On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:43:10 GMT, Palindrome privacy.net> wrote:

Hmmm. IME charity workers in Africa who I met have an inflated sense
of their own importance and of the help they are providing. They
invariably treat the locals as being their inferiors (whilst
pretending not to), They are patronising and arrogant (whilst
pretending not to be).

They believe that they will be welcomed with open arms. In fact, very
few people are happy to have uninvited guests coming into their home
in order to tell them how to improve their life. So whilst the locals
show welcome and respect on the surface so as to get the free gifts,
they are jeered and laughed at behind their backs, and are considered
weak - fair game for theft and even rape. I have seen many a charity
worker enter a village preaching human equality and freedom, and leave
as a bigotted racist, angry at the "ungrateful bastards" she had come
to help.

Let's take a pretty straightforward bit of charity work. Providing
running water to a village. When the charity workers arrive, the
women and children are making a daily trek to a river two miles away
to fetch a heavy load of the day's water supply in pots and cans.
Terrible.

So in with a few miles of steel pipe, a corrogated iron shack near the
river, a Lister diesel engine, a pump and a prefab water tower.
Voila! A standpipe in the middle of the village where everyone can
get as much water as they want with no effort. Train a local or two
on how to start the Lister, and it's happy ever after.

Of course the villagers are happy. Smiles from the likkle kiddies.
Much celebration. The workers feeling that their skills are indeed
priceless, and they have a warm feelgood factor as they leave for
their next project.

So everyone wins, right?

No. There is often a heavy price to pay for that gesture of goodwill,
that bit of trivial engineering in the middle of an otherwise
non-technical village.

Right from day one, the social structure changes. No longer are the
women and children away for two or three hours every morning while the
menfolk socialise. The women nag their husbands. The men accuse the
women of being lazy. Not a terrible situation - but the change in
social balance is palpable. Someone takes charge of the standpipe and
becomes the local water-baron. The men who were taught to start and
perform basic maintainance on the Lister (with scant regard as to
their previous social standing in the village hierarchy) have acquired
power and demand respect. No respect, no water!

There is a surplus of water. No longer need it be carefully hoarded
through the day. The standpipe becomes a focal point for washing,
socialising and all sorts of other things previously done at the
riverside. There are permanent puddles of water around the tap.
Stagnant water in the tropics soon becomes the home of all sorts of
small organisms. Mosquito larvae. Bilharzia infected snails.

The village has changed - and not all the changes are good ones. And
if the system fails (as mechanical things are prone to do), the
villagers are worse off than they were before. Because it is often
better to have never had something at all than to have it for a while
and then get it taken away.