Where altruism lies

I wonder what other people see when they look at international crisis and relief videos like the ones I just posted. Video is effective in disseminating information, and so I include what I believe are better documentaries. But the medium can also foster a certain misconception that makes me uncomfortable; a type of hubris I would very much like to address.


Seeing People
Back in the 1980s, there was a prolific ad campaign requesting aid for for relief efforts in Ethiopia. The country was enduring a severe famine, and these ads portrayed dark toddlers with enormous staring eyes, ribs standing out like trellises above their swollen bellies.

Even as a kid, those ads drove me crazy. Yes, I wanted to share my 50 cent-per-week allowance. But there was something both alienating and dehumanizing about these images. On reflection, I was probably angry that the clips relied on deliberate emotional manipulation to part me from something of value. But more than that, I don't like the way these ads make relief recipients seem less like people and more like ... I don't know. Cows. Mute. Helpless. Needy. Personally ineffective.

These are not the Africans I know, and I have met a range. Scopas Poggo, Jok Madut Jok, Ali B. Dinar, Beniah Yongo-Bure, Lako Tongun, Stanley Einstein Matthews ... and those are just the professors! I'm not counting priests, social workers, entrepreneurs, doctors, or environmentalists. I haven't spoken about those who returned home, the relief workers. I'm not talking about the revolutionaries or the intellectuals who have been imprisoned for trying to make their country a safer place. And I'm not talking about the ordinary people, either; the mothers who work three jobs to send their children to school, the fathers struggling to keep their families housed in a discriminatory environment, the students who are working to put themselves through university ...

When I think about people from east Africa, I do not think about feeble, weak individuals that the world should blindly pity. Many of these people are decently educated by Western standards. Others have no formal training but are sensitive to the environment and to family life in ways that we here in the United States are just starting to learn. These are respectable, emotionally complex, multifaceted individuals who are unfortunately besieged by political conflict; conflict fomented by poorly planned state boundaries and ethnic tension. I am confident that many war victims will make something of their lives regardless of their dire circumstances, with or without foreign assistance.

Perhaps, as the daughter of a successful refugee, I am overly optimistic. But I remember being struck by the amount of laughter at my first Sudanese Studies Association conference last year. Here were northerners and southerners, Muslims and Christians, men and women, emigrants and Sudanese, all sitting together discussing conflict resolution. They might have disagreed with one another about various topics -- sometimes vehemently so -- but they were still able to go dancing together after the talks were over. As one gentleman from Khartoum explained, these troubles are like a block of ice. They will melt away. So we tell ourselves in order to survive.

So to me, any "oh, let me save these poor souls" attitude seems condescending and flatly offensive. A million times better, in my opinion, to think "let me help these people manage their circumstances."


You DO Have an Effect
It is undeniable that many east Africans face enormous social and political obstacles to living in stable environments. But here in the United States, as in many different countries, we can help alleviate those problems without sending troops, or even large sums of money. We can support acknowledgment of political crises on an international level, and that acknowledgement will enable future redress of grievances. We can trade and form alliances with governments who treat their people in accordance with basic international standards of decency, and enforce sanctions on governments that do not. We can open student exchange programs and internships. We can write comparative policy reports and advise capacity building. We can offer microloans, we can send doctors, we can send engineers. We can distribute STD information packets with birth control. We can teach neighbors to host community forums for conflict resolution. Maybe we can even expedite immigration for refugees from countries going through recognized conflict.

On an individual level, we can support intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations like the UNICEF and Human Rights Watch that are already engaging in such activities. We can write to our politicians whenever foreign aid is reduced, or when the United States hasn't acknowledged conflict abroad. We can volunteer for larger organizations, or we can donate directly to institutions abroad. There are second-graders who hold book drives for libraries in other countries. If you've been following all my posts, you saw the video of the boy who lost his water can -- why can't we send water cans? Blankets? Inflatable beds? Tents? Underwear? Shoes?

Okay, I'm emotional. Let me slow down.


The Bigger Picture
My point is, this is not some desperate affair that no one can solve. The mechanisms I mentioned above are helpful because they support stabilization and autonomy; they do not create economic reliance. True, Joseph Kony is not going to walk out of the jungle and lay down his arms because Joe Smith in the United States donated $5 to Amnesty International. But. Giving one bucket to a twelve-year-old boy might save a family of four from dying of thirst. And who knows what that family of four will turn out to be?

Making the point personal again, somebody saved my dad, and now he's a doctor in south-central Los Angeles, fighting his own battle against disease in one of the most impoverished areas of the West Coast. And because he was spared from hunger and violence, my brother was born and is working as an electrical engineer in Santa Monica. And me, I'm studying law in Philadelphia and putting together a human rights clinic for a university in Uganda. Look at the impact, and that was just one little act, just one person saved.

But -- and this is the last bar of soap in the box, I promise -- the reasons for anyone to be interested in foreign affairs is much, much broader than just one personal experience. Even under-developed nations like Sudan have valuable resources. Oil, for example. And in our current energy crisis, how valuable would those resources become if they were effectively managed and marketed across the hemisphere? Not to mention, small nations can be the source of disease such as Ebola, diseases which threaten to become a pandemic if they are not effectively quarantined and treated. And here's another angle: Think about the influence Afghanistan has had on our global political situation over the past ten years. And these are relatively powerless countries. Broaden your thinking to China and macrolending. Think about Russia's oil pipelines and how its control influences the United Nations Security Council and our allies in Europe. Recognize that the Berne Convention has affected intellectual property rights in the United States.

We cannot ignore other countries; not for humanitarian reasons, and not for business reasons. This is the wisdom of small tribes, an entry that I will write another day: For the sake of survival, you cannot ignore your brother. The person you take care of today will save your life tomorrow. The person you angered yesterday will let you die, given the choice.

Those kids whose lips were cut off by soldiers from the Lord's Resistance Army -- we can't afford to discount them. They might seem a world away, but their lives and ours are interconnected. We are all interconnected. And we benefit mutually from helping one another survive.