Short term missions part two: Gratitude is not enough...

In my last post, I looked at the impact of short term missions on the participants, and the common response that goes something like:

“The people I met were so happy yet they had so little.  It made me realize I should really be more grateful for what I have.”

While I think that being more grateful in general is a worthwhile goal to pursue, this response of gratitude after spending time in a materially poor community is incomplete.

Gratitude is incomplete because it only requires us to change the way we think about our present situation, without challenging us to examine if there is anything that needs to be changed about our present situation. 

Witnessing poverty should cause us to struggle with difficult questions:

Why is this community poor?  How do my own community and my lifestyle contribute to this situation?

The causes of poverty are extremely complex, and I certainly don’t have the answers to these questions.  These are questions that I have been struggling to make sense of for over a decade. 

It’s not enough to talk about giving men fish, or teaching them to fish.  We have to ask who owns the lake?  Who is allowed to fish there?  Who benefits most from the fish that are caught?  Is the environment of the lake being taken care of to allow the fish to thrive, or is it being polluted so that life and therefore business cannot be sustained?

While there may be some people who are poor because of laziness or their own character flaws, the majority of people living in poverty are stuck in oppressive systems and unjust regulations that make it very difficult to get ahead.  

There are complex global factors that perpetuate poverty.  The cliché of a global village is the reality that we live in today, and I want to share two examples of how our lifestyles in the West affect global poverty. 

As a result of trying to keep up with ever changing fashion, many of us continually buy new clothes and replace old ones – not because they are worn out, but because they are out of style.  In order to produce clothes so cheaply, the majority of our ready to wear clothes are made in sweatshop factories in other countries, where workers are exposed to low wages, unsafe working conditions, and long hours.  Because competition for textile factories has become so fierce, contractors have to compromise on safety standards and illegally low wages for their workers in order to win contracts.  Our demand for cheap and fashionable clothing drives this competition and results in sweatshops that oppress workers and perpetuate poverty.

Many of us feel better when at least we donate our old clothing to thrift stores and charities.  But what happens to all of these discarded clothes?  Tons and tons of our discarded clothing is sent to countries around the world, where they are sold cheaply in second hand markets.  Although this does create employment for some people in terms of those who sell clothes in the market, the influx of cheap clothing inhibits the development of local textile industries which would benefit local communities a lot more than secondhand markets.  Locally made clothing simply cannot compete with cheap used clothing.  Kenya, for example, used to have a thriving local textile industry until cheap imported secondhand clothing arrived.  

Another example of how those of us from the West impact global poverty is the issue of environmental degradation and global climate change.  If you have any doubts that global climates are changing, just talk to some rural Ugandan farmers.  Rainfall seasons used to be very predictable – although there would always be some difficult seasons where there was not as much rain, the actual time that the rains began and ended were very predictable, which allowed farmers to know exactly when to plant.  In the past decade, the climate has changed and the rains have become much more unpredictable.  As a result, small scale farmers are the ones who are hit the hardest with the unpredictability of the rains, as planting at the wrong time can lead to a smaller harvest or even a complete crop failure.  For a family dependent on agriculture, like over 70% of Ugandans, a bad growing season can result in debilitating poverty.

Even though it is the lifestyle of those of us from the West that is disproportionately contributing to global climate change, it is the poorest communities in the world who are most affected by the effects of climate change. 

For those of us from affluent communities, it’s easy for us to point fingers at poor communities and say “its them – they are lazy, and their government is corrupt, and they are stuck in a poverty mentality.”  It’s a lot harder for us to point those fingers back at ourselves and realize “it’s also us.Our demand for cheap and excessive consumer goods is contributing to unjust labor practices around the world, and our lifestyle contributes to environmental degradation which disproportionately affects the global poor, and our country is one of many that enforce unjust trade regulations, and was involved in a history of injustice and oppression that still has economic repercussions.” 

This is a complex issue and there are no easy answers, and it’s extremely challenging to live outside of the “systems” that make up our communities, regardless of how oppressive we realize they are.  While I have changed some aspects of my lifestyle in response to the intricacies of poverty I have wrestled with, there are just as many aspects of my lifestyle that I struggle to change.

My point in writing this is to draw attention to these issues, and to suggest that spending time in a materially poor community should cause us to examine these hard questions and realize our own contribution to the problem, rather than just to be grateful that we have an abundance while others do not.  The solution to poverty doesn’t lie in those of us from affluent communities focusing on how we can change poor communities, it also involves us being willing to honestly and critically examine our own contribution to the problem and commit to change our own communities.

Short term missions: Gratitude is not enough...

                Summertime is the season of short term missions, which is causing me to reflect on the impact that short term trips often have on the participants and their response upon returning home, especially trips that take participants to areas where there is greater poverty than their home area.  Over the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with friends, colleagues, fellow church members, and many EMU students who have spent time internationally on a short term mission or study abroad trip. 

      After spending time volunteering in an area where there is poverty, a common sentiment expressed goes something like:  “The people I met were so happy yet they had so little.  It made me realize I should really be more grateful for what I have.”

    Based on the number of times I’ve heard this expressed, it is a very common response (and I’m sure I expressed the same sentiment after my first experience in another culture in 2002).  Upon further reflection, however, I’m troubled by this common response because I feel the response of gratitude is not wrong, but rather incomplete.  For those of us who were raised in an affluent community, spending time in a poorer community should cause us not only to be more grateful, but also to wrestle with two challenging questions:

1.        Why am I surprised to find that people are happy even when they have little?

2.       Why is this community poor, and how does my lifestyle and my community contribute to this inequality?

      I’m going to address the first question in my blog today, and then explore the second question in my next post.

In the US, we have been told over and over again that more things and more money will make us happy.  This sentiment is the entire basis of our multi billion dollar advertising industry and our capitalist economy.  Although many of us would claim that we don’t really believe this, our complete surprise that people can be so happy with so little is evidence that we have internalized this belief more than we realize.

So when we encounter people who appear to be content and joyful and yet don’t have much materially, it’s jarring for us. 

By responding to this situation by committing to simply be more grateful for what we have, we perpetuate our false way of thinking:

Having a lot = happiness. 

People with little = happy

 Me with more = more happy.

 Therefore, I should be even more happy because I have more. 

The problem with this of course is that it doesn’t challenge the basic assumption that having a lot = happiness.

Short term trips should cause us to question that very foundation.  We should be asking, Why do I believe that more things should make me happier?  Are there things that this community has that my own community is lacking? 

There are three things that I’ve noticed as I’ve spent time in other communities that I believe foster a sense of happiness and contentment that many of us in the West lack:

-          Limited exposure to advertising.  The purpose of advertising is to make us discontent.  If we were content with what we have, how we look, etc, we wouldn’t have the need to buy more things.  The general premise of advertising is to convince us that we are lacking in a specific way that their product can fix.  The promise is that true happiness will be found with the purchase of their product.  This promise is empty, and happiness continues to elude us as we try harder and harder to address our discontentment with stuff.

 

-          Strong community ties.  Many happiness studies have shown that strong relationships are one of the biggest determinants of happiness.  Many cultures, like Uganda, are people oriented, and place a very strong priority on relationships.   The average person in these communities has a strong network of family and friendship ties which also allows them to be resilient in the face of adversity. 

-          Strong faith – with the rise of secularism in the West, the culture in general lacks an “overarching narrative” that gives meaning to life.  The secular view is that life began as a cosmic accident, there are no spiritual forces beyond what we can see and feel, and when we die we simply cease to exist.  This worldview can easily lead to a sense of hopeless and despair.  Communities that have a strong religious faith have an overarching narrative that enables them to look at the whole of life as having meaning.   In an oversimplified way, a Christian narrative states that we were created by a loving and benevolent God, our life is a meaningful invitation to participate with God in the way He is working and present in the world, and when we die we have the hope and promise of eternal life.  Embracing this narrative results in a sense of hope and joy, as well as resilience in even difficult circumstances.

The typical response of determining to be more grateful is therefore incomplete because it enables us to continue with our false way of thinking, simply determined to “try harder” to appreciate the material abundance in our lives.  Instead, we should examine our own lives by asking questions such as:

-          How much and what kind of media do I expose myself to?  How does this affect the way I see myself?  How does this affect my ability to be content with where I am and what I have?

-          How much time do I invest in people?  Do I view relationships as expendable, simply a means to an end, or am I committed to the relationships in my life?  How can I rearrange my priorities to invest more in people and build stronger relationships?

-          Am I investing enough time in my spiritual life and spiritual development?  Am I being influenced by the meaninglessness of a secular worldview?  Do my life choices and actions reflect my faith and the ultimate meaning of my existence?

As a disclaimer, this discussion of people living in poverty and yet being happy can also cause us to idealize poverty, or to imagine that life in poverty is somehow ok because people appear to be happy.  True poverty is crippling and stressful, which leads us to the question I'll reflect on next - short term experiences should lead us to ask hard questions about poverty and economic inequality....more on that next time...

Kijani cloth diapers - made in Uganda!

When I was pregnant with Natalie, we were getting ready to move to the US for Muigai to start graduate school and we were looking for ways to save money on the baby.  We were living in Tanzania at the time, and many women used cloth diapers and hand washed them.  I figured if women could use cloth diapers and hand wash them, how hard could it be to use cloth diapers with a washing machine? 

I did some research online and was amazed at the variety of modern cloth diapers, which looked not only easy to use but also much cuter and cheaper than disposables.   So we used cloth diapers with Natalie, and we loved them -  we literally saved thousands of dollars by using cloth, not to mention saving thousands of diapers from ending up in the landfills.

When Natalie was about 18 months old, went to Kenya for 3 months for Muigai to do his practicum for grad school.  I was introduced to a lady in my town who had a cloth diaper business, and she agreed to teach me how to make cloth diapers so that I could train some women in Kenya.  My original plan was to train women how to make the diapers so that they could set up their own businesses.

Unfortunately, the materials that are needed to make quality diapers were not available in Kenya, so my original plan fell through.

When we moved to Uganda, I brought along some diaper fabrics.  In January, I made a few diapers for a friend and through word of mouth, I started receiving some orders and requests for diapers.

Since January, I’ve trained two local tailors how to make cloth diapers and have been experimenting with different designs to find one that would be affordable for the local market, high quality, and relatively easy to make. 

I’ve settled on an “all in two” design where the diaper comes in two pieces – an outer cover and an inner soaker that snaps onto the cover.  When the soaker gets wet or dirty, another soaker is snapped onto the cover, which can be used two or three times until it needs to be washed.  Since the cover is more expensive to make, this design makes the diapers more affordable.  The diapers and soakers are also adjustable, so the same diaper will fit a newborn all the way until he/she is potty trained.

I’m so excited to see how this project is taking shape.  Through word of mouth only, we have filled orders for 42 covers and 65 soakers since January!  Since this is something that I am doing in my spare time, I’m planning to keep it small for now.  My main focus is on training local tailors how to make the diapers in order to provide more work and income for them.  My role will be to source for the necessary fabrics (some have to be sent from the US) and coordinate the orders.   

Here are a few pictures of the diapers “in action” – thanks to Muigai for these great shots – it’s nice being married to a good photographer!!