More on helping out

written Sunday, 10 June 2007

Several people have written to me essentially saying of course I should help out the people here by giving them money, or medicine, or whatever, whenever I can. How could I not be sure that it is a good thing to do? So I wanted to write a little more about why I think it is not such a simple issue.

Since coming to Senegal, the other volunteers and I have experienced, to varying degrees, the problem of being perceived and treated merely as rich toubabs, as possible sources of gifts and money, rather than as real people. For example, when I go on a bike ride, in every village I pass children will run out of their compounds and chase after me, yelling, "Toubab! Give me a present!" or "Give me money!" Other volunteers have told me that even their host families, who are supposed to treat them as members of the family, treat them instead just as a source of income, constantly demanding payment for everything they do for the volunteer - meals, laundry, getting water from the well, etc. Some volunteers have even had their families give them "gifts" of Senegalese clothes and then demand exorbitant amounts of money as payment for them.

This may seem like silly little things, which we shouldn't be bothered by. But it is very hard to "integrate" into a community and to try to make friends when it seems that everyone is out to see what they can get out of you. Imagine trying to make friends, but every time someone is nice to you or does something for you they demand payment or presents immediately after, so you end up feeling like all your interactions with peoople are nothing more than commercial transactions. It's very discouraging. (I want to be fair, though, and say that both my host families have been great and treat me like a real person rather than like a pot of money, except for the one sister I mentioned in an earlier post). But I think this struggle to be perceived and treated as a person rather than a source of money and gifts is one of the hardest parts of living here (contrary to what I thought before coming here - the lack of electricity, running water, etc isn't a big deal at all).

So not wanting to undermine my efforts to be treated as a person is one reason for my hesitancy to "help out" my family and community members with money and gifts. The other reason is that I want to combat, rather than contribute to, people's mindset here of dependency.

On a large scale, this mindset can be illustrated by a conversation I had with a village man recently, in which he told me that Africa's problems are too big for Africa to solve. America and Europe must come and solve the problems here; there is essentially nothing that Africans can do to help themselves, he said.

On a smaller scale, this translates into my villagers having no answer for what they want to do with their lives or what they might do to improve their standard of living other than to emigrate to America or Europe. And the community as a whole fails to take steps to improve things here, such as doing what is needed to build and staff a health hut in the village, because they are hoping that an American or European NGO, (or maybe me, their Peace Corps volunteer), will come along and do it for them. And in the meantime, they go without.

So "helping out" isn't such a simple question of doing what I can afford or am generous enough to do. It affects my relationships with people, with generosity not necessarily having a positive impact on the relationship, and it has an impact on the way people make choices and plans here. Now that I gave my friend money so that his wife could go to the doctor, will he expect that I will pay for all his family's medical expenses while I am herer, and therefore make no effort to save the money himself and spend all the money he gets on cigarettes instead? I don't know.