A Day in the Life Returns

Today is Saturday.  I wake up at six, pleased to have slept in.  Yesterday was exhausting at the clinic.  It was ARV day, and Doctors without Borders rolled in to see patients and give out their monthly ARV supply.  In the morning, I helped sell tickets and snacks at reception while occasionally holding business-y chats with the nursery group leader.  I sat down only to let one of the few children waiting for medicine braid my hair.  In the afternoon, the support group met.  Then I helped my host mom plant sweet potatoes for an hour before netball practice…But I digress…Today is Saturday!

I take my clothes to the well early so as to avoid what will clearly be a blisteringly sunny day.  There is only one other boy there when I arrive at seven, and we wash our clothes silently together.  I am pleased to be free from the usual judging eyes of every young girl in the village that I usually face doing laundry.  I make a mental note to come and wash early from now on.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy their company, but my left-handedness and whiteness put me under a lot of scrutiny, especially when doing housework.  One Saturday, after the umpteenth girl came up and commented to her friends about my washing technique, I totally snapped.  “Just because something’s different doesn’t mean it’s wrong!” I told them.  They didn’t get my point, so I just dropped it…Still; difference being wrong is a recurring theme in my life.

I pick up two little hitchhikers on the walk home- neighbor kids about three years old.  I give them paper and markers and sit them on a grass mat outside as I hang up my laundry to dry.        

After washing and sending the cuties on their way, I go to the clinic with the intention of picking up my frying pan, having leant it last week so that we could fry up some cockroaches as a tasty work-time treat.  Seriously, they weren’t bad if you closed your eyes.  Saturday’s are dead at the clinic, so I just check on the nursery and my garden before chatting with the receptionist and fruit-stand seller.  I forget the pan for the 3^rd day in a row. 

 I then head to the soccer game of my host brothers’ team.  It’s about a half hour walk from the clinic.  They are playing their arch rivals, the Swallows!  I sit with their stuff, the only lady fan besides Scruff T and the make selling snacks.  The men I know greet me and Scruff politely.  The men I don’t know stare/leer openly, but there aren’t as many strolling by as usual, as this is the first game of the day.  I buy snacks left and right for the boys on the team.  The head of the league comes by for a chat about a tournament we’re trying to organize where the players get tested for HIV in lieu of a joining fee.  Both of our efforts have stagnated (his with the players, mine with the sponsors), but we agree not to give up.  He asks about my netball team, and promises to come watch their next game. 

Towards the end of the game, my netball girls show up, giggly and giddy to be in a man’s world.  I wave them over and buy them some treats, but they are there to check out the players, not the playing.  The boys win the game and run over to me with hugs and whoops. 

It’s hot and I’m roasting despite my umbrella.  I head to the Sitolo (store) for a cold drink.  Only the storekeeper (whose name means Happiness) and one make are in the store.  They greet me with typical Swazi politeness, and I update them on the status of the game (Happiness’s husband having played for the losing team).  We chuckle for a bit about that, then the make asks me if I’m married.  Would I like to be her daughter in law? 

“Oh, make.  You don’t want me for a daughter in law.  I’m very lazy… I won’t cook, I won’t clean, and I won’t wash clothes.” 

She appraises me for a minute, trying to decide if my childbearing hips are worth it.  “But I saw you carrying firewood with your make.”

Foiled!  She still wants me.  Perhaps the “I’m lazy” line only works on women who aren’t from my village.  I tried it last week on a would-be mother in law at the vegetable stand, and she ran away snapping “This I can’t stand!”

This make is not so easily persuaded, so I quickly divert the conversation back to what I really want- a cold drink!  It’s the old kind of pop in Swaziland- straight from the glass bottle and pure sugar coursing down your throat.  All she has left is an off-brand Fanta Orange, but most days they don’t have it at all (the working fridge is also recent).  I get out my wallet to pay just as she opens the bottle for me.  To my embarrassment, I realize that I had given out more than I thought at the soccer game, now fifty cents shy of being able to pay for my drink.

“Don’t worry,” Happiness tells me.  “You pay when you get the money.  Not today, though.  Today it is too hot.”

I grin and blush and apologize as I sip my pop.  However much I give out in money, I am always repaid in kindness by someone else.  In a few minutes, my host brothers and their team stomp through the doors of the Sitolo, partaking in the usual post-game ritual of splitting a loaf of bread and sucking on little bags of homemade popsicles.

I say goodbye and go home, quickly updating make on the status of the game before finishing up some reports for Peace Corps and grad school.  I have every intention of walking the mile to pay back the fifty cents, but a storm rolls in just as I’m leaving.  Storms here are as violent and sudden as they are in Illinois, but it is much easier to tell what the weather will be like here.  It will go weeks and even months with not a cloud in the sky.  Then suddenly, you can watch the storm clouds roll in with such exactness that you can predict to the minute when the rain will fall over where you are standing. 

I cook dinner (macaroni and spinach) as an enraptured audience of two neighbor girls stand at my screen door and whisper about my technique.  I eventually get sick of them staring and (wanting to avoid feeling guilty for not feeding them) I close the door. 

My nineteen year old host brother comes in as I’m writing this and asks to use the computer for music.  I move over and read for a few hours.  More boys from the team stream in, and we all sit in comfortable silence, listening to the music.  Later, my youngest host brother will come for tutoring.    

Tomorrow is Sunday.  I’ll take the two hour hike across the valley and up the mountain with make to church.  I really like the hike and am trying to memorize the twisting paths to take.  I will leave Scruff locked inside the house, as she was quite the distraction sneaking up the pews to be with me last time.  Awkward and adorable.  I might step out before the exorcisms start, though.  

 

Aid or Dependency

I’ve been thinking a lot about dependence versus aid lately.  I’m sure there are dozens if not hundreds of people who make a decent living writing about every possible flawed outcome of aid and the “real motives” behind it (usually boiling down to donor country domestic interests).  Foreign aid’s greatest critics argue that aid is nothing but a bloated industry interested in lucrative paychecks that allow aid workers to live like kings in countries where a nickel still buys something.  I’m not this cynical, and I don’t think anyone who works in the development industry is. 

The history of development assistance is much like that of any other industry- it has made progress, adapted to new times and markets, expanded in some areas, died in others, and still could use a serious re-vamp in a lot of other stagnated practices.  The solution as to how to best fulfill the ultimate mission of uplifting people from poverty is still a work in progress.  Lately the best practices have finally turned towards requiring local ownership in projects as the only way to ensure success and mitigate collateral damage.  This makes a great deal of sense, but many aid organizations and donor countries still provide the resources, training, and monitoring for such “community owned” projects. 

I used to discount claims that foreign aid creates dependencies.  It seemed like a conservative smokescreen excuse for a callous and selfish worldview.  But lately I find myself sympathizing with dependency theory.  I get asked to “sponsor” on a daily basis- be it school fees, clothes, sports equipment, electronics, airtime, community projects, NGO projects, school projects, personal projects, business projects, etc... 

And it’s exhausting.  And frustrating.  And incredibly uncomfortable.  Especially when people I’ve grown close to ask for something that (if I scrimped and gave up the occasional luxury) I might be able to afford.  One day was filled with so many requests for sponsorship that I almost cried in frustration.  By comparison, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been asked for something in exchange for work.  When I do break down and buy something small for the community that still puts a big dent in my monthly earnings, I am almost never shown the gratitude I desire for such benevolence, and I walk away stinging, vowing not to repeat the mistake again.      

When I tell less educated Swazis I’m not some aid worker making an aid worker’s salary who can afford to give alms, they typically don’t believe me.  White skin= rich.  I’ve heard that the only white people one village saw was when white people drove by in a car and threw candy out the window without even stopping to get out.  Barf…And I understand that a lifetime of conditioning would make you think I am Miss Moneybags. 

But at the same time, what kind of mentality must one have to ask for something for free before asking to work for it?  How did this mentality develop?  Did it come from shoe drops, clothing drops, food drops, sponsoring, etc?  Ignoring the systemic factors of colonialism and world trade inequalities, how does a culture of aid over self-sufficiency even develop?  Is what I’m witnessing the product of foreign aid, or is it a product of poverty? 

And to be fair, many Swazis are aware of the aid world’s dependency dilemma.  When I deny someone sponsorship, it always comes with the “teach a man to fish versus feed him for a day” line.  Swazis nod.  They typically understand that this is the line that aid workers give.  They even believe the line usually and assure me that they, too, would like to see a Swaziland so empowered that it doesn’t need outside assistance.  But in the meantime, they need the money yesterday.    

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether or not aid creates dependencies.  You can’t use dependency theory as an excuse not to care about others.  You can only learn from past mistakes. 

On a slightly related note, I’ve been trying to expand my understanding of the aid world by reading some more books which might go against what I believe or know.   The best was “Letting them die: why HIV/AIDS prevention programmes fail” by Catherine Campbell.  It is based on a longitudinal study of a mining community project in South Africa (where many Swazis work and which are notorious for catastrophically high HIV infection rates).  On paper, the community-led project was beyond even industry standards, but it failed to instill change towards consistent condom use.  There are some interesting tidbits that all HIV prevention programs could learn from.  For instance, the greatest determinant of a young girl engaging in unsafe sexual activity is how much affection she feels her parents have for her.  Another interesting tidbit was that sex without a condom was somehow perceived by men as fulfilling a need for intimacy/affection in an extremely brutal social setting.  HIV prevention must move beyond the condom demonstrations and peer educators, but focus holistically on the environment of poverty, extreme patriarchy, and the sense of hopelessness/fatalism that begets potentially deadly behavioral choices.