What Would You Do?

 A few days before Caleb left, our neighbor gave him this letter:

(Note: Among the many ethical quandaries I've been grappling with on this trip is the question of when to use people's actual names in these posts... the researcher in me is wary of identifying people who haven't consented to being characters in our blog.  We've referred to this neighbor by name before but I'm going to call her Valerie for now.  I'll continue to refer to some others, who are more like friends, by name.)

If you got this letter, what would you do?

Today I'm going to give you some (perhaps over-complicated) backstory.  In a day or two I'll share what we've actually done so far, and where we are now.  

As those who have been tracking our progress may know, the question of our purpose and role here is an ever-present and unresolved quandary.  For me, a couple of decades (almost) of international development work has left me humbled... I've seen how much work there is to do, and how hard it is to do things "right," and how often we (Westerners, academics, aid orgs) come in with our ideas about what is needed and what will help, without understanding or meaningfully engaging with the people (in this case, Rwandans of all classes) who actually have the expertise to know what they need and what might actually work.  These are generalizations and there are absolutely exceptions - organizations building strong partnerships, doing great work, and making real progress.  But without knowing a lot about Rwanda or the groups working here before we arrived, I've been wary of jumping in and "helping," and have been trying to prioritize meeting people and building relationships and gathering information before we act.  And for me, that has looked like doing what I do best: networking with other academics and researcher-types, and doing lots of thinky-thinky stuff like this business right here.

But that's me.  Unlike on prior trips to Africa, this time I brought a non-academic partner with a distinctly different disposition and problem-solving approach.  Caleb and I share a commitment to relationship building, but while my approach has been to network through work channels, Caleb just dives in and gets to work connecting with anyone we meet.  In our first house, there weren't many neighbors out and about, but he sat and had beers with some guys around the block one day, and went back to someone he met there to get a haircut.  On our safari, he connected with our guide, Anaclet, learned some more Kinyarwanda, and asked lots of questions to try and understand everything we were seeing as we toured the country.  Through golf, he's connected with a whole different segment of Rwandan society and learned a ton from lawyers and business people and the head of the freaking UN.  Here at our not-so-new-anymore house (sidenote: we've now been in this house for about a month and a half, and in Rwanda for 9 weeks!), we have MANY neighbors out and about, and Caleb has made a point of getting to know as many of them as possible.  "Valerie" lives on one side, and is the parent of 4 of the 15-20 kids who know us and flock to The Gate (and beloved Mr. Kalibu) when we are coming or going.  Caleb knows most of the kids' names and, through the language barrier, has done his best to forge connections with Valerie and a few of the other adults.  He bought some stools so he could pour himself a beer and sit outside The Gate and interact with the kids and be in the neighborhood.    

The problem, of course, is that as much as Caleb (and I) want to be able to just connect with our neighbors as people, there are some huge barriers to doing that.  One is language, and another is history (colonialism and its aftermath and the expectations of what "muzungus" like us are here to do), and another (closely related) is the enormous wealth gap between us and the obvious "we have and you don't" reality hanging over everything.  And so from the first day we arrived, our "chats" with people we've met here have often included requests for money.  And we've given small amounts... 500-1000 RFW (about 50 cents - 1 dollar) to people we've passed on the street or in front of our house.  While we've struggled a little with who to give/not give to, it's also felt easy to say yes: we have, and they need, and not giving feels hard to justify.  So we were kind of puttering along that way, giving a little here and there, and still trying to think about how to do more, and more effectively.

Back to wonky me: One line of anti-poverty work I've been intrigued by over the past few years, but haven't had much direct experience with myself, is something that academics and policy-types have given the overcomplicated name of "unconditional cash transfers," which actually just translates to "giving people money."  Here's one non-profit that's been doing this all over the world (including in the US), and several governments have also been trying this out.  It's closely related to the "universal basic income" concept, and the logic is mainly that one really good way to make people not-poor is to give them money.  Rather than picking one particular problem to solve (education, or food access, or water, or ...), the idea is to put the decision of where to spend into the hands of individuals facing varying challenges and allowing them to prioritize their investments.  It's an appealing idea to me, and is backed by some solid evidence.  During our safari, I was sharing this concept with Caleb and Ahya, and thinking about how we might give directly to our neighbors: this felt like a nice melding of my approach (science! research!) and Caleb's (real actual humans!!).

To explore this idea more, we hired a translator and were planning to talk with a few different people to assess what structures already exist and how we might work within those to develop our direct giving approach.  We had Joyce, the translator, join us at the house one day and chat with our house staff, Theo and Violetta.  We were supposed to meet the village head, but ran out of time in the days before Caleb left.  We had plans to have Joyce come back so we could talk with Valerie, and then the day before we had planned to have this conversation (which we hadn't told Valerie we were planning to do, because we couldn't communicate with her without a translator), she gave Caleb her letter, which she found someone to translate for her.  

So.  Now we're sitting with a real neighbor who needs and is asking us for help.  What would you do? (Vote in the comments.)

A. Give, unconditionally.

B. Give, with some conditions.

C. Don't give.

D. Gather more information before making a decision.

E. Give up, pack your bags, and go home.

What did we do?  Stay tuned to find out.