You don't have to wait for the world to change

Give her a chance to live it for real!

This young lady lives in one of the smallest countries in Africa.  In her world, education is the way up from subsistence living. 

Lend a hand?  

She's one of a gaggle of kids we've known for a few years; like most in the country, her family struggles with just keeping the kids fed. Around 30% are undernourished. Girls have a harder time staying in school because of the cost; families often must choose which of their children will go. The cost isn't much, and a little help goes a long way here. We have a strong NGO that manages our assistance efforts.

When you're a kid, as long as you're fed and housed, you're pretty much happy with life. It's what comes a decade down the road that you have to prepare for, though. Without an education, you'll be struggling to survive, worrying about how to feed your kids, trapped in the locked down world of poverty.

AUG '11: Can money buy happiness?

Yep.  It sure can. 

It turns out, though, that wealth exhausts its power to buy happiness early on.  Here's how it seems to work.  

"The difference between earning nothing and earning $20,000 is enormous—that's the difference between being homeless and hungry vs having shelter and food."

After the basics though, there isn't much 'marginal utility' to increased wealth. In other words, the difference between a guy who makes $10,000 and a guy who makes $50,000 is much, much bigger than the difference between the guy who makes $50,000 and the guy who makes $250,000." 1  More money makes less difference in terms of happiness, and getting it takes up more and more of your life.  Chasing wealth (and more 'things') will likely deprive you of the happiness you hoped to gain.  

Actually, we knew all that, those of us who aren't struggling to survive.  Once you've arrived at a comfortable level, you can expend a lot of effort in upgrading your lifestyle, but it's a lot of time and effort spent with little change in your personal happiness; it's time that could and perhaps should have been spent otherwise.  Years pass, and we wonder when we're going to achieve what we've been working so hard to get for so many years.  Perhaps we've lost track of the goal.

Got a goal?

As it turns out, while money can't buy happiness, it seems that healthy relationships can.  Folks who are invested in the lives and well-being of others are likely to be a lot happier.  Hmmm.  Genuine interest in others, unselfishness?  Giving, caring, loving?  Those things are more likely to bring the joy we're looking for?

"Individuals and societies don't have the same fundamental need. Individuals want to be happy, and societies want individuals to consume.  Most of us don't feel personally responsible for stoking our country's economic engine; we feel personally responsible for increasing our own well-being.  These different goals present a real dilemma, and society cunningly solves it by teaching us that consumption will bring us happiness.

Society works to convince us that what's good for the economy is good for us too. This message is delivered to us by every magazine, television, newspaper, and billboard, at every bus stop, grocery store, and airport.  It finds us in our cars, it's made its way onto our clothing. Happiness, we learn, is just around the corner and it requires that we consume just one more thing. And then just one thing more after that. So we do, and we find out that the happiness of consumption is thin and fleeting, and rather than thinking to ourselves, "Gosh, that promise of happiness-by-consumption was a lie," we instead think, "Gosh, I must not have consumed enough and I probably need just one small upgrade to my stereo, car, wardrobe, or wife, and then I'll be happy."

We live in the shadow of a great lie, and by the time we figure out that it is a lie we are closing in on death and have become irrelevant consumers, and a new generation of young and relevant consumers takes our place in the great chain of shopping."[1]

 We definitely need a better plan! 

Possible alternatives?  

     Return to the Christian foundation of our society^[2] or face increasing economic breakdown, war, the chaos of violence, radical redistribution of wealth, and growing shortage of food and natural resources.^[3]

  ~ Frances Schaeffer, forty years ago

While I've never been and advocate of 'going back', there's perhaps that element of abandoned truth to which one must return lest they find themselves perpetually frustrated.  Is there an element of the Christian foundation to which we might return?

God loved so much that he gave ...  Now there's an interesting thought.

So then, you can perhaps buy happiness ...

...   for somebody else.

May '11, Samuel in Kenya tells me, "These 3  girls were rejected by their father after their mother died they are now staying with their grandmother. I did buy them uniforms; took them to a preschool at Miritini."

Later when I comment on the marks visible on the one girl's arm, Samuel says, "I was there yesterday at Miritini and asked the preschool teacher to take her to the hospital.  They sleep on the floor, and their grand mother is poor and old.  I spoke to one of the leader in our church yesterday to see how we can assist her.  I plan to give her shs.3000.00 to start a small business selling fried fish to earn a living and support the grand children.   The old woman lost two of her daughters who died."
  

Thank you Samuel, for all your goodhearted work.  Update: one has lesions on her arm; taken by a teacher to the hospital, but can't afford the medicine.  Another falls from a tree and is injured.  They hadn't eaten in a couple of days, so she was climbing a mango tree trying to get some fruit.  Hospitalized.  OK for now.  Desperately poor, and could use a hand.

Easy stuff for us.  Want to join in?  Ask me.

Want to help? Some thoughts ...

So what do I do if I want to help?

GO. If you can go, do it.   
Plan it now and do it this year. We understand so little, watching from our comfortable living room. Go see for yourself. Go to learn. Go with others who know the people and can help you make your way into the community. You might wisely decide in advance that your purpose is just to meet folks and learn from them. Go with the expectation of being changed by those you'll meet. They know so much more about life and poverty and coping than we do.

GIVE. If you can give, please do, generously and regularly. 

Our generosity is the supply pipeline for competent folks doing the work long-term, and there is great need. We discovered again with the recent Haiti crisis that you can't just send stuff. If you fill a box with clothes, it costs more to handle the one box perhaps than the clothes are worth. Giving money to the organizations that do the work, on the other hand, helps fund an efficient logistics and supply management process that brings the right kind of help to the point where it's currently needed.

LEARN. The hardest task, understanding the real need.
I'm often asked if I have room to take children's clothes in my luggage. Friends see the pictures of kids in raggedy clothes and are heart-moved to meet the need. Clothes are good, and I've taken a bunch mostly as friendship fun gifts. A colorful t-shirt with a nice logo brings a smile, but clothes aren't the real need where I travel. Malnutrition, on the other hand, is a tough problem. Between 10% and 40% of the kids I meet will have protein deficient diets. They'll be under height for age and under weight for height (stunted). Some will have a reddish tint to hair that is a possible indicator, too. The deficiency will affect the way their bodies and internal organs develop. Their lives will be complicated and shortened by the lack. Sponsoring a nutrition program takes more to accomplish but addresses a real need. Agricultural assistance, or maybe a pair of goats can be a big help. Helping without hurting takes thoughtful effort. Instead of $20 for T-shirts, $20 worth of fish and beans might balance a household's diet for the month or two.

A precious mother and daughter (left) invited me in for a brief visit; nicer than most of the people in my world. Just being hospitable, they seemed to appreciate the chance to talk a bit with a visitor. They have very little but are not hungry at the moment. If you want to lend them a hand, you'll want to understand what would serve them. Help them protect their fishing areas so they can feed themselves, help the community develop clean water and sanitation, schools, health education ...

Things that help: the most difficult task is not getting goods to Africa, although that's daunting enough. It's figuring out what you can do that actually helps without being an insensitive, arrogant foreigner in the process.


Kids in the difficult areas of Africa don't need teddy bears. Families don't need our instruction or pity and are as offended by such foolishness as we would be. The presence of tourists is often an insult as they take pictures of 'the poor Africans'. Families could use a brother's hand in the labors of life along the way, just like anyone else would. So what can we do that actually helps?

Like most folks, Africans appreciate you stopping to shake hands, meet mom & dad, sit with them awhile, and listen. Give the moms a ride back from doing laundry at the river, maybe. Help them load the baskets in the truck and unload at the village. It's an apparently unusual gesture by a foreigner and much appreciated. Ask questions about whatever. Ask before taking their picture. Good manners and caring go a long way, but it costs a lot in terms of time, resources, and personal pain. After leaving a meeting at the hospital, I've had to stop beside the road and wait for the pain to quit before driving further. The reality of life in Africa will wound your heart deeply.

The Navy SeaBees leave an impressive mark in Africa with their construction efforts; they're famous for giving something that lasts. They're on my short list of heroes for serving others. What can we offer that lasts?

Organizations like World Vision do a magnificent job of the stuff that matters. They invest a couple of decades in a village, build schools and houses, dig reliable wells, teach agriculture, do health care, and after a decade or three, a generation of children are educated and the village is changed for the better. That's real help. The key to their effectiveness is that they go and live there. It's a long-term commitment to be alongside.

In the fifteen or so trips I've made to Africa so far, I've made a few mistakes and stumbled onto a few winners. I've spent money on kid trinkets, I forget what they were now, but it was a loser. No matter what you have, there are probably more kids than you can equip. On the other hand, working with a school or an organization on the ground means you have skilled adults with whom you can pitch in and try to help.
Balloons for a Children's Day event (at the school) were great fun, as was the candy which colored a lot of tongues purple, if I recall. We added those little things to their celebration, and it was appreciated. Printed photos are a nicety enjoyed by pretty much everyone. 

Books were a home run. There's no bookstore in the country. In Lisbon, I picked up a few (expensive, unfortunately, or I'd have bought more) books for elementary school aged kids. Well received; the school has just a few books, I discovered.

 

I'd picked up a couple of Portuguese Bibles, I forget why; another home run; the principal asked for more for the teachers to use in the classroom. We shipped a case to them last fall.

In conversation with the principal and teachers, they tell me their regular need is supplies like pencils and paper. I carry pencils every trip in, whatever my baggage weight allowance will stand, and we buy paper and notebooks from a store there. We have an in-country agent who purchases things locally on our behalf when we can raise money to send. 

Sending a box from the states by mail (flat rate, 20 lbs., $42) makes sense only for items worth the expense. 

But what helps, really? In Sao Tome & Principe, for instance. They have a wonderful community and culture, are not likely to go hungry for extended periods, little violence, little crime. Children are more likely to grow up safe and happy in Sao Tome than they might in Chicago. Health care is inadequate. A balanced diet is uncommon. The Taiwanese Medical Mission has made real inroads against malaria, but more is needed for basic health care. Education receives little public funding and is resource constrained. The children's world is narrowed by the lack of literature and instructional texts.   
Community infrastructural elements are minimal. Water is often from open stream sources, electricity is often not available or reliable, most homes don't have TV (probably a good thing), and home internet access is only for the wealthy. There's only one internet cafe in the city that I know about; expensive. The educational resources of the web could be a benefit to schools, perhaps. Or would they be better off if they remained somewhat insulated from the rest of the world?

Expensive lessons from the Peace Corps: In conversations with Ned Seligman, the director of Step Up Sao Tome, I learned a bit about what works. He began with the Peace Corps decades ago and through the difficult years of tremendous effort, he understands the work that has to happen in the field. He spoke with insight about the 'save the children' approach to making a difference. For a family in need, sponsoring a child's education is a big help, but there are many needs. Families rarely have just one child needing help for school. A better friend (as opposed to an uninvolved benefactor) will try to understand what needs are critical and immediate. Long term concerns might include issues like malaria or HIV/AIDS education and prevention, or help in starting a small business, or home gardening, or water purification and community sanitation, or maybe adult literacy.

Government top-down programs often siphon off funds, reducing the impact at the point of need. The needs of a community in poorer countries are daunting, but small organizations like Step Up Sao Tome are focused at the village and family level to tackle them. World Vision is perhaps the most capable of the large organizations.

24 JAN '10 - Sao Tome & Principe

UPDATE: we had a chance to assist with the Navy Seabee's site survey at Almas Elementary. They spent time with the principal, Valentim (in the photo, green shirt), determining what was needed most. They're going to fix the windows, improve the wall, repair water and electrical problems, and paint the classrooms. In the photo, the kids gather between classes to meet the team and see what's up. The Navy construction team will be here later in the year for the project's completion.

UPDATE: In Sao Tome, STeP UP is the NGO I've been working with, recommended to me by US embassy staffers who know them well.  (photos right).  They manage a number of projects including an effective scholarship program. They've agreed to open the program for a couple of kids I know at Almas Elementary. Education is a tough road for kids in Africa. Here, a lot of them drop out around the 4th grade because their families cant afford it. A few hundred dollars will cover the cost of a life-changing year for a family. For the kids, it includes school uniforms, shoes, tutors, books and supplies, food to help achieve some balance in their diet, transportation, and health education covering malaria, HIV/AIDS, and more. STeP UP is taking a couple of five families into the program for us. Donate here,if you like. It goes to the NGO in Sao Tome for education assistance. People will like you better if you give.
________________________________________________________

Djibouti:
A small country of a half-million people, 50% unemployment, nomadic hinterlands, a legacy French influence, and a fair amount of U.S. activity. We've been on the ground there several times doing construction in preparation for installation work. Having just returned from my first trip there in APR '09, I've seen more than I can easily grasp. Having ventured into the refugee slum area, a father expressed to me his simple concerns, an education for his children and a chance for them to have a better life. He'd brought his family (wife, mother, and children) from Somalia in hopes of giving his kids a better future. Perhaps we'll be able to sponsor his children through school; his oldest son is a student at the University of Djibouti and could use a little help. NOTE: his mother died recently; I haven't been able to get the details. The youngest member of the family, photo, left.
UPDATE:  
Our attempts at making our way into the community in Djibouti were hampered by misrepresentation, fraud, and theft. A younger member of the family whom we befriended used the tenuous new relationship to extort money. Truly minor, but disappointing and counterproductive. Later, we were in the neighborhood (a known and dangerous refugee area, we later discovered) to visit and drop off simple gifts, a member of the community stole a backpack from our vehicle while we were just inches away. The community made the individual turn himself in to the police, but we lost time and opportunity in the process. The theft is understandable given the desperate circumstances of their lives.


I'll post more info when I understand it better. We'll try again, probably in 2011.


Kenya:

On the horizon for 2010/11. We'll be there off and on for at least a couple of years, and we have contacts via churches in both Nairobi and Mombasa. We'll see.

Update: Kenya is incredibleFour trips to Kenya this year... 39 kids on school assistance now, including the three precious orphans here who live with grandma. We're working through a local church pastor and board for the programmatics.

More updates in the travel narratives at Africa Tales.

So what are we going to do with what we know?

Tell the rich folks to quit being so full of themselves and so impressed with their own possessions, which are here today and gone tomorrow.  It's not their merit that made them wealthy and others less so. Tell them to go after God who is generous to us all - and tell them to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasure that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

          1 Timothy 6:17-19 

JUN '11 - Home again, Africa

It had been nearly a year since I'd been in Sao Tome.  The world had become larger in that brief time. 

With a year's work behind me, it was such a joy to visit the wonderful folks in Sao Tome.  With Kenya's drought in my mind and our struggles to be helpful there, it was nice to be in Sao Tome where hunger isn't a pressing problem. To make things even better, it wasn't a work-related trip.  Accumulated airline miles paid for the ticket and simple accommodations kept the costs down for a personal trip with no work agenda.  It's familiar enough to feel a bit like home when I'm there.

We've been trying to be helpful, my friends and and family have.  We've been working through STeP UP, an NGO based in the city there.  Four families and a dozen-plus kids are the beneficiaries.  We've been focused on keeping the kids in school and getting a good education, but we've tried hard to intelligently address some assistance to the families as a whole.  Good success all around this year.  All our kids are doing well and school and the families have done well.

The best of the trip was in spending time with friends.  I visited each household, spent time with moms and dads, and got the grand tour of the year's efforts with pride and cheerful explanations.  Parents have been working hard, and it shows.

Our hope is to avoid being a blind benefit program without any relationship or feedback.  When we began, we offered to partner with the families, to help them do well by their children, specifically for their education.  We've learned a bit and expanded a bit since then.

This year, we got to see one family's big improvement; they have water by their house now!  We funded the materials; dad and the oldest son did the manual labor of digging the trench across the road and laying pipe from the mountain water main. 

Here's the road dad had to dig up to lay the pipe.  Permissions took awhile, but he has a water spigot in the yard in front of his house and a washing table so they don't have to go to the river to do laundry.

  It gives them water for the house and for the pair of pigs they use for breeding.

They proudly took me through the couple of acres they have for crops, too.  Corn, beans, unrecognizable African vegetables, and okra!  They get a small yield of okra pretty much every week.  They feed themselves and have a little to sell in the kiosk we helped them build.

Most recently, they've bought a little generator and a TV for the kiosk.  No one in the neighborhood has electricity, so now they can watch the local channel and maybe buy something from the kiosk.  It's a common gimmick in Africa.  I know a couple of neighborhoods where the kiosk with a TV is where folks congregate in the evenings.  Good business idea.

We helped a family buy their house this year.  They no longer pay rent, so things are much easier.  They beamed as they told me about their lives.  We helped another family buy a little plot of land so they can begin building a home.  Exciting stuff all around.

The most fun this trip was dinner at grandma's house.  In preparation, I took the daughters to the market; they dragged me around carrying bags of stuff for three hours.  Bananas, fish, breadfruit, more bananas.  The day of the dinner, I guess twenty or so family members showed up. 

Grandma's boys are linebacker sized fellows, all goodhearted and tons of fun, especially with kids around.  We had nearly a dozen kids in attendance.  Laugh, dance, sing, eat, laugh some more.  Kids singing using carrots for microphones was cute.  It was a great afternoon.

I often wonder at the impressive sense of community and family I see here.  They seem so much better than we at some of the important parts of caring for each other.  Don't misunderstand; they're African and tough as nails.  An in-your-face kind of love.  They're good church-going folks; I wonder what the sermons are about here, but my Portuguese isn't really good enough to tell.

MAY '11 - Kenya Again

Forth trip to Africa this year; third one to Kenya.  Still willing if a bit worn.

Work was just work.  Time with local folks was worth having made the trip to me.  Among the truly nice people of the world, my friends welcome me back and make a place for me in their homes and lives despite truly difficult circumstances.
Three more kids for a little help getting in school.  Uniforms and fees to start.  A trip to the hospital for one of them.  They bring our group to 37 kids this semester.
Ever notice how folks who have the least are often the most giving?  Or that folks who have the most difficult lives are the most likely to stop and land a hand?
After making the trek across Africa - Sao Tome & Principe, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya - I wonder why the wealthy are so often full of themselves while the poor encompass nobility and generosity.  It's not just in Africa, of course.  It was the same all those years when we lived in Spain and wandered across Europe. 

Japan may have been an exception; they were all pretty nice folks, everywhere we went. 
The phone rang this morning as I sat at my office in Maryland.  It was dear Salma.  It costs just pennies to call the States from Kenya.  She'd called just to say hello and thank you.  She's become like a sister to me.  The times we've had to sit and talk have been family time. 
OK so minutes later, the phone rings again, and it's Salma again and you can hear her family laughing in the background; she says, "Anderson wants to say hello to his friend."  Ha!  So 3-year old Anderson gets on the phone and laughs and says something incomprehensible in Swahili, perhaps, and I ask him if he's being a good boy and he laughs and you can hear Salma and her sister and mom and grandmother laughing along with him.  Marilyn says I got a grandpa call from Kenya!

In Kenya, the rains of April and May 'make the animals happy', my friends tell me.  It's been a long dry season, and the rains are appreciated.
SUMMER '11 UPDATE:  The rainy season was inadequate.  The drought has set in.  Millions face starvation in the region.  Our friends and their children there are at risk, and we have little effective access to their community.

Scrambling for funds for the access we do have.  Keeping them in school gets them one meal a day at the government school.  It's just maize meal, but it'll keep them alive.