Sucre, NGOs, and musing

---

Sucre is the OTHER capital of Bolivia, but of course no one except the sucreños actually hold any kind of significance to this. They actually hold quite a lot of significance to it, and never suggest that Sucre, without government buildings, at a dead-end part of Bolivia, in a small colonial town, maybe doesn´t deserve the title of world capital if you plan on your taxi driver taking you to your destination without a severe lecture.
But nonetheless it´s something cool to store away in your memory bank of random world trivia.

We got to Sucre from Potosí, by colectivo (shared taxi). The system for colectivos is that they wait until they´re full and then leave. There are a lot of them, so anybody that looks remotely like thinking of going to Sucre is pounced upon. Gringoes constitute a literal frenzy.
We pulled up to the bus station, and as I was looking for change to pay the driver, the clattering I was peripherally aware of became a physical force as a woman slammed herself onto the car and began yelling that She had a car ready, only two more spots! Come with me!

You know those scenes from bad movies where you see a locust plop onto the picnic basket, then the next scene is a deafening blizzard of insects? That´s what we felt like - suddenly there were dozens of people shouting and pulling at us and then shouting and pulling at each other and one dude, convinced he had talked us into going with him (I´d looked at him because he was ripping my shirt and so I raised my hand), started to pick up my backpack. Judo chop!

Eventually a policeman sauntered over and told everyone to scatter. Not sure if it was because he was bored, he was helping us, or if because everyone in the square was having a ball watching us (Fun, apparently, is illegal in Bolivia)...

The road to Sucre was uneventfual aside from a few more-than-usual landslides ...


We stayed at Residencial Colonial, but only because Lonely Planet said it was a Peace Corps favourite. Izzy and I being both big PC wannabes, that sold us. We thought, Hey, maybe we´ll meet 1 or 2 if we´re lucky.

Ha. We ended up meeting the entire Potosí region contingent ... being, as it was, I was many, many, drunkenly times reminded: SUUUUUUUPERR BOOOOOWL SUN-DAAAYYYYYYY!!!!! Twenty volunteers had all come in from the region, some hiking six hours, specially for the game. Of course, no one actually knew who was playing until they got to Sucre, but that hardly mattered.
They two we became good friends with were Mike and Alicia - Mike from Santa Cruz, Alicia from Nebraska. Both very much identifiable with those places, respectively, which surprised me. Somehow I pictured all PC volunteers as being super-skilled international extraordinaire semi-gods, but instead everybody was basically a collection of what could have been my sister´s friends (granted, my sister tends to hang out with beautiful ex-pro athlete doctoral candidates). Which was even cooler. They come into town every 2 weeks or so. They party. THey read books. They get bored. They´re normal people.
And of course Mike and Alicia turned out to be a lot deeper than their Nebraska/California images projected them as, but then again most people are.

Anywaysk, Mike and Alicia were assigned to work with an NGO (non-governmental organization) that distributes master weavings to tourists and the global market. However, after about 30 seconds on the job they realized that the NGO was little better than a corrupt corporation (it gave the weavers 40% of the value of their product and pocketed the rest). SO they broke with it and are now doing their own informal distribution, giving the weavers 100%. Neither is sustainable and based on tourist revenue, but it´s something. We went into a weaving shop out of interest later on (not the one Mike & Alicia were affiliated with), and asked what cut went to the weavers. 75%, she told Izzy. Later (I was in the baño), I asked the same question. 70%, she said. We told Mike and Alicia. They laughed - Alicia said that´s a straight up lie. I know the weavers that NGO deals with. I guarantee it´s maximum 40% that they get...

After 2 months in SA I have a whole new perspective on NGOs, but it´s hard to explain without having experienced the third world ...

Most NGOs do good work. A lot of big ones are rich and well-run (the administrative part of it, at least). They also mostly have their share of corruption. Some are just purely crooked.
The thing is - a lot of the money you donate never gets to the people you think it will. It goes towards more solicitation of funds, new pick-ups for the workers, promotional flyers, administrative costs, and material costs. Not a whole lot makes it to ´the people.´ There´s a system it trickles down through.

Ok - example: CARE gets a lot of heat (the NGO Izzy worked with). CARE-Perú people ride round in new cars and nice clothes and have great houses and expensive equipment, but the local project was to show a village how to build hygienic latrines, efficient stoves, and potable water systems, build a pilot, and then clear out. This of course is a philosophie, to ´teach them how to fish,´ but it´s just an impossibility for a subsistence farmer to buy the materials. Alan, our doctor friend in Quinua, Peru, finally broke when Izzy was talking about the good CARE had at least done some good things and he took her on a drive to a village and showed her the real thing behind the pilot, that they basically hadn´t done shite, really.
Yet still their system keeps turning over.

On the other hand, CARE-USA in Lake Titicaca provided the materials and the town provided the labour, and they made some very successful projects. Just like any other business, it really depends on the people in charge locally - for a really crooked program: Eric, a volunteer in Potosí, got assigned to work to end child labour in the mines. However, his NGO is actively embezzling and profits from the status quo. He threatened to report them, and now they{re actively working to under-mine and dis-credit him.

In La Paz I followed a HUGE (20,000 ppl) demonstration in the streets ... against used clothing. I thought it was kind of funny at first until I realized what it was actually about. The ladies (in bowler hats, yes!) I talked with said that all the clothes Annie Nelson in St. Paul donates to ´Needy Countries´ actually gets siphoned off by NGOs and sold as trendy clothing - completely undermining local economies. It´s usually cheaper than most clothes even Bolivians can make... (does this remind you of anything. I´ll give you a hint. It starts in W, and ends in ´AL-Mart´).

For a lot of programs it seemed like they had gotten so used to their cycle of bureaucracy that in the end, the actual implementation of aid was a bye-product of their system.

But - as Izzy pointed out, some 11 or 12 people embezzled from the Red Cross during Hurricane Katrina. But does that mean you shouldn´t donate? No, of course not. If it weren´t for those programs, no help would get to anyone ... I´ve heard 50 cents of every dollar gets turned into aid within the Red Cross... if so, that sounds like a pretty good ratio to me...

Just like those PC people are ´just people,´ so are NGO people. Some truly are saints and live on almost nothing, but most take what they need to live comfortably and then the project is their job.

So, next time you write out a cheque to a charity, make sure you know exactly where it´s going. Specify in writing what you want it used for. I think a large part of the reason big charities are big, aimless philanthropy-machines is because they are a reflection of the guilty, aimless cheque-writing and bucket coining most Westerners do - more as a reflex and just enough to ease the conscience to where you can emotionally distance yourself from the human turmoil that 80% of the world lives in.
I think a lot of the reason why I´m writing this is because I, like millions of other people my age from similarly affluent countries, have always wanted to ´work for an NGO´, because we´re aware of the injustice in the world and want to do something about it and working for an NGO will help re-distribute that balance, right?, and without really knowing what it is NGOs do exactly but knowing that they do good so they must be the pinnacle of devotion to a cause, right? ... but now realizing that it really isn´t, that NGOs are afflicted by the same vices and virtues that make this human world in the state that it is ... that nothing, of course, is that simple and ´poof´ there goes another adolescent pipe dream.

I´m not judging, either - I am a participant in the same thing, and you should be proud if you tithe to charity. But, like everything else, money rules the business of NGOing, and has made it an industry like any other - and as dependent on ´consumer confidence.´ That´s why I´m here, to figure out how to make that system better - or maybe make a new one altogether.
Another adolescent pipe dream just got made.

Anyways - we ended up getting a ton of weavings from Mike and Alicia, because in 2 months this was the 1st place we KNEW we could trust. At the end I was considering a belt, one that had taken this weaver a month to make.
How much will this affect this guy´s life, really, if I got this? I asked Mike (I was honestly wondering but it came out flippaant and Mike raised his eyebrows at me)
Well, it´ll probably help him feed his family for about another 2, 2 1/2 weeks ...

Hm. In a year, will I miss that $10? Probably not. At any rate, it´s become my favourite belt. Although - it´s almost two times too big. I asked Mike about tht, think the guy just thought all gringos were 400-lb hippopotomuses ... turns out all the women (women´s belt, whoops) need huge belts to wear lots of thick layers - because fat and fertile is beautiful. Mike said at the discos in Sucre the girl with the biggest butt always gets swarmed... They like big butts, and I cannot lie.

I went to the Super-Bowl BBQ while Izzy coped with her sickness back at the hostal. I felt bad, but we thought it was stupid for me not to go, because we had wanted to know about the Peace Corps.
So I hung out for a few hours with the twenty-odd PC volunteers at their ´crash pad,´ which is totally illegal, incidentally. You´re NOT supposed to have another apartment besides your site (apparently in the 90´s they had a villa and raging, coked-out parties). But everyone also agreed that the PC could go shove it, so they had a cute little apartment with lots of books. Times have changed, I guess.
Talking to the volunteers was interesting ... Everyone thought what they were doing was good and wouldn´t trade it for anything. They hated the micro-manageing and silly rules of the PC, but they loved it nonetheless and got taken care of really well.
I have heard that the PC is in the end mostly a chance for you to have an amazing experience. I asked about that. Most of the answers were similar, but Alicia put it best: Yes, I realize I am a propaganda tool of the US government. But that´s OK ... I like my country and I´m proud if I can represent the good side of it. Maybe I can show that all Americans are not like in the movies and maybe when someone thinks of America they´ll think of me instead. Maybe I can have an impact on someone´s life. Toledo (current prez of Peru) started out because a volunteer made a difference in his life. Yes, there are a lot of Maybes. But at least it´s something.

Yes, a lot of Peace Corps projects don´t have an impact beyond the 2-year span of the volunteer. A lot of them fail. But that´s the way it goes - most NGO projects do fail.... that´s why they are the way they are: they can´t bank on every project being a smashing success. The PC is just another NGO (well, actually technically the opposite) - and the fact that it doesn´t work magic everywhere it goes doesn´t mean it´s not worth it.

After about 5 the copious amount of Super-Bowl Sunday alcohol everyone had been drinking started to catch up with everyone and conversation devolved to favourite TV superheroes of the 80s, and I went back to hang out with Izzy. Later that night, we turned up at the game (in a german cafe), about 4 min before it ended. Nobody actually knew anybody from Seattle or Pittsburgh, but there was a lot of money on the table (about 100 Bs ... $12.50, or a week´s work for a bolivian). Mike had bet on the Seahawks and apparently they had been getting beat up for a while, because he was slumped on his bench, one eye open, talking to Dan next to him and picking up coca leaves and eating them. FYI, you´re most definitely NOT supposed to eat coca leaves. I imagine at some point he started out chewing but he was way beyond that point ...

We hung out a little bit more that week but then they all started going back to their sites and we needed to get back to La Paz for Izzy´s flight. They were a good group of people ... Despite what anybody says about the PC, it still takes a very special kind of person to do what they do.

Sucre itself is beautiful ... all the buildings towards the centre are white-washed colonial buildings ... except about 1/3 of the businesses were closed for tax impropriety, which only meant they hadn´t turned in receipts for EVERY SINGLE transaction for the fiscal year. So the whole time in Sucre and most of Bolivia was marked by having to wait for a hand-written carbon-copy receipt...

There´s a plaza in the middle of town where the city cleaners sweep away garbage with giant palm fronds. It has a few phases - the sleepy afternoon wanderers/lazers, the night-time strollers and running children, and latest night, the argentine/columbian/venezuelan bohemians that make cheap but cool jewelry hang out and play guitar and smoke weed and play with fire bolos. Throughout the whole time are the destitute poor, that wander round the plaza. Most of the kids are shoe-shiners and will clean your shoes for 1 Bs ($ 1/8). Some sell candy. None of it is anything you´d actually want to eat - it´s more of a less shameful way of begging, I suppose. But it still comes back to the ethics of it: give her money for a candy, and perpetuate her situation? Or not do anything and make her day that much harder? Only towards the end of my time in Bolivia did I finally catch on that very few children don´t go to school, it´s just that very few don´t have to work to support it. So the little shoe-shiners and candy-kids were just trying to make a little money to be able to go to school... So I made it a rule to buy at least one candy a day from a kid, or anything from a kid. UNICEF got it pretty wrong I think when they said no child under 18 should work. That´s just not possible, and for these kids it enables them to get an education. And it´s of their own volition, too....
One day we met a shoe-shiner boy, who, finally convinced we didn´t want our sneakers shined, showed us his coin collection. I´m kind of a coin-freak, so I promised to bring coins the enxt day, which I did, a few pennies, some euro coins, and a canadian dollar. We were talking about them and got careless and suddenly there were six kids all wanting coins and two old beggars shoving their hands in our faces and our friend was asking about various things we had and then asking for us to give it to him.

I guess we deserved it. But here was an opportunity to make a human connection beyond us being ambulatory ATMs and we thought we had made it. Oh well. Plus, we WERE perpetuating the gringo = gifts mentality.

If anything, being in Peru and Bolivia gave me some of an appreciation for what it must be like to be rich. I feel really sorry for Bill Gates. His life must be really hard - every day people asking for money, never being able to tell if someone was genuinely interested in you or if they had ulterior motives, things never having any value ... I think being wealthy would be a very unhappy thing for me.

What would happen a lot was - I would be sitting in a park or strolling slowly and a bunch of shoe-shiner men (with ski masks on - shame? leprosy? not sure why, but all of them wear it. It´s really creepy) or teenagers would come up and talk to me. I could almost predict what they were going to say: Hi, Where are you from?, Howe long have you been in Bolivia, How long was the flight, How much did it cost, How much was that necklace ... (pause) ... and then that sing-song whiney voice andeans do when they want something would appear and they would ask for it as a gift, or some moneditas, por favor mi amigo ...

Eventually I just started walking fast and avoided parks altogether.

In a way I can empathize with the ´de-humanization factor´ of NGOs (ie the actual project becoming a means of an end). There is just a way you have to be in amidst such destitute poverty or else you won´t make it through a day without breaking down. Some might call it a defense mechanism, like a doctor ... some might say it was an erosion of compassion (compassionate conservative?, ha) I guess that´s true, and if I were to act the same way in a developed country, I should be called a heartless insensitive coward. But there are different levels of compassion, and one cannot use the logic of one world - distinctly different, separate, alien worlds - for another.
So in the same way I think I understand why CARE-Peru doesn´t give the materials to the people. They could build 10.000 latrines in Ayacucho but it wouldn´t change anything in the way people think. That´s a lot different and takes more than money.

I think this place is either making me a radical leftist or radical rightist. Of course, not that they´re all that different.

But at least it´s something.

---