When I told people I was going to Portland, they understandably assumed it was for the coffee, the craft beer and the vineyards.
It wasn’t.
Last October I flew out to Rwanda with the intention of taking photos that would quickly change the world, establish me as an award winning photojournalist and transform the fate of an entire continent.
As it transpired, that didn’t happen.
Instead I found myself with a dynamic, quirky and brilliant team of Americans, many of who had travelled from Portland with an organisation called African Road, (Lead by a couple of brilliant, independent minded women, Kelly & Lori).
Unconventional on every front, it took hours rather than days to realize that they were onto something interesting:
They had formed genuine friendships with the people they were partnering with. Ongoing communication in person and via social media, mutual listening and support, engaging with each other’s lives they were finding ways to befriend and empower. They were consistently undermining the practice of a power relationship.
They had an understanding of what was going on locally. They were able to tell me of the cultural impact of the work that they were doing. They also understood that every small action had broad implications; If clothes were sent to East Africa and then used or resold this would undermine the market for local clothes, limiting economic growth in that sector.
If teachers were paid a ‘western’ wage rather than a local wage because it was seen as being too little, then suddenly no teacher would want to work anywhere else and no other school could afford to pay them. Increased pay was necessary but it needed to happen gradually & as a local initiative in line with the economy.
What has also always been apparent in my experience of visiting a majority world country is that as a white woman I represent something.
In other places I represent something too, race, gender and wealth inequality in various iterations, it’s present just a little less overt.
As a ‘Mzungu’ (white person) I might as well have had a dollar sign as a target on my back. For many I represent money.
I could have worn a trash bag and a dusty pair of flip flops and I would still have represented money, because of the way that generations before me have responded to systemic poverty and injustice across the world.
I was born in 1984, the year that the first Band-Aid single was recorded and released. In the 31 years that have passed, aid has been a dominant action by a minority, developed world.
We give.
There are myriad reasons for giving, many of which are healthy and good and some of which less so.
That we have wanted to respond to poverty and injustice is good.
That our method has had to be convenient and engaging for the giver is questionable. Giving well can be hard; because it doesn’t assume that money is the answer, and it doesn’t seek to quell the fierce guilt many people carry for an awkward colonial past.
I should know, I’m British.
Every time I go to a country where I am aware that we have had an historical hand in ongoing conflict, I want to walk around apologising, or finding a way to be anonymous.
I want to shrink because it feels as though if I do, then it will empower them.
“Here, have some of my money, privilege, power”
I’ve tried.
In an awkward British kind of way.
It doesn’t work, because I’m not being myself.
I can’t change my skin color & ethnicity so that I have less privilege to carry. I have to choose what to do with my privilege and my power and how I support greater equality.
Report after report, book after book; study after study has questioned both the impact and the motivation of aid.
There are those who’ve devoted their lives to the study of this, they have an intrinsically deeper and better understanding than I do, of the motivations and economic forces at play.
For me, in my simplicity, it boils down to this: That the giving of aid can reinforce that power structure between the haves and the have-nots. There are moments of desperation when aid is necessary, but it is not a sustainable solution.
So what do we do?
Giving up and eating an entire tub of chocolate/peanut butter ice cream seems like an entirely legitimate response to a challenge of this magnitude.
I was however fortunate to find another way. In my ambition to miraculously change the world through my self-proclaimed photographic genius, I met African Road.
They, this small charity, are doing the hard graft. They have over a number of years, built relationships with local leaders, influencers, visionaries. They ask difficult questions, sit down with them over dinner, meet their families and take time.
Then, when a suggestion is raised that will empower a community, will strengthen that muscle of self care and initiative, then and only then will they consider finding a donor to support.
Two brilliant examples of this:
- A friend who had lost all of his family in the Rwandan genocide, started a football match so that parentless children had somewhere to be, somewhere to interact. Now they have land and a school and pigs, thanks to generous support. Upon returning to ‘Togetherness’ the name of this kids cooperative, AR friends discovered that teenagers had independently set up a nursery for little kids who had nowhere to go. They charged a minimal fee to make it sustainable and ran it themselves.
This is the muscle of empowered action at work.
- The smallest ethnic people group in Burundi are the Batwa, only 1% of the population they are often the poorest and least educated. The reasons for this are complex, historical, nuanced, but by virtue of living off the land they have struggled for identity and rights. An MP called Evariste, one of only two Batwa to go to University has been advocating for his people for many years. African Road saw his work and his passion, befriended him and have encouraged him ever since.
African Road is investigating a new way of responding to systemic poverty in the majority world.
It’s about dignity and friendship and empowerment.
And it’s turning charity on its head.
by Katie Garner