Friday's column: When saving the world gets complicated
I gave up on saving the world a long time ago, right about the time that the kids who didn't mind being poor got into one line at the career planning center and I got into another. But, in recent years, I'd begun to think I had a reasonable shot at making a difference in the lives of a few hundred children. Having lucked into finding a Chicago organization, Global Alliance for Africa, that identifies and supports community groups working with kids who've been orphaned by AIDS, I'd started to think of myself as one of those people who has a "calling."
Since my first visits to Kenya and Tanzania, where I met some of the extraordinary people who have taken it upon themselves to care for the growing legions of children whose parents have been lost to the AIDS pandemic, I've felt an overwhelming need to do something. Mostly, this has meant making donations and raising money.
These are extremely simple things, like writing a check to keep a preschool going because it's the only place where orphaned kids, being raised by foster and extended families with extremely limited resources, can be the first in line to get something to eat.
In the moment, such miniscule gestures are both easy and satisfying.
It's later, when the initial rush of do-gooder dopamine wears off, that things start to get complicated.
The saga of the stables
In June 2005, I happened to arrive in Kenya just a couple of days after heavy rains had caused a deadly mudslide in Mathare, a sprawling and shabbily constructed slum in the capital city of Nairobi. At the Good Samaritan Children's Home there -- where several dozen former street kids are cared for by their tireless and charismatic Auntie, Mercy Thuo -- flooding had destroyed the ramshackle stables where Mama Mercy and her charges kept pigs and goats.
The animals, an important source of nutrition and income for Good Samaritan, were slopping around unsteadily in the toxic muck created when rain and mud had deluged the unpaved streets of the slum, where open sewers run down every alley. So Mama Mercy rounded them up and herded them into the small, semi-enclosed courtyard of the children's home.
Though it seemed there was no other choice -- if left outside, the valuable animals could be injured, lost or stolen -- this was clearly not a good situation. The animals and the children were living virtually on top of one another and it seemed like only a matter of time before the kids started getting sick or hurt.
So Global Alliance for Africa quickly transferred money to Good Samaritan to get the stables rebuilt.
I returned to Nairobi that December, looking forward to seeing the new structure, which I'd been told would have concrete floors and a strong foundation. I showed up to visit Mama Mercy, hoping to get the grand tour. She'd rounded up a group of previously unemployed young men from the neighborhood and had set them to work on excavating the site and setting pillars for the foundation. It didn't seem like a lot of progress had been made. And the animals were still in the courtyard.
Meanwhile, some of the money originally intended for construction costs had gone, instead, to an architect who had helped Mama Mercy design a multistory complex that would include stables, retail shops and apartments. This new building, he estimated, would cost nearly a million dollars to build. But, she pointed out, it could also provide rental income to support and expand the children's home, as well as economic stimulation for a desperately poor area.
It was not the sort of project Global Alliance had in mind.
Still, no one wanted to fault Mama Mercy for thinking big. This is a woman, after all, who has pretty much single-handedly rescued hundreds of children who might have, quite literally, died without her.
So, after a long and rather awkward conversation with the Global Alliance staff, Mama Mercy agreed to put her dreams of real estate development on hold and focus on getting the animals out of the courtyard. She once again received money to rebuild the stables in keeping with the original plan.
Six months later, in June 2006, another group of volunteers went to visit her.
"Take some pictures of the new stables," I'd urged them before they left Chicago. But, when they arrived, there were still no stables.
So, what now?
What's the difference between being a generous and compassionate donor, one who understands that the real world is an imperfect place, and simply being, well, a sucker? How much control can you really expect to have once you send in your check?
Things get complicated when you're trying to save the world, or even just one tiny section of it. But you have to try, anyway.
Don't you?
