Give: A Moral Dilema

I live in a relatively poor village. I can’t say that it’s alike or different from any other, it just happens to be the one I live in. I live here. Pretty much full time. It means I interact with the people every day. All the people. Including the children.

I know that to some people to make a child smile might be the high point of their day, and indeed, it has often been the pinnacle of mine. An easy way to do this is to give them something. A sweet, a balloon, a toy, some money. It’s not like they don’t know that you, or me as a white person, likely have it. It’s not like they aren’t asking. For many of the children in my village it’s the only English they know.

I can see the attraction. I’ve seen the look on tourists faces as they give the scrambling hoards of often dirty, sometimes half naked children sweets. Then the tourists take pictures of the children, shot from their vantage point above them and thus generally having the visual effect of a “save the children” ad to take home and report that they’ve been to “Africa.” For some of the kids, it may be the only thing they’ve had to eat that day, but it’s unlikely.

The tourists hand the sweets or small change that likely amounts to a fraction of a cent of whatever currency it’s been converted out of into pula. They reach into whatever deep pocket they’ve remembered they have the coins or sweets or bubble gum in, and get their joy from seeing the children smile, and laugh to themselves as the children follow them like lemmings, grasping their hands and coming merrily along. The self satisfaction beams from the tourists faces, and one can see that they fancy themselves a sort of Santa Claus, and feel good about themselves the rest of the day. They leave my village with warm fuzzy memories of their trip and perhaps a greater sense of gratitude of how much better off they are than those poor starving children in Botswana that they saw on holiday.

Call me a miser, but I don’t agree.

It may seem logical that these people feel they have given the children of this poor, rural village a smile, and from their frame of reference it might appear that this sweet might be the only reason that child has had to smile in a long time. Not true my friends. Yes, there are many aspects of this village that are enough to make a lesser mortal (like myself) cry like a baby.

And yet. These children genuinely smile more than many children I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. Their toys consist of trucks they push along the road made of bits of wire and soda or beer cans for wheels. They create purses out of old rice bags, and fans out of stray bits of paper. I’ve seen children with improvised guitars and drums, and often they’re smiling like maniacs and running around happy for no tangible reason that I can see, and I find myself wishing I could be like them, happy and full of joy for no reason.

The point. This is an economically depressed area. There is little money being passed around, but I can assure you, based on the number of children I usually have to stand in line at the co-op who are throwing whichever coins they scavenged from wherever to see how many candies the clerk will give them today (it has occurred to no one that this might be a great learning opportunity to teach kids about money and adding) that the children can get their sweets. Sure ours are usually better quality than the stuff we get here from China (patriotism at it’s best;-) but it’s all sugar isn’t it? It’s not like these are kids who only get sweets when rich white people come around distributing them like…. Candy. Although there aren’t a ton of white people or foreigners in this remote place, they do come through with more regularity than you’d think. Despite their fantasies to this effect these tourists are not Columbus for crying out loud.

But sweets are so not the point. The point is the association of white people with money, sweets, higher intelligence, the ability to create jobs, solve problems, fix things. What’s wrong with that? Because yes, I agree it can feel pretty flattering to walk around every day with people treating you like the second coming. But after a while it feels… Gross. Because eventually you realize all the negatives that come with this sort of attitude. Namely, that if I automatically hold these attributes because I am white, then logic would denote that there’s probably some inherent thing that makes me better. If this is true, then if someone is black, then perhaps they can never aspire to these attributes. Maybe they have no responsibility to try.

The whole thing has begun to feel very toxic to me, I sometimes feel like the keeper at the zoo, muttering to the tourists “Please don’t feed the animals.” Because in the end that’s really what it’s about. Human dignity. Saying no rather than reinforcing all these crazy and damaging stereotypes about white people. It seems like a small thing, and it is. But for me it’s a big deal.

This is my home. These people have become my people. I want something better for them than to see white people (which I also happen to be) as the answer to their wants and needs. I want to help them believe that they can provide, and create and change their conditions and situation into what they want it to be, rather than thinking they need to depend on white people, or the government, or to think that any of this is outside their control. (Again. This is my village and I describe my particular situation. Each of us living in this country has to negotiate their situation in whichever way makes them feel and sleep best. This is how I feel about Seronga and I don’t judge the actions of any other volunteers in any other place on Earth.)

I have often heard people around the village complain that tourists always take pictures of the children when they are dirty, or the ones that are in rags and it gives Seronga a bad reputation. I have agreed with them, and then I have asked what Seronga has done to present a different image of itself to tourists who come through? This usually stops them in the middle of their complaint, but they have a valid point, they just may not know what to do about it. I try to gently point out that it might be a start for the adults themselves to set an example by not asking any white person they see for money, alcohol or cigarettes and also to teach their children not to do it either. Apart from that it gets kind of tough.

Because it’s not that the villagers don’t bathe their children because they do, usually daily, depending on water. We just happen to live in a place which can constitute a rather large sandbox much of the year. Hell, I’m always shocked by the amount of dirt I see in the puddle that comprises my bathwater. And Seronga is not Milan, nor does it attempt to be a fashion capital of anyone’s world (I myself am an obvious enough example of that on a depressingly regular basis). So if the clothes happen to have a whole of a few tears in them as long as they still sort of fit, so what?

As I’ve said, I live here. Every day. Many of the children here are conditioned by the frequent tourists we have coming through here to beg, and most of them try it with me, most of them should know better by now, but many must figure why not try their luck. Hell most of their parents try it as well, for money for local homebrew. It’s to the point that I might take someone more seriously if they asked me for fifty pula, but I generally barely return the greeting when they greet me but asking for two pula in broken English. (The thing that gets me the most is that it is their own cultural norm of politeness they are violating by not properly greeting me by saying hello in any number of the local languages. Most people should know by now that I can properly greet in all of them. I can’t say much else, but by God, I can greet.)

Exhibit #1: I was leaving for training in September for a week or so. I had some fruit in my fridge that I didn’t want to let go to waste. I was on a flight out of Seronga on a small plane, so I couldn’t take it with me. I had some oranges and other fruit, and decided that I would get rid of them as quickly as possible, by just giving them to the first kids I saw. I did so, and hopefully some kids got a days serving of vitamin c out of the deal. It would have ended there, but the effects of my actions still haunt me to this day, namely in the few kids who still, 7 months later, ask me for oranges specifically, nearly every time I see them.

Exhibit #2: I can count the people in my village on one hand whom, regardless of how long I have known them or how close we are, have not asked me to give them something, bring them something from America, or feed, clothe, provide water for or in some way give something to themselves or a member of their family. It’s tough to be seen as a bank or charitable organization every day.

Call me petty, but this is not the association I hope to leave with this place. I absolutely do not want to be the “white” that everyone remembers for something material she gave them. I selfishly want my legacy to be more significant than that.

These may seem typically overdramatic of me, and perhaps it is. But I’m the one living here, struggling with the dilemma of “what is right?” And how can I show these people the love I feel for them in a way that feels good to me too?

(It’s a fascinating thing to spend every day staring some moral quandary or other in the face. I guess it’s both the thing that makes me a feel alive and the thing that can occasionally make my heart feel like it would be easier just to turn completely to stone.)

The lesson I’m hoping to impart: If you don’t give money to every panhandler you see in your own country please don’t do it here. Furthermore, think very carefully about the impact and impression you’re leaving. These children aren’t zoo animals, they’re people with dignity, and by rewarding their begging behavior no matter how little it means to you it’s reinforcing some pretty ugly and dispiriting stereotypes.

Finally, I get a lot of candy in the post from people and last time I was on the phone with my mom she said someone had given her a big bag of suckers he wanted her to send for all those “poor little children in Africa”. I tried to explain the dilemma. My dear mother asked me if perhaps I couldn’t put aside my rule and be nice to the children for one day (as if I’m an a-hole to them every other day) ;-). I informed her that it was more of a principle than a rule and if I abandoned it once to please someone in the States who would never even meet these children (Don’t even get me started on the increase in diabetes as a result of an increase in refined sugars being introduced as a desirable part of the Batswana diet. And tooth decay? These children have never been to a dentist in their lives!! The mobile truck for the whole community comes once a month, and it tends to focus on the elderly whose health is at risk due to their oral hygiene. Or even the adults for that matter. Toothbrushes. You want to send something send toothbrushes. Or really, send books. Help me expand these little minds that think I am so wonderful, -or perhaps not as I never give them candy. But I digress) than it wasn’t really a principle was it? She sighed and called me a Grinch and we laughed. (She will see when she gets here!!!)

What I have been doing with the candy is distributing it as “incentives” when I do teaching at the schools, or presentations or when a member of my book club gives a great answer, or when I see people at the clinic working particularly hard. I try to use it more as a “we’re celebrating our hard work together” than a “reward” of sorts but there’s just no easy way about it. I try to do it as nonchalantly as possible, and sometimes I claim I got it from the government, or I found it, or I say that the volunteer who was here before me sent it in the mail because he misses them and loves them very much.

Truly. If you want to send something for the “poor little” children, send art supplies, send books, send maps. Send something I can use to teach them something about our American culture, rather than something to rot their little teeth. Ok, enough soap box for now. I have to go great my adoring fans;-)