Poverty Porn

In looking for other blogs on related topics (at the advice of my blog guru Ellen, who blogs about her adventures in India on A Reason to Write - India), I came across the blog of Owen, of Owen Abroad.  In it he writes this:
If you want to raise money for international development you will eventually encounter a dilemma. You want potential donors to be interested in their fellow human beings and to feel a connection with the people they are helping. You know that you will raise more money, and sustain a longer-term relationship with your donors if they are getting constant feedback about the people they are helping and the difference your programme is making. Your communications team tells you that statistics are not enough: you need “human interest” stories about individual lives. You need photographs and life stories.

And goes on to describe the result of the above as "poverty porn."  I need to chew on that a while, but while I understand what he's talking about and why it's exploitative, I wonder about things like donor sustainability.  I have heard it said that it is relatively easy to get people to donate intially to projects like the CRC in Africa - but what is really hard is to sustain it for the long haul.  Sustainability is critical in a human institution.  How tragic would it be if the US-based donors lost interest (or moved on to any one of a billion other equally worthy causes) and left these children to their own devices after having supported them thus far? 

I get that we don't want to perpetuate the "poverty porn" of pictures and words about destitute children languishing without your dollars to ease their burdens, but if we are brutally honest with ourselves it is hard to send money into a void without some sense of where it going, what it is doing and whose lives it is affecting.  Is it really that people want to see picture after picture of suffering?  Or is it about wanting a human connection for the gesture? 

There was a piece in the Washington Post Magazine this past Sunday about human beings' ability to comprehend suffering on a large scale.  Shankar Vedantam explains that we just aren't capable of comprehending on a visceral level the difference between donating to help 2000 vs. 20,000.  Either seems to big to be meaningful.  We much prefer to help the one. 

But I think it's more than that.  I think, at the end of the day, we also just want to be in relationship with each other.  I want the money I donate to Africa or Haiti or AIDS research to go where it is most needed, but I also want to know that the money is having an impact on a real human life, a real person living and breathing in the world.  I am much more likely to keep sending money if I know that my money is going into a fund that pays for Hawa's school tuition, that buys cassava for Albert's dinner, that enables Sallay to receive vitamins.  Is it wrong for me to want to know that my donation has an impact on a real human being?  How can we foster that connection; be in relationship with one another across oceans and miles and cultures in a way that is not exploitative?

Through Students's Eyes

When I traveled to Bo to teach Summer School last summer, I was given the opportunity to invite six of the CRC students to participate in a grant my new boss was writing connected to a project he was a part of in Cleveland.  The project is called Through Students' Eyes, and seeks to connect high school and middle school students in various parts of the country in an effort to have them document through photographs and writing what education means to them.  The inclusion of six CRC kids meant that we would be able to connect kids in Cleveland, VA and Sierra Leone through a website so that they could share their images and writing with one another.  We're curious what similarities and differences we find between the educational experiences of kids in inner city Cleveland, upper middle class Fairfax county, and West Africa.

Through the grant, I was able to travel to Bo in July with six point-and-shoot digital cameras.  Only four made the journey (theft is a common problem en route to Bo, and two of our cameras disappeared from our luggage between Heathrow and Freetown), but my six intrepid photographers just shared the equipment.  A fellow missionary (Brian) and I followed the kids around while they snapped pictures for several hours during the course of our time there, and then the kids wrote about their two favorite images.  The kids at the CRC often get a chance to play with the cameras of missionaries who travel there, but they don't have as much access to this kind of technology as their American peers.  The images they took are amazing, especially when you consider that they have more limited contact with cameras than kids in America:

Abu-Bakarr Jalloh, TSE photographer

Albert Lawundeh, TSE photographer

Alfreda Humper, TSE photographer

Joseph Bomorie, TSE photographer

Rosa Saffa, TSE Photographer

Suma Thamu, TSE photographer

Part of the grant is that the kids get to keep the cameras.  They'll get a small stipend as well, which will go into their respective college/post-secondary funds.  Their work will also be published - in some format chosen by them, but also as a part of an exhibit where their photography and writing will be displayed for the public.  They'll each get to select one image to be professionally printed and framed for display.  The first exhibit will take place April 10 -11 at the historic Old Stone Church in Cleveland, OH.  My kids won't be able to make the trip, but I'm hoping to go in their place, and to videotape the presentation of their first public exhibit.

What an amazing opportunity for these kids to get published in a real and public way, and for people with no idea what life is like on the other side of the world to see it through their eyes!  Thanks again, Kristien - for allowing me to be a part of this!

Bedtime in Bo

Bedtime at the CRC is one of the best times of the day for teams that travel there - and no, I'm not talking about finally falling into bed at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) after a long day of working hard (although that has it's merit too)! One of the traditions for teams traveling to Bo is that we get to spend the last hours of the day with the children, reading them stories and then listening to them sing before they go off to their own beds.

Usually teams split up - sometimes along gender lines, but sometimes not, and visit with the children in the common rooms or lounges in their respective dorms. The children crowd in, sitting on the tables, arms of the couches and each others' or missionaries' laps and listen to stories (or tell them). And finally, as we wrap up, they sing.

Africans harmonize differently than Americans, and when they sing, they sing loudly and with conviction. It's hard not to be moved no matter what they sing, but most of the missionaries who travel to the CRC are most moved by a song called "Reconciliation Song". Part of the Peace and Reconciliation Movement, the song reflects the terrible civil war that tore Sierra Leone apart, and how in the wake of all of that, it is the mandate of God that we forgive those who have committed atrocities against us.

If you know of Sierra Leone's war at all, and what these children suffered at the hands of the RUF, and then you hear them sing this song at the top of their voices with passion and conviction, then you get to witness the true redemptive power of forgiveness. If you've ever seen the film Blood Diamond, or read Ishmael Beah's book, A Long Way Gone, you'll have some small idea of what these children have lived through and survived. It is one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had in my life. The first time I heard the girls sing this song (the boys sing it too, but my first time was in the girls' dorm), I couldn't breathe. These children have witnessed the very depths of human depravity; the worst that human beings have to offer....and yet, they have the power to forgive.

Here is a link to a video of the girls singing the Reconciliation Song. Don't pay attention to the video part - it was shot with a video camera, but you can't see anything (Africa at night is DARK). But listen to it. Below are the lyrics:

They are moving

The Angels of place and reconciliation are moving the gospel (soldiers)

We want peace, we want love, and reconciliation

Brethren, let's love one another for this is the commandment God gave us.

Yes we know and we that our leader have really wronged us

For they have killed our fathers, killed our mothers

for they have destroyed all our resources and yet still oh my brethren

Le's forgive, we just have to do it,

for its a command that is given by God

Everyday we sin and God forgives

They are moving (repeat chorus)

Yes we know and we know

that prayer is the only key

How can we serve God and Man -

When God is a jealous God?

Let's forgive, we just have to do it

for its a command that is given by God,

Everyday we sin and God forgives

Well, that puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

Out of the Box

The first time I went to Bo, I wasn't sure how I'd do. Most of my friends and family weren't sure how I'd do. I'm really more of a Hilton or Marriot girl than I am a camping kind of girl. I like my creature comforts. I like them to be nicer than average. I'm a 700 thread count kind of girl.


However, I like to be a little bit off-balance. I'm learned about myself that I learn better if I'm slightly uncomfortable. I like to be pushed a little. So okay - traveling to a third-world country might be a little more than slightly off-balance, and I was pretty nervous about that the first time around. One of the best aspects of that first trip was that I learned something new about myself - and I adjusted to the non-Hilton aspects of the trip a lot quicker than I had expected to. And the truth is, the MTC - the dormitory where missionaries stay when visitng Mercy or the CRC, is hardly roughing it. Tommy and Fudea, the caretaker and cook respectively, take such good care of us that I wind up feeling quite spoiled.

And yet, it's not the difference in how we live when we're at the CRC that pushes me out of my box - not anymore, and it's deeper than just that I'm in a foreign culture (although that is certainly a different box than I'm used to). It's more that every time I've been to Bo, whatever it is I think brought me there turns out to be not the real reason I'm there at all. I have good reasons to go - teach summer school, for example - but both times I've been I've realized fairly quickly that my agenda is extremely minor. Irrelevant even. In Bo, I'm so far out of my box that I don't even know what I'm about to learn - I can't help but just be open to whatever the experience is going to be. I don't live that way normally; not at all. I'm a planner. I love routines and I hate surprises, and in Bo, the only thing you can count on is that your plans will change, nothing will be routine and it's all a surprise. And I can't wait to go back.

Preparing

I'm not sure exactly how to begin this blog, since for me, this journey is not really beginning. It's actually more of a continuation that began seven years ago when I agreed to become the chair of the education committee of the Child Rescue Centre Partnership without really knowing what that would mean, and how it would transform and enrich my life.

The Child Rescue Centre, for those of you who don't know of it, is a 70-child resident orphanage located in Bo, Sierra Leone. The CRC provides safety and nurturing to these children, and my role as the chair of education is to do my best to ensure that they receive the best education possible so that they can grow up and become the future leaders of their nation. You can find out more about the CRC here.

In less than two months, I will be making the journey back to Bo, the second largest "city" (I put "city" in quotes because by American standards, it would probably more accurately be described as "village" or "wide place in the road"). This will be my third trip to Bo, and my first as the leader of an 8 person team. It will also be the first time I'll get a chance to observe in the classrooms and schools attended by our resident orphans, and the first time I'll travel to Bo with a student of my own; a GMU senior earning three credit hours for her work with me in Bo and in the months leading up to and following our trip.

As my student's instructor, I'm charged with giving and grading assignments. One of the things I'm requiring of her is writing a regular blog about her experiences related to this trip. In the spirit of never asking a student to do something you're not willing to do yourself, I'm also planning to keep my own blog.