In the States, we sort of understand how begging works, and depending on where we live and spend most of our time, we do encounter it from time to time. Growing up in the outer suburbs of the Twin Cities, I didn’t have much exposure to this. I recall going into the Cities as a child, usually with my dad going to a Twins game or something, walking through the city and coming across some down and out folks asking for cash. I followed dad’s lead, completely ignoring them, and then once I thought we were a safe distance away, I would start asking a bunch of questions: “What is he doing?” “Why doesn’t he have his own money?” “Why didn’t you give him any money?” “Do you ever give them any money?” I soon figured out that it is best not to hand out money to people in public, and if someone asks you for money, you should give no reaction at all and walk away at a slightly faster pace than when you were approaching. In Minneapolis, this usually seems to work, but in Malawi this often just seems to attract more attention (“this white guy doesn’t seem to be noticing me, maybe if I yell louder and act more like an idiot he will…”).
In Malawi, begging is completely acceptable. It is an acceptable form of employment, entertainment, social interaction, and way to start a conversation. Everyday I hear requests like:
“Give me my money.”
“Give me a pencil.”
“Can you borrow me 100 kwacha.”
“Boss, please help me.”
“Give me 1 tambala.” (This one’s supposed to be funny, a joke to get your friends to laugh. 1 tambala is about 1/150 of a cent. It never gets old, especially if you’re 10 years old and live in Mitundu.)
“Give me my Christmas card.” (This is my all-time favorite. A little girl yelled this to me, in English, as I rode my bike past her on some remote road in the middle of nowhere. I believe it was March)
It seems to me that here in Malawi begging can be divided into three categories: 1) Genuine. A lot of people don’t have the basic needs to get by, and at that particular moment (from their limited perspective) their best option is to ask other people for help. The reasons for them not being able to procure their basic needs can range anywhere from laziness to severe physical disability, but my point here is that genuine beggars are really looking for help and they are not begging for either of the following two reasons.
2) Comedic. If I’m having a bad day or not in a good mood, this kind of begging can really tick me off. Imagine a group of about five guys, most likely losers in their mid-twenties with nothing better to do, standing on the side of the road. They’re board out of their minds because they don’t have any initiative to find something constructive to do. They’re more than likely drunk (A common habit of many men in this area is to find a few hours of piecework (this is comparable to temp work, but its completely unregulated and usually disorganized) in the morning, earn 100 or 200 kwacha (about a dollar) by noon, spend all the money on enough local hooch to get sloppy drunk, and stumble home in the evening, only to realize that all of their children are crying and hungry, but they don’t have a single kwacha to buy dinner. But no lesson has been learned, and they just go and do it all over again the next day. With these two problems of food scarcity and alcoholism in this country, I would guess that we are one of the top ten countries in the world for percent of dietary calories coming from alcohol. However, I highly doubt this statistic actually exists. Please excuse me for going off on this tangent, but I think it gives an interesting snapshot of the situation here. Now, let’s get back to the stuff outside of the parenthesis.). So as they’re standing there, they realize something interesting is about to happen. A white guy is walking down the street, about to pass by them. One nudges to other, “Ask this dude to buy us some booze.” They all start giggling, and then the guy does just that. The white guy then get’s pissed off, tells them to go find a job, ridicules them for being morons, and says some other things that he probably shouldn’t. This happens here about once a month. Who’s the white guy? I’ll leave it up to your imagination to figure that our. Most begging from children falls under this category as well. I’m pretty sure that the first English phrase that Malawian children learn in school is “Give me money.” (I predict that their success rate would go up tenfold if they threw in a “please” at the beginning and a “sir/madam” at the end of the phrase.
3) From left field. From time-to-time I’ll be having a good conversation with someone, talking about anything under the sun, and out of nowhere they’ll ask me for something. Often times I can see the request coming (that’s usually what they call it, a “request”: “Bryan, I have a request for you…”—then I give them the stone face), but every once in a while I’ll be thrown for a loop. This usually happens when I’m talking to a stranger while traveling. I’ll be talking with them for a while, and when they see that we are about to go our separate ways, they figure they might as well give it a shot with something like “Sooo, I have I nephew in secondary school, but we aren’t able to provide school fees for him. Do you think you can assist us?” It never hurts to ask, but it does annoy.
Recently, we have started a project whereby we are distributing bed nets to women of children under the age of five. This is part of a larger effort with the lofty, but not impossible, goal of eliminating malaria. Most of the work (i.e. transportation of nets, distribution, and documentation) is done by Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) from Mitundu Community Hospital. HSAs are low-level medical staff that are being used to relieve some of the enormous strain on the healthcare system here caused by a dearth of nurses and doctors (amongst other things). These HSAs are assigned more rudimentary tasks such as organizing outreach clinics, vaccination campaigns, and basic healthcare education for rural communities. Anyways, the hospital administration and I decided that the bed net distribution should be done by these HSAs. This seemed like a good idea to me since the HSAs have the most direct contact with the people we are targeting with this project: children under five in rural areas. Also, these HSAs never seem to be that busy. A typical day for them entails some work in the field in the morning, maybe taking two to four hours, and then sitting in the shade at the hospital playing board games all afternoon. Therefore, I didn’t think that this additional responsibility, participating in the distribution, would overwhelm them with work, especially since there are about 50 of them, and this work is being divided up somewhat evenly so that each person is only doing about 90 minutes of extra work per MONTH. Not surprisingly they have been asking me to give them bed nets as well. Despite the facts that they are paid government employees, participating in a project to assist poor people in rural areas, and not doing a whole lot of extra work, they came right out and told me that they should have an extra benefit from helping with this project (I could go on about this-Malawian professionals and semi-professionals being addicted to allowance and extra benefits, but I’ll save it for a different post). To be honest, it’s been hard for me to deny them since I can’t really do this on my own. The begging has been even worse from non-hospital workers. After starting this project, I’ve been surprised by the number of people that now know my name. It seems like every time I step out the door I hear, “Bryani, kodi mutipatsa manet?” (“Bryan, are you going to give us a bed net?”).
For the most part, people are usually thankful when you assist them here. However, this doesn’t usually stop them from asking for more and more. For example, in previous posts I have been writing about our food security project for people with HIV. In the upcoming months the groups we have been working with will finally start benefitting from this project with what looks like what will be an impressive harvest. In general, (knock on wood) most of our fields look good, and therefore the families of the people in these groups should have plenty of food this year after a good harvest. Nevertheless, a few of the groups have already started asking me how I will help them next, after this project is finished. They are asking me this in spite of my constant reminders, from the beginning, that the purpose of this project is to eliminate their chronic malnutrition and struggle to find food so that they will be healthy and able to invest their time and energy into activities (such as starting a business, increasing their agricultural productivity, or spending more time doing HIV awareness outreach activities that most of these groups already do) that will benefit their respective families and communities. As a result, the idea was that this project would sort of wean them off of external support, putting them on the first step on the latter out of poverty, and allow them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (ha-da-ya-like them metaphors?). Well, (sticking with the metaphors) weaning isn’t as simple it sounds, the first step on the latter may be relatively insignificant if you consider how tall the latter is, and if you’ve ever tried to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps (or if you don’t want to look like an fool, just imagine doing so), you know that this is completely impossible because the same force you use to pull your bootstraps up also pulls your upper torso down and you end up going nowhere. What I’m saying is that many of these groups expect, or would at least prefer, Bryan to keep helping them. (One more clichéd metaphor, this time with a twist:) It seems that a lot of times, I’m speaking about development in general, rather than giving a man a fish, or even rather than teaching a man to fish, we end up somewhere in the middle-just giving the man a fishing pole and saying, “good luck.” The man is excited to get the fishing pole, because its free and all his friends are getting it, but he soon loses interest once he realizes that he doesn’t know how to use the pole, and maybe he uses it for fire-starter or something. I’m a little bit worried that this is what is happening with the projects I’ve currently got myself into. But all we can do is try our best, evaluate, adjust, and try our best again.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds.” Bob Marley
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment