Give Me Money

A persistent problem Peace Corps volunteers face in Madagascar, as in probably all developing countries, is the expectation that since you are white, you have money to hand out to people. During training we were taught to say that Peace Corps provides technicians, not money, and that I can help them with business skills and money management so that they can make or save more money themselves. In theory, this is a great concept, and obviously one I support being that I am donating time, not cash, myself. But in practice, when the average wage here is $1/day (and even less in other parts of Madagascar) and prices are increasing as they are everywhere, rallying people to help themselves is more difficult than the grassroots model of affecting change through community development would seem.

Arriving back at site, fresh from vacation where we watched breaching whales from the shore, and motivated to implement some of the tools I learned during In Service Training, I excitedly told Philbertine and Prisca that I could now start work and mentioned that I learned about some funding sources as well. Peace Corps is very careful not to tell us about funding sources until IST so that we can honestly tell people that we can't just supply money, and our villages get used to us as workers, not suppliers.

My language skills are still nowhere near fluent, and I had difficulty trying to explain the various programs, but was able to at least say that there is money that we can apply for that helps with projects, but there needs to be an actual written project, not just a general request for money.

Prisca asked what program could help with her charity work which supplies food, clothing and hygiene products to poor and orphaned kids in our commune. I tried to tell her that there were funds out there, but that a project had to show it could be sustainable. So, for instance, we could apply for money if we wanted to start a community garden to supply food to the needy kids or we could start a business club targeting orphaned girls which helps them start small businesses to run during vacation so that they can pay their school fees. While my efforts in Malagasy were not this fluid, Prisca seemed to understand my point that we can’t just apply for money or materials as handouts to all the poor kids in the commune, like we tried to do earlier. (Before I left for training, Prisca and I filled out a request from an organization called Friends of Madagascar that distributes donated items from the States to pretty much any Peace Corps volunteer who requests them. There are things like toothbrushes and soccer jerseys and these things are available on a first come-first served basis. The list of available supplies is a hodgepodge of items donated at the whim of Florida residents: 56 toothbrushes, for example, 2 Sanibel Beach Club t-shirts, and a few ziplocks of travel-size shampoos. Prisca and her association and I went through the list and circled the items we could use and I went on my way. Before I left for Tana, Prisca came to my house with supporting documents for the application: a letter about the association, a copy of their formal registration, and lists of every single needy kid in the commune. There were hundreds of names.)

So, Prisca is used to asking for donations for her work, but did seem to embrace the idea of sustainability, and made comments during my painful and halting explanation of the possible projects to show she understood. She said, in effect: That’s all well and good, and we should do projects like that, but the hungry season starts next month and if we don’t give food to these kids, they won’t eat.

So, what do you do?

For Sarah Palin to imply that community organizers don’t have actual responsibilities highlights the incredible chasm between bureaucracy and activism in the sphere of public service. She has absolutely no concept of the incredible vision, energy and outlook required to affect change in people’s lives, especially when faced with such immediate and persistent poverty. I certainly don’t have it.

Those skills, along with the endless amount of solitude, makes this the hardest job I’ve ever had.