Altering the Status Quo: Thoughts on Africa and Nepal

13Sep10

Altering the Status Quo: Thoughts on Africa and Nepal
Elliott Verreault
September 11^th 2010

I thought I was finished with my trip, so called WorldTour2010, done talking about it, done posting pictures, uploading videos online… But now I realize I have yet to close the books. This summer has definitely been amazing. Truly, I am thankful for the opportunities I was given and the encounters I have had. It’s been a 4-month trip day for day. I think what made it rather difficult psychologically is the fact that the “assignments” or the legs of the trips were always very intense and fairly short, jumping from one to another, leaving me with no time to meditate on each experience I had been blessed with.

I came back to Canada on the 30^th of August and the next day my host family was coming in from Japan for a week to visit. I would take them everywhere during the day, taking the role of a live interpreter  as well. Then they would go to sleep sometime late in the evening and I would start working on ItsOneHumanity until 4, 5 am, only to wake up a few hours later to start again. It’s been amazing to have them home, but the many things happening kept me from isolating myself and thinking about what exactly had happened to me in the past 4 months.

I now recognize I do have to write, I do have to talk about it more.

It goes back to late April, when I finished my exams at Bishop’s and hopped on a plane with a backpack, headed for east Africa. I had been brought to Tanzania, a place on Earth where one can find the prettiest kids… my kids. There I was, working as a volunteer, teaching English and Math to a class of 3 to 5 year olds. To the outside world, I was working in an orphanage, but in Tanzania, I was a teacher. The word “orphan” has a bad stigma inside Tanzania so they refrain from using it, referring to it not as an “orphanage” but rather as a “school.” One would expect to arrive to textbooks and everything, helping out the teacher to give the day’s lesson. But it’s no such luxury. School supplies were scarce in every way. I remember replacing a fellow volunteer who hadn’t shown up one day in her class (the one with the older kids), I didn’t want to interrupt the ongoing lesson, so I just stood in the corner and helped the kids do their multiplications once the teacher was done explaining. The kids would break their pencil lead all the time, I spent all morning sharpening pencils with no success. The kids would look at me waiting to get it back while I was struggling to make it work. Was it because of the overused sharpener or because of the low-quality, also overused pencils, I don’t know but I felt terrible not being able to return it back to the kid in better shape than when he or she gave it to me. The material side is one thing (supplies, etc) but what made me worry about the future of the kids the most was the quality of education itself. I remember leaving the orphanage feeling helpless, wondering if any of these kids would have a bright future ahead. It made me feel or rather realize how much we take education for granted back home too. Most kids back home don’t like going to school. Yet for them, school is everything…

I remember a professor of mine telling me, looking at pictures, “but they don’t look so bad, they look so proper, their clothes are nice.” The truth is that’s all they have. They would have the same outfit everyday. One kid, Rachael, came to me once over the break. She had been playing with a skipping rope quite intensively – she was probably one of the best amongst everyone at Nelito – she showed me her left foot. The sole of her shoe had torn up, hanging at the back. She came to me, poking me at the waist, asking me to do something about it. Yet, I didn’t have anything to give her. I think I turned to one of the teachers asking if they had another pair for her or something but they didn’t bother. Rachael looked at me, saddened. She turned around, tore the whole thing away and went back to play with one foot literally touching the ground through the shoe (I felt bad at the time, but I had yet to realize that a child with shoes in countryside Nepal was a rare sight).

The kids of the orphanage are not alone though, thankfully. The concept of family in east Africa tends to be very large and quite inclusive. The orphans, whom their real parents died of HIV/AIDS, now stay at their uncle’s or aunt’s. They have shelter, they are fed. But you can tell they probably don’t have all the attention and the love they would be getting should their real parents still be around. Although I did feel powerless about their education and their future in that sense, I did feel like I made a difference in their lives when we played outside, in-between the lessons. Be it just looking at them when they ask for attention and want someone to see them skip the rope over twenty times or carry them around over my shoulders or walking hand in hand to the main road after school, their smiles , the warmth of their hand, the purity of their laughter… all of this spoke to me and reminded me that my being there actually meant something to them. I miss them very much now when I think of it. Going over photos just now reminds me of their energy. I was blessed to meet such beautiful kids.

…

Tanzania was not all beautiful though. Safety was a big concern. We were told by the organization taking care of us that we couldn’t go out past seven thirty at night because it was too dangerous. I never felt so trapped in my life before. We would go out by cab somewhere for a beer sometimes, that would be fine. But sometimes we wouldn’t. We would be in the small living room of the small house where we stayed at, trapped in a box. That was really hard for me at first. It makes one realize how much we take that freedom for granted back home. Being able to walk around at night and feel safe, was just such an amazing feeling when I got to Spain a month later. Safety is a common good that should be accessible to all. But why not in Tanzania? The answer probably lies in the fact that it’s one of the poorest nations in the world. There’s always a reason behind everything. That’s how I approached everything during my time in both Tanzania and Nepal. One of my volunteer friends got her camera stolen in town, she had it around her neck and some guy came over and pulled like crazy three times until she took it off her neck to hand it over, in pain and scared. Another walked to her placement one morning with her iPod on, she got hit in the face and got her stuff stolen. It would be easy in such situations to conclude that people in Tanzania are crazy, savage and what not, but it isn’t the case. Picture yourself as the father of a poor family of four. You have three mouths to feed, you struggle to make ends meet and to provide for your family. They might be ill, dying of something curable but you lack money to pay for treatment or medicine… Then, all of a sudden you see a year’s worth of income walk by you. The question is what do you do? Easy to say no, but I bet that guy had all the reasons in the world in his mind to do what he did. One needs to go to the very source of the problem. And if you look for it you’ll find that it is poverty. Why is Tanzania a poor country? How is it to lift itself out of it? I don’t know… As I write this, I can’t help but think about the quality of education my kids at the orphanage were getting. I don’t think it helps.

It’s sad to think we have so much here and they have so little there. We’re not in the 15^th century anymore, we know what the world is like, we know how it’s like for people in those countries. We know we’re all the same human, living beings. We only look different on the surface. Yet, we still think of the world as a collection of distinct, divided, independent nations and peoples. If one fares good, all the better, if one struggles, “meh, good luck with it.” That’s it. Am I the only one annoyed by this? I’d like to see more equality in the world. Sometimes I think that nothing can be done until we have some kind of supra-national entity having real effective power and making policy in that direction. You would think the UN to be that entity, but the truth is that it isn’t. The UN serves national “clients” and is funded, hence controlled by a few of the more powerful ones. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the core principles of the UN, so much that every time I see its flag I always think to myself “that’s my flag.” But I would like it to work, to really lead the game.

Sometimes my argument turns into that of a world government. That’s what I’m saying in a sense, some kind of supra-national body, being more powerful than the national parties. But that’s where the question of leadership becomes difficult, or rather scary. How do you prevent corruption on a global scale if we already struggle on a national scale. Global democracy? Billions of voters? Hard to tell whether that’s doable or not. Sometimes I really think democracy is not the answer anyways. I might shock a few but really sometimes I hate the short-term “let us get re-elected” vs. the long-term “let’s make meaningful change” blatant imbalance. Monarchy? It works when it works…! But the risks are way too high. Aristocracy? Who do we pick? A brochette of the world’s best philosophers, spiritual leaders, the enlightened ones would probably lead us somewhere good in the long run. How do we pick them, how to we prevent abuse, corruption? I had a talk with my host in Switzerland about this when I was there and he shared with me his idea of having people vote for anyone in the country, not just the ones who run for election (those are often driven by self interests) and then you have someone knock on the door of the one person with the most votes saying something like “You have been asked by your peers to lead them and run government, do you accept to serve them truthfully?” Hehe! You can laugh, but when you think of it, it’s not that bad of an idea.

All this to say that sometimes I think many places in the world, many people in the world could have so much better conditions if richer countries decided to pour in for real. Hugh Evans of the Global Poverty Project put it bluntly at the “1.4 billion reasons presentation” I had the honour to assist in London earlier this year. 21.5 billion dollars had been promised to eradicate extreme poverty, halve it by 2015 under the UN Millennium Development Goals. Only $7.1 billion have been delivered to this day – world leaders saying they can’t afford to support the world’s poorest nations anymore. Yet the very same people spent as much as $8.5 trillion to bail out failing banks just a few months back. It’s obvious that money is not the issue, nor is food or resources the issue. It’s really a matter of political will. Global unity, connected consciousness…

On a more personal note, I would like my kids in Tanzania to have just as much opportunities as the kids in Canada, or anywhere else do. I’m sure many other places in Africa and elsewhere are just as rich as Tanzania is in smiles, laughter and hope. They deserve the same too.

…

That brings me to talk a little about Nepal, where I volunteered in community development. There was a bit more than a month between the time I left Tanzania and the time I entered Nepal. It was quite a contrast to move from east Africa to Europe at first. I remember landing in Amsterdam where I transferred to go to Spain right after Tanzania. I was just shocked to see so much wealth around me. Even just thinking back, the contrast is so strong it makes me feel bad. I had the same experience but in reverse a month later, flying out of picture-perfect, rich and clean Geneva to land in Kathmandu was also quite a contrast. I remember seeing the shacks from the plane coming in. It’s crazy to think that it can be such a different world just a few hours away…

It’s funny because one would say I moved into poverty leaving Geneva for Nepal and I did in some sense, but really what is poverty? We always think of poverty in monetary terms. It makes sense because back home, in the West or in the developed countries in general, without money, you can’t go far. How are you going to pay for your rent, your food, etc? When I was in the capital, in Kathmandu, the noisiest of cities, you could really feel poverty. People struggling, selling trinkets for a living, children begging, the dirty streets, the overall mess… I remember seeing one 10 year-old kid carrying so much garbage on his back, struggling to keep his balance as he was dashing through the streets of Thamel, the touristy area. I couldn’t believe it… Working so hard at such a young age… But when I was in my village, I couldn’t feel that as much. My host family was not the poorest, it was fairly higher caste, but it was not rich by any means. They struggled to pay for tuition for my brother and sister, that’s a given, but they weren’t begging, nor were they starving. They had their own rice field, their own cow, their house. Not only were they self-sufficient, they were part and parcel of the Dadagaun village, a small but tight community where everyone cares for each other. Other than from the occasional football games where the guys would play for a little bit of money, you would hardly see people pay for anything. Hardly any stores around or anything. Life in the village was so different from what it was like in Kathmandu. Yet all the young ones of the village would leave at five in the morning for the capital where they would attend classes (high-school, university, or even masters level). Why? Because they want to be better off, because education is valued I guess. If I were in their position I would probably still go as well. I would probably, just like them, aspire for more. One would say this is fine, Nepal needs more educated people to develop, but the sad part and the truth is that they’re all leaving. I was once told by someone within the organization I worked for, “there are only two jobs in Nepal, either you study, or you teach.” Walking around Kathmandu, it’s hard to let all the “Study in the UK”, “Study in the US” signs go unnoticed. Nepal has a massive brain drain problem.  All the bright kids end up leaving the country. It’s fine to have a great portion of your country’s youth go abroad to get a good education and come back to help develop the country but most simply do not come back. If you’re good, you pass the exams and you end up in some nice place like the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, or even Japan, South Korea, etc, you make some money and send remittances. If you can’t make it to the nice places, you go to India. There’s a reason why everybody leaves though. There are no jobs in Nepal. Why? Political instability most likely. Nepal hasn’t had a stable government since the monarchy was abolished and that doesn’t help to attract foreign direct investment. Neighbouring India probably puts Nepal in the shade with its English-speaking, well educated population as well… In any case it is sad to see. I’ve had the pleasure to meet a fellow OneYoungWorld ambassador when I was there. He told me he wanted to go study in the states and come back to help put his country back on its feet. Not everyone has such good intentions unfortunately. My brother in my host family will probably soon be part of the group of those who leave for good and just send money back. His dad left when he was younger, leaving him, the elder son, with the responsibility of taking care of the family. He worked in a temple for money for a while, but stopped when he realized it was negatively influencing his studies. He had just started a masters programme in business studies when I arrived. Who’s paying for it? The cousin living in Australia who’s sending money back once in a while. He was telling me that he needs to finish his masters, pass the exams to go study in the UK, or Canada and start sending money back as soon as possible. I was shocked, listening to him talking about his duty as the elder son. Being both the same age, we really connected – I really thought of him as a brother when I was there, I still do now – but really, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t help but think that it’s just so much weight on his shoulders, and he’s only 21 too. It reminds me of what I talked about earlier in the part on Tanzania. So many things seem easy to categorize as bad and even destructive in the long-run but when you put yourself in the shoes of the human being living it, you realize sometimes you don’t have that freedom of choice and then what seems completely illogical or immoral on the greater scale makes every bit of sense in the world on the individual level. It’s just the same as the story of this girl getting beaten up in Tanzania for her iPod. However bad and immoral it was, on the individual level, the guy who hit her and stole it probably had all the reasons in the world to do what he did. Whatever it is, we need to dig deeper and solve the problem at the source. The problem we see on the surface is just a consequence of something else much deeper. That’s what eastern medicine practitioners will tell you and it really applies for everything.

…

Another thing that struck me in Nepal is the caste system. I had read and heard much about it. I understood it intellectually but being there and seeing it live at play was something. It’s as if I had known about it all this time thinking it didn’t really exists. But it does. It’s crazy. My project was to build toilets for the low caste families in the Jitpurphedi village. Walking down from my house to the projects only took three minutes or so, but it was a totally different world down there. From the Devkota (where I lived) to the Balami caste (where I worked), what a contrast it was. You would see very young kids completely naked, one kid with a swollen penis (infection from poor hygiene I imagine), another with a over-swollen belly, etc. You could tell many of them needed medical treatment, but that costs money and it’s far away. I had talks with my host brother on this. It’s crazy, you’re born in poverty and you die in poverty, you’re stuck in it, it says it in your name. I would ask my brother if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing, he said “I think it’s a bad thing.” The people seem to realize it’s not good, but because it’s so solidly rooted in the culture, it’s hard to change it. It makes me realize that even with all the foreign aid in the world, poverty cannot be eradicated unless there is some kind of education programme put in place to change the way people think and ultimately promote equality between people in places like Nepal. Would it ever change though? That’s one larger question.

At this point, I don’t know if it’s just because it’s late as I’m writing this but I do feel overwhelmed. It seems like there’s just so much on our plate. But we can’t change everything in one day. I had a nice talk with Bhupi, the founder of the NGO I worked for in Nepal. He shared with me his aspirations, what he wishes to see change in his country. He founded VIN (the name of the NGO) back in 2005 and since then it has focused only on one area, Jitpurphedi, aiming at integrative development (meaning not just working for better education in the community alone but better education alongside better health, better hygiene, greater women’s empowerment, etc.). Their plans for the area go up to 2012, he told me that they want to show that they can make a real difference, change that place for the better in all respects and then move to the next project area, hopefully replicating the same successful recipe where it applies and adapting where it doesn’t. I was only there for a month. I couldn’t change Nepal very much. But I do think I made a difference in the lives of the people there. I remember this one kid who was helping us with laying the bricks and cementing the walls. He said something in Nepali looking at me smiling. I didn’t understand but his older brother turned to me, pointed at him, searched for the right English word in his mind for a few seconds and then said “grateful.” It was heart-warming in every way, and it felt amazingly good. The crazy thing is that we weren’t even building a toilet for his house, but for that of the neighbours at the time. Despite that, he was happy, happy that the village was changing for the better. I think he was full of hope that soon his house was going to be have one too.

You really can’t change the whole country in a month, but you can give hope, make people believe in the future through concrete actions however small they may be. What I did when I was there was by no means extraordinary. My actions were small, but they were tangible and they still mean something today. The toilets I built are still standing to this day. Thinking about that makes me feel good about what I did. My actions were by no means large, but they were concrete, a part and parcel of a larger change led by themselves. I am happy to have been able to help. I can’t change the world in a month, but through small actions I can show that the status quo can be altered, and feed hope and inspiration for both the local people and myself.

Now that… is something I can do.

Elliott

Advertisement

Filed under: Humanity, Travel, WORLD TOUR 2010   |  6 Comments
Tags: Emotions, Experiences, Process, Thoughts, Travel, WorldTour2010