Of course, I continue to attach the most
value to pieces that bravely carry the writer’s name, because few things keep
you more honest as a writer than putting your stuff out there with your name
attached, for all the world to see. But sometimes it’s anonymous or nothing, so
I’m cutting some slack to the unidentified writers producing pieces for Secret
Aid Worker.
I’m not exactly an aid worker in my current
role of doing communications work for Central American NGOs on behalf of Cuso International. My work experience in Honduras and now Nicaragua has not been
that different than it was in Canada, except for much lower pay and a
dramatically different work culture. But both home and abroad, I do my work
for aid organizations, whether it’s in aid of sex workers back in Canada, or women
farmers scratching out a marginal living on tiny plots of land, as it is here
in Nicaragua.
At any rate, the moral dilemmas and ethical
conflicts that the aid workers tend to write about in the Guardian feature strike
a chord with me. Two recent pieces in particular caught my eye, one about how quickly a person’s idealism to help people in poor countries ends up corrupted
by life as a privileged ex-pat; and the other a counterpoint noting that
expecting foreign aid workers to “live like monks” is hardly a solution either.
The Cuso stipend I receive in Nicaragua feels
like more or less the going rate for a Nicaraguan communications consultant working
in the country. I get the equivalent of about $1,600 CAD a month, which includes
up to $585 a month for housing. (Cuso rates vary from country to country and
town to town, depending on the cost of living of where a person is placed.)
You’re working as a professional when you
do a Cuso position, and getting a liveable stipend for the work you do is
probably important for recruitment and retention. But at the same time, you
take a Cuso position because you want to help, not for the money. I think Cuso
does a good job of establishing a stipend level that keeps things real for volunteers
while also ensuring their safety and comfort.
But just because I’m paid like a middle-class
Nicaraguan doesn’t mean anything else about my experience is the same as
theirs. Even if I worked for free, I’d still be privileged just by dint of
being born a Canadian.
Sure, I'm opting to take the city bus to
work, and walking in the heat and the dust to Managua’s sprawling public markets with
just as much of a desire as any Nicaraguan to score a good price on tomatoes,
cucumbers and limes. I’m not going to the pricey restaurants where the rich
Nicaraguans eat any more often than my low-paid co-workers.
But small stuff aside, my life isn’t even
remotely comparable to the experience of an average Nicaraguan. (For starters,
minimum wage here is less than $500 CAD, and a whole lot of people make nowhere
near that much.) However long I might live in Central America, I will never be
able to declare that I know how life feels for an average Nicaraguan any more
than a comfortable Canadian who spends a night on the street pretending to be
homeless knows about how real homelessness feels.
If there were bugs in my bed, a sickness in
my household, a crisis with one of my parents’ health, I could do something
about it in an instant. If I hated my boss, I could quit. If I needed a holiday,
I could pay for it. If I had to jump on a plane to anywhere in the world to
help a family member out of a jam, I’ve got a gold-standard passport that
nobody would question, and the credit card and line of credit to make
it happen even if my savings weren't adequate.
If life went sideways on me in Nicaragua, I
could pack it all up tomorrow and come running home, to the land of public
health insurance, pensions, and subsidized care and bug-free housing. It’s like
that line from Pulp’s song Common People – “when you’re laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall, you could call your dad and he’d stop it all.”
And there’s the dilemma. I’m innately
privileged, with a comfortable Plan B. Yet if I’m here wanting to be helpful to impoverished
Nicaraguans, I absolutely have to check my privilege at the door and
consciously consider everything as if I were a struggling Nicaraguan with no
safety net. Which I’m not.
I try to remind myself of that every day,
because it really matters. Otherwise, you risk being one of those awful people
who forget how privileged their world view is and get petulant when the locals
don’t see things the same way they do. Otherwise, you become one of those
annoying development types who grows sour from years of disappointments and
ends up living like just another rich person enjoying the perks of abundant cheap
labour. (Check out "The Reductive Seduction of Other People's Problems" to understand more about why good people go sour.)
I’ve visited some terrific international
development projects. But I’ve also seen a lot that feel foisted on the locals because countries with money to spend presume that what worked in their land
will work in others. There’s a certain flavour-of-the-month quality to much of
the world’s development work, and much time, energy and hope is wasted trying
to force square pegs through round holes.
Ultimately, a country finds its own path toward
change. Economic opportunity, revolution and protest, responsible government, guaranteed rights and a healthy justice system – that’s where real change
comes from. Foreigners can play integral parts on all those fronts, but their
contributions are most successful when they take their signals from those who
live in the country.
Aid works when it’s based on strategies
that call on those with privilege not to come to other countries to implement their own ideas, but to walk alongside people who are already bringing
about change in those countries and require help to get there. They need us; people
of privilege not only hold the purse strings, but can recognize and develop opportunities
that countries enmeshed in poverty don’t yet see.
So yes, a person from a wealthy country who
lives and works in a poor country is privileged. But that’s just how it is. We can’t pretend to know how it feels to be
poor and without a Plan B. I think the best we can do is keep that fact top of mind, and strive
to follow rather than lead.
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