The weather has improved. Aqueduct construction is in full swing and I'm hauling materials for composting latrine construction. For my latrine, I need about 20 sacks of sand, 25 sacks of gravel, and 10 sacks of cement. Suffice to say, it's a lot of work. To speed up the process of building my latrine, which will serve as the example/talking point for the community, I decided to pay community members, something somewhat taboo for Peace Corps development philosophy.
I've been trying to organize a work day for quite some time. I thought if I provided food for the workers that that would be enough, but people kept flaking. So I started asking around and found out some startling news. The going rate to carry a 5-gallon bucket (1/2 sack) of sand from the river was $0.75. Mind you it is hard work, but it's also only 15 minutes of hard work. To haul a bag of cement from Kwite would be $5.00. People were making up excuses because they wanted me to pay them.
Last week, I had a work day that I'd been planning for weeks. The morning of my counterpart said he couldn't help. Sticking to the Peace Corps idea of a community contribution, I told him I would not pay for the labor for anyone else's latrine. However, I would pay for people to help build my personal latrine. Suddenly, my counterpart was free for the day.
Even though we only worked the one day, word spread. Now people are stopping by all the time not to ask for photos or money or gifts. Instead, they're asking if I have more work for them. It's relentless. Suddenly, there's an overwhelming enthusiasm to work, something lacking for the last year and a half.
I should back up a bit and add a little more context. The Panamanian government every once in awhile makes its way out to the Rio Mananti for a project. A health post was built in Calante three years ago (still without staff and locked up). They paid community members $1.00 per bucket and $10 for each bag of cement hauled from Kwite.
Projects like that set a precedent. When a worker earns about $5/day from Chiquita Banana, in an urban setting, what dynamic is created when someone can earn $30/day hauling cement in a place where people live on less than $1/day? On top of that, the government doles out $100 to each family every two months, which for many is their only source of income. In other words, people learn to wait for the easier money and have an inflated sense of the cost of labor.
Amongst less-than-ideal purchases, that money also helps provide a better diet or supplies for personal hygiene like soap. If community members earned as much as the average Panamanian, the overall heath would improve. Cooking over a fire would be replaced with cleaner-burning stoves. People would be able to better fight of infections and water-borne diseases with the improved diet that comes with a higher socioeconomic status. But handouts may not be the best way to get there.
In America, we have a culture of meritocracy and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Our lore is of frontiersmen and immigrants, people who struck out on their own and made something out of nothing. That mentality simply does not exist out here. What is the price of creating a culture of dependency? What is the true cost of aid?
For now, I'm playing (or paying) along with my latrine project because I'd rather kick back a few bucks to my gente and be able to show people the composting latrine rather than stand by an empty patch of dirt with my paternalistic principles about aid.
To be honest, I don't really have an answer to the best approach with aid. I'm certainly more confused on the issue than when I got here. I think the penny drives to UNICEF certainly have their place. There are starving children and people are dying of preventable diseases. Like the commercials say, thirty cents really can save a life. When I return to the US, I fully plan on donating to charity again. But I will do so knowing that charity is a much more complex issue than I once thought.
