Field Day
So, one of the problems of working in the finance department in the main office is that I get relatively little exposure to local culture if I am not deliberate about seeking out opportunities to stretch myself. So I have made it a recent plan to make sure that I get out to view our projects on a relatively regular basis. This accomplishes a number of things. First, I get to see firsthand some of the work we are doing, and I get to see the people that are helped by our organization, as a reminder that my work is a part of something greater, which is helping the people of Malawi. It also breaks up the monotony of the week and gives me some variety, and some exercise (we went out yesterday to check out some of the flooded areas, which required some significant hiking in the heat of the day)
So, yesterday, I got to view one of our food distributions, which is funded by the World Food Program (WFP). I was told this was one of our smaller distributions, with about 800 families as beneficiaries. Each beneficiary represented a household, or family, which could be any size. They received a bag of maize, some beans, and some cooking oil (I forget the amounts) Each beneficiary receives this allotment monthly. We have a monitoring team who surveys the families to see how long the food lasts, how many people it feeds, etc. The families that received the food were selected in a meeting of their village, where everyone was present and would choose the families in greatest need. The old system would be to approach the village chief to get a list of the neediest families, but it was found that the chief would often provide a list of his friends and family rather than those in greatest need. Just hearing this reminded me yet again that the problems of poverty and hunger are too complex to be solved by money alone. I think I’ve talked before about how everything is interconnected, but it continues to amaze me when I see the complexities involved in helping the needy. People far away hear about the needs here, and want to send money, or food, but then you are here, and you see the complexities. For food, you need to be able to purchase it from another country, since obviously if the food was available locally, we wouldn’t have a famine and thus would not have the need to distribute it. Once the food is purchased, it has to be shipped here, delivered to a warehouse, and stored. Then effort needs to go into determining the areas of greatest need, avoiding duplication with other NGO’s, and then getting the food to the people. Then there is monitoring to ensure the food is used properly, and education so that the people understand that even though they are starving, they must learn to ration the food so it lasts until the next distribution.
There are so many examples of well intentioned ideas that have failed due to missing one factor. I see large machines, used for digging and fixing roads, that lie dormant. They were provided by some organization, but no one has the money for the costs of fuel to run them, or had the money for maintenance. One of our projects is rehabilitating wells that were put in by the government, but have broken down due to people’s unwillingness to keep them fixed, or due to their lack of knowledge of how to keep them running. Then, there is the issue of one village stealing well parts from another village. As I mentioned in another post, I have had phone, power, and water outages due to people stealing wires and pipes. So much of the time, I spend in large cities, or in my own little comfort zone of home and office, where it is easy to forget that I am in one of the poorest countries in the world. It is sometimes too easy to judge, and I find myself getting frustrated when I hear other expatriates complain about the laziness or foolishness of some of the local people. While I agree that letting your water source deteriorate because “the government put it there, so it’s their problem” is a poor attitude, it’s hard for me to look down on that attitude when I come from a country where so much is taken for granted. I struggle sometimes as well to understand how the rich people in this country are able to live knowing that so much poverty is going on around them, but sometimes it seems to me that they are almost as unaware as I am as to what village life is really like here. Like I said, it’s easy to live in a city here and forget that 90% of the country has no power, barely adequate shelter, and is struggling to feed itself and fend off disease. All I can do is continue to try and help out however I can.
So, yesterday, I got to view one of our food distributions, which is funded by the World Food Program (WFP). I was told this was one of our smaller distributions, with about 800 families as beneficiaries. Each beneficiary represented a household, or family, which could be any size. They received a bag of maize, some beans, and some cooking oil (I forget the amounts) Each beneficiary receives this allotment monthly. We have a monitoring team who surveys the families to see how long the food lasts, how many people it feeds, etc. The families that received the food were selected in a meeting of their village, where everyone was present and would choose the families in greatest need. The old system would be to approach the village chief to get a list of the neediest families, but it was found that the chief would often provide a list of his friends and family rather than those in greatest need. Just hearing this reminded me yet again that the problems of poverty and hunger are too complex to be solved by money alone. I think I’ve talked before about how everything is interconnected, but it continues to amaze me when I see the complexities involved in helping the needy. People far away hear about the needs here, and want to send money, or food, but then you are here, and you see the complexities. For food, you need to be able to purchase it from another country, since obviously if the food was available locally, we wouldn’t have a famine and thus would not have the need to distribute it. Once the food is purchased, it has to be shipped here, delivered to a warehouse, and stored. Then effort needs to go into determining the areas of greatest need, avoiding duplication with other NGO’s, and then getting the food to the people. Then there is monitoring to ensure the food is used properly, and education so that the people understand that even though they are starving, they must learn to ration the food so it lasts until the next distribution.
There are so many examples of well intentioned ideas that have failed due to missing one factor. I see large machines, used for digging and fixing roads, that lie dormant. They were provided by some organization, but no one has the money for the costs of fuel to run them, or had the money for maintenance. One of our projects is rehabilitating wells that were put in by the government, but have broken down due to people’s unwillingness to keep them fixed, or due to their lack of knowledge of how to keep them running. Then, there is the issue of one village stealing well parts from another village. As I mentioned in another post, I have had phone, power, and water outages due to people stealing wires and pipes. So much of the time, I spend in large cities, or in my own little comfort zone of home and office, where it is easy to forget that I am in one of the poorest countries in the world. It is sometimes too easy to judge, and I find myself getting frustrated when I hear other expatriates complain about the laziness or foolishness of some of the local people. While I agree that letting your water source deteriorate because “the government put it there, so it’s their problem” is a poor attitude, it’s hard for me to look down on that attitude when I come from a country where so much is taken for granted. I struggle sometimes as well to understand how the rich people in this country are able to live knowing that so much poverty is going on around them, but sometimes it seems to me that they are almost as unaware as I am as to what village life is really like here. Like I said, it’s easy to live in a city here and forget that 90% of the country has no power, barely adequate shelter, and is struggling to feed itself and fend off disease. All I can do is continue to try and help out however I can.
posted by Chuck @ 6:09 AM
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