The Seventh Post

So I put up a post on the Book of Faces this morning to see if I could guilt anyone into donating money to help one of the local guys I’ve been working with here afford his accounting course fees for this coming semester. As I mentioned in that post (I wonder if anyone has read it because as yet I’ve had precisely zero replies… hmm…), quite a few situations like that have been coming up recently – a few have slid by already and I can see a few more on the horizon heading in my direction.

I wrote previously about perceptions of Westerners here and the instinctive demands for money that you get from little kids as you walk down the street. But this is different – more subtle and much trickier to find the right path through. As I’ve started to develop closer relationships with people, got to know a bit more about their lives and the issues that they deal with every day, I’ve started to realise just how many genuinely worthy causes there are – and just how money really can help if it’s used in the right way. It’s an uncomfortable truth because it makes that line between “I’m here to help” and “I’m not here to give you money” all the blurrier. Someone needs to buy a storage tank for his water shop so he can still sell on the frequent days when the deliveries simply don’t arrive. Someone else wants to re-start a business delivering meals to schools that she had had to abandon after her sister died. A fantastic school and home for HIV/AIDS orphans can’t pay their electricity bills. They want to install solar panels so they won’t have the problem in future – but that costs $1200 and they can’t afford it. And of course there’s young Michel, who might have to stop his accounting studies because he can’t afford the fees – and then what will he do?

As much as we say “I’m not here to give money”, the fact is these are instances where pretty much the most useful thing we can do IS give money. The hardest thing is it’s often not all that much. In Michel’s case, he needs $700. Now, that’s not nothing, but when it comes down to it, I could pay for that myself if I had to. Does that mean I should? Obviously I chose not to and that’s why I put the thing on Facebook – somehow I feel if it’s a lot of people giving money, it’s fundraising, but if it’s one person, it’s a handout. It’s a slippery slope too – if I help this guy out, how can I say no to the next guy?