging to face than any third meal of millet porridge or a hot day.

Until next time,

<3 Phoebe

P.S – It’s been a year, Africa! Happy Anniversary.