Petty Cynicism on the Mound

This rant extends the specific point that international development, as a paternalistic practice, mostly suits the purposes of those “helping”.

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I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ splendid “Baseball” documentary the past couple weeks, and it got me thinking about how baseball imbues our daily lives and how we think about the world. Some romantic passages of the film speak of baseball as a “perfect” game, the 90 feet between bases ideal, the three-strike count just right. I tend to smirk at how tradition has a way of seeming mythically idyllic, even if the origins of that tradition might have been rather arbitrary. Couldn’t we be saying the same thing about a four-strike count today, had it had the advantage of over 100 years of history on its side? Perhaps, but then again, there is a certain fairness to getting three tries, whether in baseball or in a vast array of other activities. Two is entirely too small; four just a little too much… In fact, people get three strikes when my petty cynicism is on the mound, which I believe is entirely fair, don’t you? As the following rant describes, Greg Alexander,* a consultant my company has hired to provide advisory services to the Supreme Audit Agency of Indonesia, has just struck out.

Strike One

Last week, Greg stopped by our office during his visit to the States just to say “hi.” My team, which provides administrative support for consultants like Greg, had arranged a meeting with him to introduce ourselves and catch up on all the fantastic work he had been doing in Indonesia for the past couple months. He had been entirely friendly over email and was pleasantly mild-mannered when we first met.

Meant only as an informal “hello,” our meeting was unstructured, and Greg took this opportunity to describe to us the “Baldridge framework,” the organizational management system he had been using to help the Supreme Audit Agency. I kept waiting for him to tell us why the Baldridge system was so amazingly effective, but I soon learned that this was a secret he was unwilling to share…even with those we are supposedly trying to help.

In the midst of his attempt to sell us on the Baldridge system, he mentioned that it had come to his attention while in Indonesia that a “local” had somehow learned the Baldridge framework and was attempting to teach it to various government ministries. I thought that was tremendous news: instead of sending some US expatriate out to Indonesia at $500 a day to pimp out what was likely a fairly simple and straightforward tool, an Indonesian could do it for far less money and probably with far more effectiveness, given his acclimation to the socio-cultural environment.

Apparently, my thinking did not coincide with Greg’s. Upon learning of this threat to the integrity of his own endeavor, he went to his contact in the government and told him that the Baldridge system was “his” job and that this other fellow should be removed from the scene. “Yeah, we got rid of him,” Greg stated, proud that he had maintained the sanctity of our collective mission to aid the Indonesian people. Whatever happened to teaching a man to fish?

Strike Two

Whatever I thought of Greg’s comments during our meeting, I was willing to give him a free pass, especially when he volunteered to fill out his own expense report, one of the most excruciating administrative tasks of all time. Then, I found out why he was being so kind: he was trying to pull a fast one.

After the end of his contract with us, he was supposed to fly home to the US from Jakarta, usually a two-day affair. Instead, he goes galavanting around on vacation for a week and then wants to charge us (after the end of his contract) for two “travel” days in Tokyo, where he had ended up at the conclusion of his adventures and where USAID’s per diem expense reimbursement rate is nearly twice that of what it pays in Jakarta. I can understand the logic of the higher reimbursement rate: Tokyo is much more expensive than Jakarta, but if you don’t have to go there as part of government business, then you shouldn’t be spending the government’s money there.

Despite that irksome milking of “the system,” I was willing to let it slide as an isolated and perhaps ignorant or accidental occurrence that ultimately cost only a few hundred bucks…until today, when he tried to pull the same shit again.

Strike Three

Because of some dragging feet over at USAID, Greg was being forced to leave the US for his second stint in Indonesia a day late. At first he seemed fine with this little mishap, but then his wife called us up today and railed on my co-worker, arguing that Greg was losing one of his seventy contractually-allotted days of work through this mix up. “What could he possibly need this extra day for?” I wondered momentarily, but the Baldridge system was still too mysterious to me to question it much; I assumed it really must take a lot of intensive work to implement, so maybe Greg really needs that 70th day.

When we suggested extending the end of his contract a day, she refused, explaining (understandably) that he needed to return home to be with his family for the holiday season. For a brief moment, I was won over by the insistence that Greg get out “in the field” as soon as possible; sure, there was an Indonesian already in Indonesia who might be able to do Greg’s job just as well as Greg could and for a lot less money, but at least Greg was ready to work hard and was anxious to get out to Indonesia quickly. It really was a shame that USAID had delayed this all by a day so–

–before I even had a chance to complete painting Greg’s portrait of martyrdom, he ruined it for himself. What’s that? You want us to arrange a layover in Hong Kong so you can spend Thursday exploring the city? How much is the per diem in Hong Kong? Why, it’s also about twice that of Jakarta. Yes, you will be able to get quite a sumptuous hotel for that amount of money. No, I don’t make the rules, Greg. Yes, have a great trip.

We paused for a moment after we got off the phone with him. Does he expect USAID, “Aid from the American people,” to actually pay for his extra day loitering around Hong Kong? Certainly he doesn’t! He couldn’t be that crass! This fellow is out to help Indonesia, to improve how their government runs with the revolutionary Baldridge framework! Of course he would not be in turn milking his own government’s system for all its worth. No way!

Let’s just send him an email…just in case. A “clarifiying” email, letting him know the “administrative details” of how his trip will be funded and “reiterating” our understanding of the situation.

We sent that email, and within five minutes his wife called our office, indignant with our refusal to fund his vacation day. “Why can’t he spend a day in Hong Kong? What is he going to do with that extra day in Jakarta?! Just sit around in a hotel?”

I guess that answers the question about how that 70th day would have been used.

*****

There’s a lot I don’t know about the circumstances surrounding the perhaps petty diatribe above. Maybe Greg works 80 hour weeks when he’s “in the field.” Maybe the Indonesian expert on the Baldridge system was a total fraud. Maybe Greg rightfully “deserves” a free vacation day in Hong Kong before engaging in his second endeavor to aid the people of Indonesia. Who am I to judge? In fact, I would undoubtedly pose that question and walk away from this little wrangling altogether were Greg a consultant in the traditional “business” sense of the word. Everyone can get theirs in the business world; if a Fortune-500 company wants to throw its money at someone, whether he’s earned it or not, that’s their business.

However, we’re dealing with the US (and Indonesian) government here. Neither is in the business of making lots of money and, especially in the field of international development, the problems we are confronting dwarf the scarce resources. Those resources ought to be used wisely, and, if we are going to insist on expending them on US expatriates instead of well-trained locals, can we at least use them for work and not play?

The whole approach USAID takes is backwards: instead of pumping up salaries to lure “quality” people away from business, it should spin its mission to its own people as much as it spins it to the rest of the world. It should be a rare honor and a privilege to represent your country abroad, not something that requires a “competitive benefits package” and that differentiates itself from an ordinary job only by the number of exotic locales you get to visit…but that’s the stuff of a whole separate rant. For now, one “international development professional” has struck out. Next batter.

* Greg Alexander is not his real name.

Do You Like Paternalism?

Originally written for a course called “The Colonial Encounter in Africa,” this thought-piece is a bitter diatribe against those of my peers who remained “idealistic” as I careened into the existential event known as the Lost Year… While not as haphazardly questioning as this essay, recent news stories from the BBC and NPR indicate this type of critique is “catching on,” and my personal experience in the field of international development has seen this sort of thing play itself out before my very eyes [17 August 2005].  Knowing what’s best for poor people is, after all, a part of the stuff white people like [5 January 2009].
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So far, the answer seems to be “no.” I think it is safe to say that most everyone agreed that people like Ray, Rhodes, and Lugard, who all deemed themselves the saviors of African life and who disguised their plans to extract labor and earn money with fluffy language of benevolence, were paternalist bastards. Nobody seemed to think the Christian missionaries were much better, who, with no respect for indigenous culture, attempted to convert African natives to the European way of seeing things under the guise of nobility and kindness. This week’s reading should not improve our picture much. Starting each chapter of The Road to Hell with quotes like “All domination involves invasion–at times physical and overt, at times camoflauged, with the invader assuming the role of a helping friend” and “Charity creates a multitude of sins,” Maren offers a scathing criticism of the paternalistic practice of foreign aid.

I began to question my stance as an anti-paternalist this past weekend, when I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was talking to one. A friend of mine was telling me about his work with the “Empowered Painters’”‘ project of North Philadelphia, and the more I heard about it, the more it sounded like the missionary project of colonialism and the “sustainable development” projects of today. Mind you, I certainly do not think they are all the same thing–”Empowered Painters” does not force anyone to do labor as in the colonial “development” projects nor does North Philadelphia see the massive genocides of Somalia, a recent recipient of substantial foreign aid, but the thought that my friend’s project is paternalistic has remained with me all week because it shares five basic qualities with other paternalistic programs.

1. Helping People: “Empowered Painters,” like all paternalisms, purports to help people. Lord Lugard saw his “civilizing mission” as the greatest gift anyone could give to the primitive and backwards Africans. Christian missionaries thought converting heathens through a “kind conversation” was a supreme benevolence. Save the Children, which Maren denounces, tugs at the heartstrings with televised requests for your coffee change to feed starving African children. And “Empowered Painters” seeks to alleviate poverty and destitution from Northern Philadelphia.
2. Superior Culture: he proponents of “Empowered Painters,” like all other paternalists, view their culture as superior to that of the people they seek to aid. I do need to remind you of the racism that supported the ideas of Lugard and his civilizing friends. Christians denounced the foul practices of cannibalism and tribal warfare they saw many natives practice. The development workers Maren describes were often confounded by Africans’ “laziness” and unwillingness to participate in such noble endeavors. My friend’s comments about how Hispanics in North Philadelphia have “no work ethic” are hauntingly familiar.
3. Limited Understanding of the Culture of Those “Helped”: The students involved in “Empowered Painters” also act without a complete understanding of the society they are trying to “help” with assumptions that are completely fabricated or misguided, much like their fellow paternalists. We all know that the racism that supported colonialism was based in ignorance and prejudice. In addition, once Western culture got to know “heathen” religious practices, it began to adopt some of them. Maren describes how, unbeknownst to most of the West, many of the children we see on TV are starving because of the dictatorial regimes aid supports. Moreover, being “lazy” is not necessarily a sign of an inferior culture; Hecht and Simone describe why one might not leap into the noble cause of development: “A response can be seen in a Sudanese adage: Sometimes it is better to play the fool, to look stupid in face of problematic realities than it its to know exactly what to do–for once one is committed to pursue a specific plan, he or she becomes blind to the fact that they may be really going nowhere” [35].  Not surprisingly, the “Empowered Painters” project was designed in an Urban Economics class with no input from the targeted community, and, once it gets started, it is also certainly possible that a significant chunk of this grant money or the proceeds fromthe painting might not end up actually developing the project or the community, instead ending up in the hands of a desperate city government.(1) The lack of “work ethic” among the Hispanics of North Philadelphia may not necessarily be explained by Sudanese proverbs, but it certainly does not mean that they do not understand work ethic or have never thought about working “responsibly” before.
4. Ultimately Supports Elites: Even when the paternalist realizes the fallacy of his claims, as with the actual Save the Children workers who clearly saw that the food for the starving was funneled to the elites, paternalism often continues because it benefits the paternalist, a quality that “Empowered Painters” also shares. As I have already stated and as Lugard himself admits, Europe stood to gain tremendously from its colonial policies in Africa. Christian missionaries were frequently more able than merchants to make a buck off natives. Even today, Maren describes how foreign “aid” is generally given, not to those countries in need, but to those countries that back the political agendas of the developed world, as was seen by the pattern of aid during the Cold War. Sometimes the benefits are more indirect; often the economic “progress” that is made in developing countries, such as the building of hotels, airports, and transportation systems, is useful mostly to aid workers (and the elites who own the projects) rather than the country itself. It is also pretty clear that “Empowered Painters” will be quite beneficial for those in the position of “aiding”; given that they know nothing about business management or painting right now, they will certainly learn an awful lot. In addition, as with the hotels in Nairobi, this project really only provides permanent aid to those who do not really need it: My friend explained to me that they will be painting the houses of “suburban ex-hippies.” Even if devoid of these economic benefits, paternalist will always have the benefit of feeling good about helping their fellow man. [2]
5. Dependency: “Empowered Painters,” like other forms of paternalism, can place the aided in a state of perpetual dependency, displacing real solutions, because they become accustomed to free gifts and because the generous do not want to lose their jobs or the benefits they reap from paternalism. We need only remember Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba to see how colonialism and Christianity worked hand in hand to create dependency: faced with arduous working conditions and miserable lives, where else would an African turn but to the outstretched arms of Christianity? Maren argues that aid workers today really don’t care if their projects don’t work very well because as soon as the project works, they are out of a job. Food aid to refugee camps not only displaced farmers who were already supporting themselves in rural Somalia, but also made the refugees dependent on the food aid as their source of livelihood. Finally, “Empowered Painters,” My friend admits, with its handsome grant supplements to boost worker wages, is likely to limit the development of other businesses in North Philadelphia, leading to dependency on aid to support the local economy. Thus, by virtue of it sharing so many traits with other projects of paternalism, it should be clear by now that the “Empowered Painters” project is paternalistic.

This conclusion leads us to certain implications for our actions. Whether you act out your own imposition of will and take our criticism to the proponents of “Empowered Painters” is your own business, but if we are to really take this conclusion to heart, we would follow the example of Maren. After realizing that foreign aid was paternalistic, he just give up on “helping” people who are so distant and incomprehensible. Other than himself, Maren’s examples of respectable individuals in The Road to Hell are few and far between. Maren paints even Chris Cassidy, who defies the corruption of the system to live in squalor side by side with his fellow man in Somalia, as a fool who loses everything, including his family, to pursue his paternalist dream. Here is a description of one of the few people Maren paints as admirable:

“One of the waiters working tables was Mohamed Aweis, a refugee from Mogadishu who had been in the United States for about two years. He paid little attention to the conference, didn’t really care what it was about, and just wanted everyone to leave the room so he could clean up and get home to his family” [277].

Aweis, as Maren seems to imply we all should do, sticks close to home and family, and minds his own business.

Unfortunately, if my plethora of discussions with some of you and many others are any indication, this type of action is a long time in coming. Not only has nobody that I’ve talked to been willing to come down against “Empowered Painters” on the issue of paternalism, but this class has had considerable difficulty criticizing itself on the same grounds as we criticize others who are distant in time, space, and culture. For example, a few weeks ago, Ben wondered if, despite all our criticism of colonialism, we ourselves would be “colonizing African minds” (and bodies, I might add) if we took a stance against genital mutilation. Similarly, I pointed out that the rally being held that day, despite its intent to protect the marginalized proponents of the IC, marginalized the idiots who desecrated it. Few of you, however, had any use for infinite cultural relativism, and Professor Burke argued that since the marginalized have seized power on this campus, it was time for them to do something with it. We never really finished the discussion of genital mutilation. It seems that we have drawn a line with colonization and marginalization, and I wager you will feel that we can do the same with paternalism. On one side of the line, these three phenomena should be done away with; on the other, they are permissible, even promotable. This line largely has to do with the extent to which the people we seek to help are “distant in time, space, and culture.” There is no doubt that present day North Philadelphia Hispanic Americans are closer to us than Somalians from the 1980’s or Tswana from the 1920’s in all respects. It is simply an issue of how similar one must be to us for us to presume to know how to help them. I continue to have reservations though, and I hope that we can revisit “the line” in class. In closing, I put forth a quote that has found its way to the email signature of Pat James, CIVIC Coordinator, which I am quite certain has tremendous relevance to this paper but frankly serves only to confuse me at this present moment:

“Such is the power of mindful, selfless generosity: at the deepest level there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient; only the universe rearranging itself.”

Notes

1. One need only look as far as Chester to see widespread corruption in the city government.
2. This point is extended by my brief experience in the practice of international development in 2005.