the "rules"

I wonder if I’ll look back at this entry and feel foolish or regretful for having written it. I apologize if it is incoherent or rambling, but that’s a reflection of my thoughts on this subject. I’m genuinely a bit lost.

As much as I love living in the camp. The most difficult thing is finding peace with the disparity in what you have and what you live around. Especially when you befriend children who later tell you they are hungry and ask for food, and you go inside to a pot overflowing with food and “rules” that tell you not to give food to neighborhood children. The logic is sound. Giving food promotes begging; it is unsustainable and an inequitable way to distribute resources. But it does not sit easy with me. I understand the logic behind it, but I have a real hard time denying food that might otherwise go uneaten to a hungry child – especially a child I have developed a friendship with. Most people have that same difficulty and I guess that is why we have developed the “rules” – so the decision is out of our hands and out of our conscience. And truth is, most people here have bent the rules to some degree. But still, some housemates can become quite upset if you are found giving food or money for food because they fear it will make the kids around the house more pushy and persistent and simply attract more kids to the house, which would all be a major nuisance. That is true. It could create a practically unlivable situation for us. But in some ways that makes me feel even worse about the rule. That we are denying food to hungry kids because it would create an annoying situation for a very privileged set of people.

Thankfully, none of these kids are starving. I do see them eat everyday. And some of the kids use the money for food to buy candy. The kids are not starving, but some are most definitely malnourished, and they have childhoods that look so different from my own – no playgrounds, few if any toys, certainly no Saturday s at the zoo or dance classes – that if my 10 cents buys candy and a little bit of happiness, more the better.

But I know that in some ways I am wrong. The rules have been created by volunteers who have come here before me and know what works – what’s sustainable and what’s fair. But it’s not easy. I struggle wit what is right, appropriate and moral for me to give every day. Last week, a student of mine came by the house and asked me for 1,000 cedis to rent a bike for an hour. Many of my housemates were gone for the weekend and would have disapproved if I gave him the money. He would then be back irritating everyone for more. But, in the end, I felt that if what amounted to 12 cents could buy an hour of “normal” childhood for a kid who would otherwise be faced with boredom or chores, I couldn’t deny him that. I understand the risk, and I explained to him that if I gave him the money, he wasn’t to ask my or my housemates for anything for a while. He agreed, took the money overjoyed, returned to show me the bike and has not asked for anything since.

But why do I feel like I did something wrong? There is such a strong push against “handouts”, but in African culture, that’s exactly what you do all the time just by the nature of living in a community. There is such incredible generosity and sharing of what little people have among Liberians. Given the impossibility of working, the entire economy here is fueled by “handouts” from abroad. Children think little of sharing their food with one another and therefore little of asking others for food. It seems to be a kind of cultural understanding that those who are blessed with more will share with those who have less.

Still, I know we cannot just willy nilly give handouts. It has to be targeted and fair and done in a way that does not promote dependency. But it’s hard to resist the urge to give at all when the inequalities of the world are shouted through your window as you sit at your kitchen table every morning. Or when you go away for a weekend and spend on a meal what a local volunteer makes in a month! When I bring this up people tell me “you just can’t think like that.” But why? Because it’s inconvenient psychologically? Because there are no easy answers to world inequality? Because denying yourself a nice meal does nothing to help those who have so little? Those are the answers I’ve heard, but that last one is actually not true. If I gave up my meal or ate something cheaper, I’d have more money to donate to those in need. We “can’t think that way” because it would imply more self-sacrifice than many (including myself) are willing. And maybe we “can’t think that way” because it smacks of communism and is an affront to our Western sensibilities that tell us that our hard work is justly rewarded. But we know that this too is not true. That the most industrious and intelligent Liberian refugee may not dream of spending $15 on a meal in a luxury resort, no matter how hard-working or deserving. There is nothing that makes us that much more deserving of our relative riches, and we all know it is largely a consequence of the community and parents we happened to be born in to.

But still, there are the rules and their logic. So, I find myself tugged in two directions and in a conversation with a poor child asking him to justify his request for money for a meager amount of money that I can easily afford. It makes me feel small and petty and horrible. It would be so much easier to just give him what amounts to such a small amount of money and both feel better right away. But then, am I giving only to remove my bad feelings? Is that partly why anyone gives anything? Is the end result of giving more important than anyone’s reasoning? But, am I doing more harm than good just so I can assuage my guilt?

So, in the end I give part of the time (we all do) and try to do it in an appropriate way. This is not a new issue for me. I’ve traveled through poverty-stricken countries and worked with or on behalf of poor people for the last 10 years. But I don’t believe anyone who tells me they have decided how to deal with the issue here on camp, and most admit they struggle with it. The most adamant “rules” supporters find instances to have exception to it. Most aid workers do not actually live among people they are distributing aid to and I wonder if this is partly why. This disparity in what you have is too glaring and there is no way to feel good about it and no easy answers on how to change it in a just, enduring and moral way.